Nirvana

My highest priority was for an all-in-one that would fit upon my home desktop alongside my computer and monitor. I needed to replace my HP F4180 because of queuing problems with the latest version of one of my photo editors.

By comparison the F4480 is much faster quieter and sleeker. Prints spew out at least 50% faster. The unit is quieter in operation and has the sound of quality. The F4480 is sleeker and shorter.

I can't address this unit's durability except to say that I am a computer hobbyist of over thirty years. For about the last ten years I have chosen HP products exclusively. I am very pleased with HP's online support (chat) system.

As for ink usage I will willingly pay more for the convenience of needing only two cartridges.

Tho I use printers predominantly for printing and copying documents I am delighted with the photo quality of the prints which are sometimes exhibited on the walls of our home.

As for the software I downloaded the driver only version from the HP website. The full HP software on the CD may be helpful to novice users but is an annoyance for folks who don't like all the ads. Better freeware options exist elsewhere online.

Price was not an issue this was simply the best at fulfilling my particular needs. However I am still in awe of the low price.

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Good fun for the creative folks out there...

I purchased the Polaroid PoGo today and have done a fair bit of "playing" with this compact little printer over the past couple of hours. In fact I have already used the first package of 10 sheets of Zink (Zero Ink) paper that come with the printer. So my first recommendation is; if you are planning on buying a PoGo I highly recommend getting extra paper so you can get through your "testing" phase without having to purchase more paper. However don't go crazy and buy too much there are expiration dates on the paper which may affect your picture quality if you take to long to "expose" (print) them.



Connectivity:

I have tested the Bluetooth capabilities with my Motorola Q Laptop Computer (Bluetooth enabled) my desk-top Windows Vista computer (with Radio Shack "Bluespoon" Bluetooth 2.0 adaptor added) and my PictBridge capable Canon Powershot A 640 camera (directly connected to PoGo via USB cable) and the printer worked like a charm in all of the above tests!



Speed of Printing:

Print time is about 1 minute per photo. There was no noticeable change in print speed with any of the tests I performed. Using the Bluetooth (wireless) connection or plugging in your USB cable directly from your camera did not seem to make any difference as to how fast the image printed.



Image Quality:

Not great...but not the worst I have seen either...The pictures I printed from my camera (via USB connection) looked better than my pictures from my cell phone but this was likely due to the higher megapixel image created by my camera versus the 1 megapixel image from my cell phone. However the "white balance" of both my camera and cell phone images were a little "off". The whites were extremely white (almost washed-out) and the dark (shadow areas) were very dark. So if you stay away from printing bright "beach / snow" images or dark "night" photographs you will be OK. Photos with lots of color (flowers for example) looked pretty good when printed with the PoGo.



Cool things to do:

The adhesive on the back of the photo paper is a nice feature of this product. This makes it possible to add pictures to your hand written journals. You can stick them to business card magnets and put photos all over your refrigerator. You can make photo luggage tags cards and much much more.



If you don't need the highest quality image but want to do some fun creative stuff with photographs I would definitely recommend the PoGo. If you are a photographer hoping that the PoGo would give you a quick "proof" of what your printed images will look like then this printer is probably not for you since the image quality is not as good as you could get with some standard ink jet printers.



Have fun...



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Had to return the first one

I did a ton of research and finally decided to go with this unit despite no reviews at the time. Installation was a breeze (using Mac OS X) except for one part where it asks you to set up a print queue. After doing so it didn't recognize it after multiple attempts. I finally decided to click past that step and it worked fine anyway.



We printed about a dozen photos over the first three days. On day 4 the printer booted up and slammed the print cartridge hard to the left then came up with a "Carriage Jam" error. The nice thing about the touch screen is that it also visually walks you through pictures of the areas that you need to check for paper jams etc.. Alas after going through every trouble shooting step provided it didn't solve the problem.



We returned it to Amazon (Very hassle free I might add--can't fault them a bit) and decided to try a second one since we did like the features. I was glad to see that Amazon ships you another even before you return the defective one. So far this one is working fine although it's only been a couple of days.



Our last HP was probably 4 years old. I have to say the print speed on this one is amazingly fast by comparison. I'm impressed it can print a 4x6 photo as fast as it does. Copy and scan work well too although I've found I have to initiate scanning from the Mac. Didn't seem to work if I tried to use the touchscreen to scan. I was pleased how easy they make choosing options with scanning. You can scan a document straight to PDF JPEG TIFF Memory Card USB drive OCR...



Overall it does seem as though this printer is very well made. It's also great having a tray for both paper and 4x6 photos. Unlike so many printer reviews it doesn't appear as though this printer is burning through much ink at all.



Although I would definitely recommend it I can't give it 5 stars due to the issues mentioned above.



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An Amazing Value Printer

Disclaimer: I do not own this printer but have worked with and installed tons of them at my school and I use them all the time. Anyway we have about 4 of these units and all work perfectly fine.



Quality: The image quality of this printer is stunning the detail level and color reproduction is great! When compared to the Canon iP6600 the color and detail reproduction seem to be slightly better.



Speed: It is fairly fast for photo printing its not a speed demon or anything but it is faster then most printers I have used.



Features : This printer has a ton of features too many to discuss but it can scan images it has a card reader and can be hooked up to the network via ethernet or via wifi.



Ink Consumption : This printer is also very easy on the ink and the wallet. Ink seems to last a fairly long time even when doing a lot of photo prints.



Setup: Setup was painless I installed all 4 of these units in about 40 mins just run the disc connect the printer install the print head and then the ink cartridges. ( I do however wish they used less packaging )



All in all I woud definitely recommend this to a friend. I have yet to have a single problem with any of the 4 and they are being used by tons of people each day for photo printing.



Edit; I forgot to mention that I have only tried this on Windows XP can't comment on the problem the other user spoke of with Macintosh Snow leopard 10.6.More detail ...