HP Photosmart C4280 All-in-One Printer/Scanner/Copier (CC210A#ABA)

The C4280 has been in my home office for ten months now. I've got the software loaded on three laptops ranging in age from 4 years to six months old; all of which are running Windows XP. We've been using it for work, personal and school projects without any problems.

The scanner has a couple of modes. The document mode had a couple of surprises. When scanning a document from the newspaper, the document mode added typos that were not on the original. It also changed hand printed notes in the margin into a typeface. Now I just scan documents with the photographic mode to keep them looking like the originals. In photographic mode, the scanner software offers some ability to edit and manipulate the image.

Only in the past month have we started buying HP photographic paper and using the C4280 to print pictures from the digital camera. I'm amazed at the results produced by this ink jet printer! I had retouched some old photos of my parents and had them printed as 8x10's at a local camera store with a good reputation. The C4280 with photo paper produced prints that looked every bit as good as the expensive camera store versions.

The printer takes two ink cartridges - one color and one black. Refill ink cartridges are available in "regular" and "XL" sizes. The cartridge modes (74 and 75) are readily available. I've seen the refills here on Amazon, Office Max, Staples, BrandSmart, and Costco - so, they're not hard to come by.

The C4280 has been an excellent personal printer (copier, scanner) for me. Frankly, I'm shocked by all the bad reviews on this board, but I am not trying to run it with Mac, Vista OS, or making it the primary printer for a busy office.

Forget this printer if you're a Mac Leopard user. Since I've upgraded to 10.5.2, I've gotten every message listed in other reviews, especially the one about a communications problem with the printer. It shows up on the USB, but absolutely refuses to print. It will scan however, which is unusual according to other's reviews. I would stay away from this model. I NEVER got a response from my e-mail for support at HP, and the phone support knows nothing about the Mac. When it was working for me (briefly) it was an ink hog, too.
NEVER BUY IT!

I purchased this printer in August of 07 - and after returning the first one I received due to a non-start (I can't remember what happened, other than it just didn't work - straight out of the box) - the second one has worked like a charm -

I teach school and this is my 'school' printer - I use it daily. It is connected to an airport, and I am using OSX (10.4 & now 10.5) and have had no problems at all... I have had it connected directly to the mac and to the airport and never had a problem.

Excellent all-in-one printer for a great price. We have printed a lot of pictures, reports, letters, greeting cards, etc. and everything prints great. We have been able to make prints of some very old photos and they have turned out terrific, some even look better than ones that were printed professionally. I was surprised by how much we were able to print before we had to replace the ink cartriges which are reasonably priced.

I don't usually write reviews but I felt compelled to warn people about this printer. I bought it three weeks ago to replace an HP Photosmart P1000 that I had for six years, which was a troublesome printer from the first day. I should have known better than to buy another HP. The C4280 tries to reinstall the software every single time I plug in the USB cable. I send something to print and it sits there for two or three mintues "thinking" about it before it finally decides to print. It took a week for me to get the scanner to work. Now I have a cartridge jam and I can find no paper fragments or anything else blocking the cartridge carriage. I tried unplugging the power source and plugging it back in and now it won't even turn on.