Long Initialization before printing takes place

Author's Rating:

Pros: Prints fast once initialized

Cons: Very long initialization process

Envelope printing inconvenient

Separate Print Heads

Very noisy

Very large

The Bottom Line: 
I would not reccomend this printer to anyone unless they find this long initialization process acceptable and also understand that the print heads must be replaced eventually.

Author's Review
I am very unhappy with this HP Officejet Pro 8000 printer. The first one I bought was defective and HP sent me another one. At first I thought the second one was also defective, because it takes so long before the printer is ready to start printing. I timed it with a stopwatch. If you sit down at your computer and want to print something, you must first turn on the printer by pressing the print button. The printer sits there and goes through all kinds of motions and loud noises for 2 min and 30 seconds. Finally the print light stops blinking and it is ready to print. That is a long time to have to wait to actually use the printer. Way too long in my opinion. Just in case anyone is curious, I did download the very latest driver for this printer.

Once it finally initializes, it prints fast and  fairly well. I thought I could avoid this long initialization, by leaving it in standby, but after awhile it reverts back to the long initialization process (but not quite as long as the "printer off" initialization.) I just couldn't believe that the engineers that designed this printer would think this long initialization process would be acceptable to people.

Just to check if I had another faulty printer, I went to an Office Depot to check out another one in the store and it had the same long initialization. I showed it to a salesman and he couldn't believe it. He said that he had never seen an inkjet printer take that long to initialize!

I have a friend that has the next model just below it, the HP Officejet Pro 6000 and it doesn't have this problem according to him. I called HP and complained about this problem and they said that the 8000 model was a "high end" model and that's why it takes so long to initialize. That's a completely unacceptable answer to me.

How well does the printer print?The printer is fast once it gets going, but the quality of the output is not exceptional. I had hoped that it would be sharper than the 12 year old HP Officejet 890C that it replaced, but there was no difference.

Envelope printing: My old printer had a slot in which you could insert envelopes without having to remove the paper. This printer has no such slot. In order to print an envelope or single check, you must remove the cover over the paper tray, then remove all of the paper and slide two sliders to the middle and insert your envelope. When finished you must reverse the process. I find this inconvenient.

The print heads on this printer are not located in the ink cartridge as are most other HP printers. There are 2 separate print heads that will eventually have to be replaced after around 4,000 sheets of paper have been printed.

Bottom line:I am very unhappy with this printer and as soon as the ink is used up I will be giving it away or junking it. HP just lost a long time printer customer. I'm going to be looking at Canon printers or Epson printers from now on.