HP Deskjet 3745
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Average user rating from 2 users |
Fast, good pic quality, but tricky
by Al on Sep 18th, 2005 at 7:15 PM:
When my old HP printer finally bit the dust--spelled "w-o-r-n o-u-t"--and I was in real need of a good printer, I didn't really have a lot to spend. I looked at the HP Deskjet 3475, liked its compact size, and decided to give it a try. I am running an HP computer with a Pentium 4, 2.56 GB (actual speed) processor, Windows XP-SP2, 512 MB RAM, and an 80GB hard drive. Here's what I have discovered in the two months I have owned the HP DJ3745 printer:
At first it was great, although I was a little disappointed at the small size of the ink cartridges, which are about half the ink volume of my old machine. Still, I thought, it prints great, and renders graphics at darn near photo quality just at the "fast normal" print setting and photo quality images at the higher settings. Since I print my own business cards using exclusive graphics, I was very happy. My bubble of joy, however, soon burst when I tried to print a sheet of business cards from MS Publisher.
First the graphics had to be realigned because of the difference in the old and new printers, but that is normal. However, no matter what I did, the alignment on the page was different every time I printed. The first page was badly misaligned, about 1/4" above my settings, rendering the cards useless. I checked the margins against the perforations on the card stock, and they were correct. After a couple more ruined pages and wasted ink, I discovered the problem. The way the paper tray is set up allows the paper, or card stock in this case, to slide right through the machine until it hits the inside of the removable back panel. There is no stop that properly aligns the leading edge of the paper into the correct feed position unless the tray is almost full. The result is that the user has to best guess or experiment to discover where to stop when loading only a few pages of paper or card stock into the printer.
Also, the DJ3745 printer is not really designed for perforated stock, especially business card stock. It uses a very tight U-shaped feed pattern that is fine for letters or photo paper but causes the perforations in business card stock to crack as it is fed around the tight U turn. It is the same with certain other label stock. The consequences of the cracked perforations is that it creates a sharp edge that snags other parts of the machine, including the printer head carriage that travels back and forth during printing. This has the potential of causing mechanical damage to the carriage and to the printer head. It also makes a horrendous noise when it hangs, which is a combination of the gears slipping and the motor bogging down. Being a machine designer and fabricator, I can tell you that every time the motor bogs down under such circumstances, it shortens the life of the motor. Every time a gear slips, there is the potential of damage to the teeth or of its spinning on the shaft and compromising the tight fit necessary for the gear to function properly.
Of course, every peripheral and every component of a computer is the product of planned obsolescence. They are designed to wear out or otherwise malfunction after a given period of time to ensure future sales of their ever-changing, "new and improved" models.
Also, there is a basic problem with the software that accompanies the printer. It is brand new, so it does not yet have all the bugs out. One such bug is the inability to disable or stop blank separator pages from feeding, even though the Separator Page field in the Printer Options is blank. This is especially aggravating when printing something such as a two-sided document or a greeting card. In "fast draft" mode, the printer only feeds one separator page about 5-10 seconds after each printed page. On any mode above "fast draft," even in "fast normal" mode, the DJ3745 or its software feels the need to feed TWO blank separator sheets, one before the document prints and another after the document has printed. It was not always like that. When the software was first installed, the separator sheets did not feed, because I had no separator page specified. Now, almost two months after the purchase, the separator pages are being fed, and I have so far been unable to find a way to stop it. HP support wants to phone me rather than giving me written instructions on how to troubleshoot the problem and implement possible solutions.
It still prints really well, but I will have to get a different printer to be able to print business cards.
A simple solution to the perforated card problem, it seems to me, would be to make the back cover, opened only to clear paper jams, so that it folded down into a paper tray and to modify the machine so that heavier card stock and business card stock can be fed straight through rather than making the tight U-turn and potentially ruining the printer.
That's my 2-cents-worth.
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Very cheap printer which is exactly what you get, if not worse.
by Daniel Neu on Jun 4th, 2008 at 9:08 AM:
I've yet to ever see this printer pull two consecutive sheets of paper into the printer the same way. Alignment is always different and often off.
Don't even think about trying to print photos on this printer. Once you actually get photo paper to feed into the printer (forget about correctly or strait) you notice that the black and color cartridges don't stay in alignment and make for very fuzzy images.
Don't try printing a large document from this printer. It jams about ever 5th sheet and can only hold about 12 sheets of paper safely at a time.
All in all I've wished several times I could toss this printer out the second story window of my house and watch gleefully as it plummets to it's death, shattering into a thousands teeny, tiny, bits.
0/10 here.