all photo printers

If you are looking for an affordable photoprinter, not a fast text printer, this is the one.

I have a 2 year old printer at home printing digital photos at 2400x1200 dpi. I printed the same photo on both my old printer and the hp 7660 at max resolution and wow the colors in the hp printer are more vivid and accurate. The photo felt more life like, similar to film prints.

The draw backs are you can not refill the ink cartridges, and you have to switch between black and the photo cartridges. It is slow printing text pages compared to a dual roll printer like a deskjet.

In summary if you want a great photo printer at a reasonable price this one is it, if you want to print say 24 page documents all the time buy another printer. This was designed to be a photo printer, not a document printer.

I'm a stickler for research. I extensively researched six of the top photo printers on the market. I eventually narrowed my search to the HP 7660 based on these attributes:

A- Picture Quality- It can't be beat! I went to the trouble of printing three pictures from the HP 7660 and compared them to the same prints I received from a well know photo lab from Bentonville, Arkansas (started by a guy named Sam). The clarity and realism are identical; perfect pictures.

B- Versatility- I wanted a photo printer that would serve as a document printer as well. It does both. And unlike the SONY X5 that doesn't print documents nor any other photo size other that a 4X6, this printer does it all. And for those that whine about having to interchange ink cartridges to print photos versus documents; so what! It takes (not an exaggeration) less than 5 seconds. HP even gives you secure cradle to rest the dormant ink cartridge in until it's ready to be used.

C- Price-- Compared to other photo printers, the price is exceptional. It will pay for itself in memories, gifts, entertainment, and convenience in no time. $150.00 is VERY reasonable.

I wanted professional picture results. I wanted to print documents. I wanted a fair price. The HP 7660 gave me everything I wanted. I am OVERLY satisfied. No hang-up on installation. No problems whatsoever. I'm very satisfied with my purchase.

If you have a Mac G4, if your OS X version is 3.3.4, HP would have you believe that the printer will work out of the box, with later versions of OS X. After some 4 hours of trying to work this out on a G4 PowerBook, here are the results of trying to use the CD provided "with the printer".
1. It set up fine and showed the printer in the OSX printers window.
2. It tested itself fine in the Test and WOW! mode, printing its specimen pictures using the Powerbook
3. Trying to print a picture from Photoshop CS, caused the Adobe program to ABORT.
4, Trying to print a picture from Preview, caused the Apple program to ABORT.
5. Trying to print a picture from iPhoto caused the Apple program to ABORT.

I returned the printer the next day to Circuit City, even though it cost me a 15% restocking fee. They were selling old stock, with out-dated drivers.
I then went to Cosco, and bought the (High-End) $299 HP Printsmart 7960 Printer on sale for $179. It has the latest CD with the correct driver. This printer works as it should.
In talking with the HP Support person, I found a day later, that I could have downloaded the new driver from their site, but the store people had no clue that this would be a problem for Macintosh. They speak PC, not Mac.
And with the way it uses ink, I estimate that I will equal the price of the printer in 4 sets of ink cartridges, in about a month. They should sell the printers for free, and make their money on the ink cartridges.