Bigger format, better quality, heavy weight.

I work at an architecture office. We've got this printer because we needed bigger format prints - we print a lot of technical drawings, pictures and photos. Usually we don't print large drawings at the office, but there's still a need to print things here and there immediately. About 8 years ago we've had an awesome plotter which worked with A3 format - it was huge, it had a mechanical arm which could take one of 7 color pens and draw lines and curves with it. Unfortunately, it worked with DOS only - I could not find a Windows driver for it, so we had to send it to the garbage museum. I really miss that device! During the Windows era we've been working with all sorts of HP Deskjets - in A4 format. Finally here's the upgrade: HP 1220.

How it looks like
As you can see from the picture above, it looks quite like a regular A4 printer. The difference is in the scale: it has the same proportions as smaller printers, but it's very big. You can get the measurements from the HP site, I can only say it is 60cm wide (how many inches is that?) and it will not fit any table. I understand that the bigger the paper, the bigger the printer, but for some reason bigger (A2, A0) HP's look not that fat. Smaller Deskjets also look slim, so I guess the problem is in the design. HP1220C is big, fat and heavy and it takes a lot of space.

What it does and how it goes.
Guess what - it prints! It accepts everything from A3 and less, it also accepts thick paper (some of the smaller Deskjets I've seen choke on 180 and 220g/m papers). The print quality is superb! It's better than on smaller HP's and much better than laser printers. All the colors look very close to what you see on the screen. Even more than that - I've been drawing perspective views on photos (like new buildings in the existing environment) - after I scanned the photos and printed them on 1220C the difference in color (between the orignal photos and the prints) was almost inevitable. Even my boss was satisfied.

The printer was set as a network device and we've been printing from all types of programs, including Autocad 14, 2000, ADT, Word, Corel Draw, Photoshop etc. None of the programs had specific problems with the printer.

Speed
It is slow. You can't feel it if you print occasionally, but if you intend to print a brochure it might take some time. It depends on the picture, but if you have a full-color A3 it takes more than one minute to complete it. Black texts and smaller pictures go much faster, letters and stuff like that usually take a couple of seconds. Don't build on this printer if you plan to print large quantities of color pages and you need it fast.

Ink consumption
The stock cartridges lasted more than I expected. Our comp tech said HP put half-full cartridges in new printers, but he's wrong. I printed a couple of color brochures, many technical drawings and a whole bunch of b/w letters until it was empty. Once I replaced empty cartridges with refilled ones, and they lasted about 1/4 time of the stock ones. Now I'm putting original (not refilled) cartridges, and it lasts about two months (of hard work). The color cartridge always ends before the black, so if you plan to buy a couple, buy three color and two black. And, by the way, changing cartridges is very easy.

Technical details
First of all, it features a good old parallel port. Not that bad! I've seen lots of problems with USB printers, and this thing works smooth. The printer's slow speed is probably a result of the data transfer via the parallel port, but, as I said, it's still not slow enough to drive me mad.
The power supply is internal (no wall-wart) which is a big plus, but it probably contributes to the printer's XXL size.

Does it ever break?
Until now it works. Don't drop it - it's too heavy to survive in such a kind of an accident. The fact is, I never needed any technical help with the printer, but when it'll retire, I will update this review.