HP Business InkJet 2200 prints poor vertical lines
David Tong
quality they're getting.
Mine is only two weeks old but when it prints vertical lines on a page, as
in a table or border, they often come out looking like a square wave with
period half an inch (the width of a print head) and amplitude about one line
width at a point size of ½. Also at half-inch intervals down a page the
line of text comes out like distorted italic. It happens in Normal and Fast
modes where the print head prints in both directions of travel. In Best
mode, where the printing is unidirectional, the alignment is OK.
I've tried 'Align Print Heads' with no improvement. The distortion is also
present when I print out the Menu Map from the printer itself, so it's
independent of the computer, but for the record I'm using driver version 1.2
with Windows 2000 Pro. I've printed the same test material on our Business
Inkjet 2000C, the previous model from the same family of products, and the
alignment is almost perfect even in Fast mode.
Thinking my 2200 to be a faulty specimen, I rang HP UK's Warranty Support
number today but I can still hardly believe what I heard. Straight away the
technician said that 'the distortion is to be expected because they traded
quality for speed in this design', and that I should use Best mode to avoid
it. However, if true, this makes the HP 2200 useless at doing what HP claim
it offers - 'quick professional printing with high quality output'. Instead
it becomes just a very slow printer that can't justify either the price or
its large footprint on the desk.
I offered to send the technician a specimen printout but he said 'there's no
point as it's in specification'. [This is without even seeing it]. And no,
he couldn't tell me what the actual specification is for the straightness of
vertical lines. I felt the guy was embarrassed at fobbing me off like this.
I suspect he's had similar complaints about this printer but has to deliver
the HP party line. He tried to tell me that the HP2200 is an improvement on
the HP2000 because it's faster and uses less ink. This is fair enough, but
it's a waste of time if the resulting quality is too poor to send out to
clients.
Seems to me that if the technician is correct, then this product is being
advertised in a misleading way. For example Dabs in their UK catalogue
state 'Super fast printing with no compromise on quality', and 'Designed for
business'.
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David Tong.
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