HP Officejet 7000 Wide Format Printer (C9299A#B1H)

I bought this Printer primarialy to print AutoCAD drawings. Vast majority of my printing requirements will be monochrome line drawings.I am running Windows 7 64 bit. I just installed the printer today so at this time this will be a initial review only.Installation: Since I read online that smme people had problems getting printer to run in Windows 7 I went straight to their solution and downloaded the Windows 7 drivers from the HP web site. I did not try the drivers that came on CD with the Printer. Printer was to be installed on my small network. First I followed the instructions for installing print head and inks per instructions that came with the printer. All went well. Printer takes about 10 minutes to initialize itself.Then started the HP driver software. All went well , but at end an error was reported with my network (Zoom brand wireless router). I elected to proceed with installation. Printer worked first shot, test page printed.I printed several AutoCAD drawings in "General" mode. All good quality. Then drawings in "Fast" mode. Quite fast, quality OK, but not as good as "General". Still quality more than good enough for review purposes. All printed drawings were in monochrome.So far All Good. I will add more later as I work it more, but for now, no caveats. Does a fine job of printing my AuotCAD drawings, and this was what I bought it for.12-April-2013: Still pinting my AutoCAD drawings without problems. A little color line work, but majority in monochrome. Additional note: All my plots were on 11x17 paper.10-Feb-2014: Connected to my new Asus T100 Tablet without a hitch. Printed test page. Al good.15-Feb-2014: wont print black ink. colors all work. Replaced Ink cartdridge, still nothing. Spent half of the afternoon cleaning printhead, hot water, alcohol, contact cleaner. No good. After reading reviews several people had same problem. THAT IS BLACK INK JUST STOPS, NO FIX! Read reviews on replacement printhead (~$80.00), most very bad. For $150.00 i didn't expect it to last forever, but I hoped for more than 3 years of light use. I am searching for new wide format printer.

Like one of the previous reviewers, all I wanted was a low cost 11x17 color printer that was capable of printing AutoCAD and *.PDF drawings. If that is what you want then this printer gets 5 stars. I don't have a lot of sympathy with the graphic artists who complain about the quality of the large print image. Gads what do you expect for under $130? HP do fantastic wide format color printers, I use one at work - it cost $1,360. You get what you pay for.For someone who is a computer geek I have to say setting up this printer was rather fiddly and the instructions aren't wonderful. I didn't use the CD that came with it due to past experience with vast amounts of unecessary bloatware and advertising that HP push onto your PC with the drivers. I downloaded the commercial network driver only from the HP website and although the very first print was a complete mess, the printer has performed well and created great color CAD drawings for me which is why I purchased it.This is an older technology printer with limited capabilities, hence the price. I knocked off one star because on the only occassion I tried to print a large color image (poster) it came out looking rather poor compared to my HP 8.5x11 Color laser. However as stated at the start of this review if you want an 11x17 color printer for color CAD drawings, it would be very hard to find anything that is better value for money and it performs exceedingly well for that purpose.

Printer seems OK so far. It prints much faster than my old printer. Print quality is average for a printer in this price range. I got what I expected.Sure takes it's time from power up to make a lot of whirr, buzz and clicking noises. (I think its part Solenoid Robot from Roger Ramjet :) )A LOT of software gets installed with the driver and an update for Adobe PDF caused some conflicts and an endless loop of an HP application trying to reinstall and failing. I finally uninstalled the HP application - despite a dire warning message - and seems OK now.

This was the second purchase of this printer. The first printer printed 3 pages with no problem, then refused to print at all. When trying to print from the PC it spit out a blank page then flashed the "form feed" light. Pushing the "form feed" button cleared the light, but that was it. Reinstalling the driver was no help. So I powered-off and disconnected the printer from the PC, powered it back on and tried to print a self-generated diagnostic test page: same results. At this point I called HP support and after going through the maze of voice-prompts to get to business customer support, was promptly disconnected. Since it wouldn't even print a self-test page, I opted to return it as it was obviously defective, and order a replacement.Once the replacement came, I set it up and attempted to print a self-generated diagnostic test page before even connecting to the PC: same results. Thinking maybe HP's documentation may have been incorrect IRG printing the test page, I tried calling HP support again. After explaing my problem to the "problem router" who said there was a known problem with these printers, I was transferred to a "tech" who would help me resolve it. Unfortunately, after about 20 minutes of telling the "tech" he was reading the wrong script after he kept telling me to do things like "use it to make a copy" and "press the set-up button" (both of which apply to an AIO device, not this printer). I gave up and opted to return this printer as well.Too bad HP printers and their support has gone this far downhill.