I'm a Happy Camper...er...Printer

Joe went to Pueblo today and came home with a new HP Photosmart all-in-one printer_fax_scanner_Copier. It uses the individual color ink cartridges for better color and even has a tiny screen and photo card slots so that you can upload your digital photos and save, print, or send them without even using the computer, if you choose to. It has express and a premier photo management software which with just a preview looks to me like it will do a lot of things I wanted to do in the past and didn't have the capability. I'll know more after I have a chance to play with it a while. I've already printed onto photo paper and cotton fabric sheets and the color is so much more brilliant. Hooray! In the past I was trying to do photo jobs on a document printer, basically.

From what we could find out, HP inkjet printers seem to be about the best you can get and the salesman told Joe that, for the money, he couldn't find a better all-in-one than this model. Joe bought the extended warranty and told the guy if this printer goes out before the two year extended warranty period is over, he will come looking for him with a club. He didn't seem too worried about that.

We found out that a few guys will work on these printers for at least $80 an hour and the cost of parts, so it is cheaper to buy a new one and this way we know it will work for a while. Since Joe is a trained repair man, and is good at taking things apart and getting them back together so they work, he is going to see if he can figure out how to fix the old one, just for the learning experience. He figures he has nothing to loss and may learn something helpful and may even fix it so we have an emergency backup, if needed. There's nothing he likes better than tearing into something different and figuring it out. Did I luck out, or not, when I met this guy all those years ago at a country and western dance class?

My brother sent me some more unbelievable photos and I want to share them with you. He is going to make me a professional 10 x 17 print of the Grand Canyon photo to hang on my wall. It was my choice of all his photos I've seen. Our cousin, Zack, is trying to talk him into moving to the gulf coast of Florida so they can set up a studio and shop to sell Steve's photography and photo tiles. He can't stand the the thought of living away from the mountains of Colorado, Utah, and Arizona so he's not sure if he wants to go down there.

The photos from top to bottom:

Bryce Canyon: A Fire Within

Grand Canyon: Toroweep Overlook

Zion: Gobbler on the Road

copyright: Steve Metzner

Images on Tile

Need Info on HP Inkjet Printers

I found I needed to print a few more sunflowers on cotton fabric sheets for my March 12 x 12 piece today, and guess what? My HP Officejet all-in-one broke today. It kept telling me it had a paper jam, but I couldn't find a jam when I checked it out. When Joe came home he looked at it and found no paper inside but lots of black ink powder. Evidently the ink cartridge jammed somehow, and dumped the ink and now he can't get to the ink cartridge to get it out. He's going to check tomorrow and see if it can be repaired at a reasonable cost, but he doubts it.

This is the third HP Officejet all-in-one we've had go bad on us in 5 years. The first, a G85, died before the warranty was out and they replaced it immediately. The replacement lasted a little over 2 years and the printer broke on it. It would cost as much to repair as to buy a new one so we bought the current 7200 a year and 3 months ago. It managed to last just beyond the warranty before it broke. It has been the printer portion that broke in all of them. I admit, we do lots of printing for the business, my photos on fabric, quilt patterns, and my genealogy research and books; but they are rather expensive to replace every year. I'd like to find one that is not a disposable use and toss variety.

What kind of luck have any of you had with your HP inkjet printers? What would you recommend as a good reliable machine for us? We need one that can print, scan and fax. It takes too much room to have separate pieces for each function.

Where have you purchased your and did you get the extended warranty. If so, do you recommend the extended warranty? We haven't had very good luck with the extended warranties paying for what needs to be repaired. They tend to cover everything except what actually breaks. And since they have a lot more experience with the equipment than we do, they know what to exclude. Do I sound a little cynical?!!!

In the meantime, I'll get my 12 x 12 as far as I can without the use of a printer. We have to get this fixed or replaced quickly. Like yesterday?!