HP Photosmart 385 Compact Photo Printer (Q6387A#ABA)

This is a very good printer for the type it is. I have now seen a Thermal Film Transfer Printer which gives more of a 'developed' look but has lower Picture Quality. Prints from this printer seem to have uneven drying of the ink, which is sometimes distracting if looking at the photo from different angles. This 'problem' is easily corrected by framing the photo or putting it in a book with a gloss sheet over it.

If I fix the image on my computer, copy the image to a CF card, and use the card print the image, the printer complains "Cannot display this photo". It doesn't print it either. I really don't want to connect this printer to my computer. Another HP printer connected to the printer prints the picture fine.

All pictures are in simple JPEG format.

HP Service was absolutely worthless. The only suggestion I got was to "change the power source". While I was extremely skeptical, I did try a different source and as I expected, nothing changed. The lady at the support told me to try another power source!

Update 5/4/2007:
I found that the images edited using the software are missing some EXIF information (X and Y resolution) and that is causing this printer to fail on those images.

There is a free software on the Internet called jhead.exe using which I could copy EXIF data from another image to the problematic image. Then the printer printed it fine.

BTW, I compared a print from this printer to a print from another HP all-in-one deskjet printer. The quality of this printer is barely better than the regular printer. I don't see any advantage to this printer (other than portability).

this printer is junk.
after a couple months of low usage,
it now jams all the time.

the power supply also died, and i had to replace it at high expense.
and now i have this jam problem.
what a piece of junk!

and as usual, the windows xp sw drivers are awful. 180 mbytes! give me a break. and no linux drivers available. and no simple/small drivers available.

no more hp photo printers for me.

I got this printer last year as a present. The printer worked well at the time, although it ate up A LOT of ink. Then I went to use it for the first time in a few months and all it would flash was a error message. I called, but they wanted me to pay just to TALK to someone about the problem. So, instead I got online and talked to a person there about the problem and all she could tell me is that it was a software problem and that I could trade it for a newer model but it would cost me a $100. Okay is anyone else seeing a problem here? I don't recommend any HP products....this company obviously does not stand by their products and instead I recomend Lexmark...they do!

We bought our photosmart printer about eight months ago and it recently started having paper jam problems. We have probably printed about 40 pictures on it total. The problem go so bad it would not print anymore. We called technical support and they said that it was a "software" problem and that the printer's warranty for software issues is only 90 days. They wanted $59 to fix the problem.

While the printer does make great pictures I don't see how paper jamming in the printer would be a software issue.