DeskJet 970Cxi for printing photos at home

DeskJet 970Cxi for printing photos at home

By Zatni Arbi

JAKARTA (JP): When I bought my HP DeskJet 1600C, I was
convinced that I would not have to buy another printer in another
10 years. Well, it turned out to be a case of yes and no.

Yes, because the DeskJet 1600C still works very well for most
of my printing needs -- and I no longer print as much as I did in
the past when I was still doing some desktop publishing work.
Today, however, the color capabilities of the heavy-duty, high-
end DeskJet 1600C pale when compared to what we can get from the
latest generation of color inkjet printers.

So, when I finally had the chance to test one of HP's
currently most popular inkjet printers, the DeskJet 970Cxi, I
realized that I had a case of wishful thinking when I decided to
buy the 1600C. In addition to really great color printouts, the
970Cxi, which HP also calls Professional Series, comes with a
slew of nice features.

It is the first inkjet printer to come with a duplex
capability. The two-sided printing module, which is included with
the printer, can be attached to the back of the printer and will
enable us to print on both sides of the paper without having to
reinsert the paper. HP claims that the printer has 12 pages per
minute (ppm) of maximum speed, which may be an overstatement.
Still, the 970Cxi is a respectably fast printer. Strangely,
despite the speed, the printer is quiet and does not shake and
jiggle when printing -- like my 1600C does.

In addition to the commonly used parallel connection, the
printer also has a USB port for USB connection to a newer PC or a
Mac. Immediately after I inserted the plug of the USB cable,
which was not included, my PC recognized the printer even though
I had not powered the printer up. However, I made a mistake by
going straight ahead with the installation of the driver,
thinking that it would work like any other time I installed the
driver of a new printer on my PC.

It did not. After two failures, I followed the instruction on
the included flyer. Only then were the drivers and printer
utility installed without any problem. Once again the same lesson
was learned here: Don't just ignore the quick start flyer that
the manufacturer has provided. Products may require a bit of
special trick before you can use it flawlessly.

The USB connection is faster than the parallel. Besides,
plugging and unplugging the cable are easier, too, much easier
than the parallel cable. We don't even have to turn off the
printer when we use the USB cable.

PhotoREt III

With this printer, HP finally responded to the demands from
users who religiously believe that the more DPI (dot per inch),
the better. The 970Cxi is capable of printing color images at
2400 DPI (2400 x 1200), one of the highest in the industry.

However, more dots per inch will mean a lot more data is
involved. HP recommends a machine with 64 MB of RAM and 400 MB of
free hard disk space if intending to print a 8.5x10 inch image at
this level of resolution. Processing more data will inevitably
require more time, and we may be unable to use our PC for a
while. It took me more than six minutes to print a full-page
picture of my daughter using the Best print quality mode.

HP has a better solution that does not require a huge amount
of data and therefore can keep printing time short. It's called
PhotoREt (Photo Resolution Enhancement Technology), which is now
the third generation. PhotoREt III is basically a color layering
technology developed to enable the printer to place up to 29
droplets of ink on the same tiny spot on the paper. The size of
each droplet is really miniscule, only 5 picoliters. With this
capability, the color becomes very rich and highly saturated. The
printer can print up to 17 different levels of intensity for each
primary color per dot.

In one of my tests, I used the image captured using the Canon
PowerShot A50 digital camera, which I reviewed late last year.
The camera itself did not do a very good job in capturing flesh
tones, but the printout still shows an acceptable result,
nonetheless. The SmartFocus feature also helps a lot in
sharpening the details of the relatively low-resolution JPEG
image file from the digital camera, making the large 8.5x10 inch
image still look very acceptable.

In addition to PhotoREt III, the printer is also equipped with
ColorSmart for color management. There are other special features
that HP has added to improve the quality of color printouts, such
as Automatic Contrast Enhancement and manual color setting. Black
text printout equals that of a laser printer. We can also tell
the printer to print out pages that are more suitable for
photocopying or faxing. The 970Cxi accepts a wide variety of
printing materials, including envelopes and special photo paper.
We can even print posters by combining a number of sheets, and
the printer driver automatically creates the individual sheets
for us.

Unlike in the past, we no longer have to swap cartridges if we
want to print photos. Unlike my 1600C, which has four cartridges
for four different colors, the 970Cxi has only two ink
cartridges, one black and one tricolor cartridge. There is a low-
ink indicator, so we won't have to stop our job midway because
the ink runs out. There is a Cancel button, too, so we don't have
to power down the printer if we decide to cancel a print job. The
duty cycle is pretty high at 5000 pages per month. It is also
networkable, but we'll have to add HP's JetDirect printer server.

Because HP normally includes a USB cable in each of its USB-
capable scanners, I was surprised to find that they didn't
include one in this printer. The built-in 4 MB of RAM cannot be
expanded. But, except for these two weaknesses, I could not find
fault with this US$400 printer.

Often it is a good idea to buy a product that has been field
tested by the market. The DeskJet 970Cxi has been around since
last October, and therefore its reliability has been tested. If
you're looking for a mid-range inkjet printer that will allow you
to print gorgeous photos in addition to sharp documents for your
business and SOHO, you can't go wrong with the 970Cxi.