The set up was a bit confusing, but you just have to fool around with it, because the directions can be a little less than clear.

So why did I give it 3/5 stars? Because it goes through ink like crazy! It printed fewer than 90 pages before I had to replace the black ink cartridge, and it’s already used about 1/3 or the colored ink… eventhough everything I’ve printed has been in black and white! At close to 30 dollars each, the cartridges are not cheap, and all things considered (cost of cartridge, combined with paper), this makes printing at home just about as much as printing at Kinkos; if not more!

You would be better off buying a more expensive laser printer, or an ink printer that doesn’t eat through black ink like it’s going out of style. You will actually be saving money in the long run because of the cost of cartridges.

In the latest instance, the red (magenta) cartridge stopped working, and I went through the customer service/technical department dance. When I finally got the replacement, it didn’t work, either. So I guess my magenta nozzle isn’t working, even though I have performed all the maintenance operations on it. Everything I print comes out weird looking.

The last thing is that only the scan and print functions can be done from the computer. None of the maintenance operations, no faxing or copying functions can be done from the graphical user interface. Why? Because only the scan function has one. This is very different from other printers I’ve had, where almost everything could be done from the computer. And this is supposed be a networked computer.

All in all, I wish I had gone with HP, which has performed so reliably for me in the past. I guess the money I saved wasn’t worth it, because if you can’t print something right, it’s not worth anything.

First of all, it’s unbelievably fussy about what kind of paper you put in it. I do a lot of work that gets put into 3-ring binders, so I like to use pre-drilled paper. Pre-drilled paper jams in this printer. (Oddly enough, it doesn’t jam if you feed it upside-down, so that the holes are on the wrong side of the page. But that doesn’t really help things, does it?)

Most card stock, especially the heavier perforated business card paper, jams. Envelopes are often a problem. Even if they don’t jam, they feed through crooked, or they double-print and smear. The sheet feeder is also apparently very sensitive to paper texture. I’ve had experiences where things printed fine on one side, but when I tried to do 2-sided printing, the paper would jam when I tried to print on the other side.

I bought one of those print-your-own wedding invitation kits at Office Depot, and the stock wouldn’t feed through. I ended up having to go out and buy a $49 HP ink jet printer, and they fed through fine and looked great.

On top of that, it goes through an amazing amount of ink. I’m constantly having to replace the color cartridges, even though I rarely print anything in color. I can get about 150 pages out of a black cartridge, provided I’m not printing very densely on the page. For some reason, the printer uses both black and colored ink to print black text. So if your colored ink gets low, your black text will print out as brown. And maybe this is a common thing with printers, but I hate the fact that if it runs out of colored ink, you cannot print anything at all, not even black text.

I bought this printer because it was an all-in-one, was compact, and because it had wi-fi. I thought it would be nice to print from my laptop from anywhere in the house, without having to plug in the USB cable. But considering the price I paid for that convenience, and the fact that the printer is otherwise such an enormous hassle, it wasn’t worth it.

Shopping on Amazon (and elsewhere) online, we found the WorkForce 600. It has 4 ink cartridges, not 6, and they are DuraBrite, not Claria, ink which seems cheaper. There are high capacity cartridges available, and black has a double-wide extra capacity version. Like the Artisan, it’s wireless and so presumably Mac and Windows friendly.

It arrived yesterday and the setup instructions were quite clear. Setting up wireless devices hasn’t always gone smoothly for me, but this was anxiety-free. It just worked. The setup program is made from some Flash-like product–I don’t know why they do that–and seems to think you’re going to sit at one computer running this setup for lots of printers, rather than set up one printer on lots of computers, but nevermind…it worked.

Installing the drivers on three Windows machines (XP and Vista) and two Macs (OS X) took longer than I would have liked, but it was easy and successful.

The black and white printing speed is amazing–including b&w copies. I copied a full-color magazine ad and was very impressed with the quality, including color rendition. The front panel is intuitive–my teenager needed a copy before I had a chance to lecture about the new printer. She just walked up and made a copy.

And lastly, we tested the DuraBrite ink by splashing water on the color magazine ad copy. The ink doesn’t run. The paper gets wet, but it’s still readable. Oh, and our photos on bright white plain paper look really good. The colors “pop.”

With the lightweight plastic machine just a day old, I can’t speak to reliability, but the features and setup are A+, especially for this reasonable price.