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HP Photosmart C7180 All-in-One Printer, Fax, Scanner, and Copier Review from Chris Lee Mullins. A very pleased Mac user, So far, this printer is a delight. UPS delivered the unit to me without issue, and a day earlier than Amazon anticipated. Unbox and setup proceeded smoothly and almost without incident on both my MacBook Pro and my wife’s Dell Inspiron E1705 (although it ran **very** slowly on the Dell). At first, the PC Setup Wizard wouldn’t find the printer. I found C7180’s MAC address and had it find the printer manually. True to form, the printer set-up on the Mac was quick and easy.

I was initially worried that printing wireless to the C7180 would be slow, laborious and error-prone. Not so. From both the Dell and the Mac, I noticed little difference between USB and 802.11g printing modes.

The first few prints on the provided 4×6 HP Advanced Photo paper were a little off, both Mac and PC. Black and white prints were flawless, although drying times were longer than I’m used to from my previous HP Photosmart 7520. Looks as if the nozzles needed some cleaning (not uncommon with a new Photo printer), as a single cleaning cycle fixed issue with colour prints.

Normal fast prints to regular paper from Word and Excel (both Mac and PC) were very sharp. Not quite laser quality, but very legible at 5 points.

When trying to print from iPhoto to 4×6 paper, I’m having to use the Advanced print option to choose the print tray, otherwise the photo prints to normal paper. Maybe that could be considered an “Advanced” setting, but that’s not something I had to do with the old Photosmart 7520.

I haven’t done much scanning, but I’m please with what I have done so far (some slides). For some reason, the light bar on the scanner **never turns off** and I plan to call HP about it tomorrow. The last thing I need is for that light bar to burn out. Additionally, the 3.5″ screen is always lit up. Could be a function of being on a wireless network – the screen gives you feedback on the strength of the wireless signal and whether or not you are receiving messages or shared photos via HPs photosharing service.

So far, I’m impressed. I love the ability to print wirelessly from…well, whereever I want to be. I’m sure my mother-in-law will love the internet photosharing function. I’m docking a single star for the light bar and color screen remaining on for hours at a time.

edit – Duh. An option in the printer setup will allow you to shut off the scanner lamp if unused for an hour. Still no solution for the printer LCD remaining backlit.

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