HP Deskjet 3070A

Fraud you can buy – Please under no circumstance buy this printer. It is utter utter rubbish. Simply there to take up space and get you buy more cartridges. Do no not buy useless useless useless ... Do not buy this printer and try to avoid hp a4 printers

Worst purchasing decision I have ever made – It's okay as a scanner, but from day one I have had constant problems with paper jams. It chews up, rips, and jams about 8 out of every 10 pages it tries to feed. When it does manage to print a page, it ends up on the floor because there is not catching mechanism. And it chews ink like nothing else. Really disappointed with it. I'd have taken it back immediately, but it was bought as a scanner and backup printer, and by the time we needed it for more printing, the years' warranty is up. Money down the drain; I will have to replace this printer as it is just a giant paperweight. Scanning is fine Just does not work.

Excellent Value for Money – The HP Deskjet 3070A is a nice simplistic multi-function. Despite not having a separate tray for outgoing paper (it spits out just on top of the paper feed tray), it works marvellously. In regards to the paper tray issue, just keep an eye on large loads to ensure you don't accidentally overprint something! For the $80 or so I payed for it, high quality print-outs of aircraft on basic photocopy paper look astounding - apart from vertical colour banding - otherwise, it looks lovely. I have also found that printing plain text in fast draft appears better on basic paper than normal mode. If you use a Macbook Pro like me, you can also set the ink usage in MS Word 2011 under advanced options.

The printer prints quickly and effectively. The HP utility on my Macbook Pro allows you to do "fast scans" to preview what you'll be scanning. It runs a draft scan (so quickly running across the paper) and spits out an image on screen. You can then scan in good copy mode (or save scan) if you are OK with it.

This printer has also been found to work perfectly with Linux Mint 12. It installed without any intervention from me whatsoever! Since this distro is based on Debian, like Ubuntu, it should work in other distr.'s such as Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Ubuntu etc.

The supplied install disc in March 2012 did not support OS X Lion on Mac. A 120MB download followed, and I was up and running.

I have not (as of early April 2012) tested the "Wireless printing" or "E-mail printing" on this printer. Apparently, the Wireless print can be hard to set up, however, since I haven't tested this myself, I cannot detract anything from this printer.

Another plus, compared to the junk Brother DCP-150C I had before this printer was the fact it doesn't power on to clean the print-heads every few hours, and will only do a 10 second clean upon plugging it in. So, my advice is to let the printer shut itself off (or via it's power switch) and leave it in Standby to conserve ink. The ink tanks are also smaller than the Brother's, but (based on 2-3 A4 print-outs in best mode of aircraft from airliners.net) you should get at least 40 HQ prints from the ink tanks.

Our local post office also stocks various inks. HP inks are the cheapest, and Brother's are the most expensive. Inks from online stores are surprisingly more expensive. There don't appear to be any generic inks available either. But since this is just an "occasional' photo printer, that doesn't matter. There are also options available to "imprint" your ink cartridge computer chips, so they won't work in any other printer - very useful if someone is likely to pinch your ink for their printer, or someone who might try and get a refill out of the cartridge!

I am very pleased thus-far, and will be purchasing more of this model in the future!

P.S. Sometimes, the print-outs are not entirely straight. Our Canon LBP3200 Laserjet and workplace photocopiers appear to be worse than this printer. In fact, this printer might make the "straightest" printouts I've ever had Comes with USB cable, High printing speeds, Scanner, Good software (on Mac - PC version is probably "Bloatware," Decent photo quality for price, Self Aligning heads, No "Automatic" Ink-Wasting cleaning, Linux Plug & Play compatibility, Nice colour, Wireless/E-mail Printing (Untested), Good "Ink Mileage" Paper ejects onto intake tray, Possible Wireless/E-Mail printing issues (hard to setup) but untested, none other to think of

Worst Printer I've Owned – This printer is very noisy, can't print envelopes easily, and the printout is slightly crooked. I'm going to re-install my ancient HP PSC 1210. Noisy, can't print envelopes easily.