I purchased a new Mac to replace my tablet PC in July, so a few days ago for the first time I tried to hook my mac up to it, and I could not get anything to print well. After some troubleshooting and testing from other platforms, I realized that there was something wrong with the unit physically, and tossed it in the garbage and looked for a printer at a local brick and mortar.
I was half sold on getting one of the Canon all in one units, based on some favorable remarks in some of the apple forums, but the local store by me only had one model of Canon, a lesser one than I wanted, so I looked at the rest of the available printers, and narrowed it down to this HP and another HP, one step below this. The kicker for me was the bluetooth in this one, which was worth the extra $40 for me, since I run an 802.11n only network at home, and had assumed the wireless on this unit was just 802.11 b/g like most. Happily, I was mistaken.
Got it home, unboxed, and like the other reviewer said, this is a nicely sturdy, well built, solid home printer.
As usual, I downloaded the most current version of the software and driver rather than relying on the CD to be current, and indeed the CD had been superceded. The download and install went fine, so when it started nagging me about where the printer was, I hopped into the printer and set up the wireless just to see, since it actually saw my 802.11n network. Sure enough, entered my encryption key, and there it was. And instantly my mac found it, and the install completed.
One thing to note, the little paper manual that came with it didn't seem to have anything in there regarding setting up the unit, so I'm going to assume detailed instructions are probably on the CD in PDF or TXT files somewhere. But I was able to get the wireless going without any documentation, the touch screen is very well designed and extremely simple to follow. The flow for printing or setup is well thought out.
So I did some printing, both of 4x6 as well as some 8 1/2 x 11 photos, and they turned out just excellent. Superb, better than I had hoped for, and certainly faster than I had expected.
I will also add that the printer loves to do the samba, especially the 8 or 9 minute "first run" it does the very first time you power it on. But it gives the status right on the LCD, and a timer counting down so you know how long it will be. I'm assuming the wiggles after printing are probably cleaning off the heads and parking them to seal them again between print jobs.
I haven't tried the duplexer yet, but as the other reviewers mentioned, scanning is just as simple and as high quality as the printing.
After I knew it worked and was happy with it, I hopped back into the on screen menu and checked the bluetooth settings, then added it via bluetooth to my mac, and a minute later, was printing via bluetooth.
One surprise was that it actually came with a USB cable for those who will use one - something I'm not used to seeing bundled with printers.
Another nice feature for me is the front paper load - after the Epson I just tossed, it's nice to be able to get at the paper right in the front, rather than feeding from the top in the back. Makes it easier on my shelf in the computer armoire, i don't have to roll it out and play around trying to find where things fit back there out of sight.
The finish is nice. And the mac software works well, haven't booted to my Windows 7 install yet to see how it works there, but I would be surprised if I had any problems on the windows side. This is not my first HP printer, and if it performs and lasts as well as my others have, I will be more than happy with it.
I purchased mine without any review searches at all, since it was an impulse grab at the store when the one I was looking for wasn't available, but I'm glad it wasn't, as this one has a few more features and works better than I could have hoped.