The Scanner on the HP OfficeJet G55xi Finally Works
Written: Oct 18 '00 (Updated Apr 22 '01)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: print quality, ease of use
Cons: took forever for HP to figure out the problem
The Bottom Line: The greatest, now that the scanner and printer work at the same time.
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| colleenmf's Full Review: Hewlett Packard OfficeJet G55 All-In-One InkJet Pr... |
Update 4-22-01
Numerous additional phone calls and emails to HP still have not produced the desired results but we do seem to have our HP OfficeJet working correctly. My husband recently reformatted our hard drive and reinstalled Win 2K Pro from scratch instead of over top of W98. When he got ready to reinstall the printer he went to the HP website to see if they have a new driver yet. They don’t. The driver available for this peripheral is the same one that we have had all along but a paragraph has been added to the information available at the web site. According to this new information, the parallel port should be set to ECP mode. The default setting in Win 2 K pro is bi-directional. Changing the parallel port setting seems to have fixed the problem.
It took 10 months to get this information from HP. That is my biggest gripe. None of the technicians, with whom we spent hours upon hours on the phone, ever suggested this change. I guess I should be glad that hubby thought to look on the HP site ONE MORE TIME.
Overall, the print quality is great. I’ve copied pictures in the color mode to share with friends and family with little loss of quality. I can reduce and enlarge, control light and dark, make multiple copies with one touch. And the readout on the front of the keypad provides information on jams and ink levels when necessary. The copier is a godsend (especially when I want to copy all my CyberRebate forms before mailing them in). The scanner is extremely easy to use. I never once had to use the help function. I just pushed the “start scan” button and followed along. It seems pretty intuitive to me.
I now give this all-in-one a big five stars.
Update 11-3-00
After spending 2 hours on the phone with HP (at our cost) we still don't have a driver for this scanner. Two different technicians tried to have us do various things like edit the registry (NEVER DO THIS UNLESS YOU ARE A TOTAL COMPUTER WIZ) or use two HP drivers, one for the printer and one for the scanner. None of their ideas have worked. They promised to get back with us 10 days ago but we haven't heard anything. I do feel that HP is trying just that they aren't trying hard enough. If we could find another all-in-one that isn't HP, is within our budget and works with Win 2K pro we'd buy it in a minute.
Original opinion
We bought the HP OfficeJet G55xi in June 2000 to replace a perfectly good HP 550C printer and a less than perfect Mustek 600II EP scanner. I’ve read many of the recent reviews here on the G55 xi and I have to agree that that this item is a good printer and copier. Great black and white print and wonderful color print. The ability to make copies at the touch of a button is a godsend.
The problem is the scanner. When we first installed this we could not get the scanner to work at all. A visit to HP’s web site quickly told us why. THERE WAS NO DRIVER FOR WIN 2K PRO! The drivers were only available for Windows 95 and Windows 98. Due to the instability of W95 and W98 we upgraded to Win 2K pro early this year. (It totally solved the frequent crashing problems.) HP’s web site said that a driver would be available in late July so we decided to keep the G55 xi and wait it out.
You can probably tell what is coming next. No driver in July. Finally in late August a new driver became available. When we installed it, it slowed down the printing of B&W pages to about 5 minutes per page. I am not exaggerating. It was awful. We have since taken the driver off so that we can print reasonably quickly but whenever we need to scan we either must reinstall the “new” driver or take the item to be scanned to work and bring home the scanned items on a disk or send it by email. This is a total pain.
Of course, we have contacted HP and are trying to resolve this with them but it seems to me that the G55 xi has been available for a while now and should have adequate drivers for a fairly common Windows operating system. If you are using Win 2K pro, I would suggest waiting before purchasing the G 55 xi or trying to find another all-in-one that supports Win 2K pro. The HP products are generally very good and perhaps another OfficeJet would be better for Win 2K pro systems.
Contrary to what the summary says I WOULD recommend this machine to people with W 98 or W 95 but not to those with Win 2K pro.
Recommended:
Yes
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colleenmf
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Member: Colleen Farley
Location: Lubbock, TX
Reviews written: 146
Trusted by: 148 members
About Me:
Happily married, mostly retired, and addicted to the internet.
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