I have a few words to say about these printers, DON'T BUY THEM! I have had the worst trouble with this item, purchased by me not even 3 years ago and lightly used. This printer line is the WORST and I spent a lot of money buying this all-in-one printer, I got suckered into the whole "save money on ink replacement" that Kodak uses to promote this line. I thought this wasn't a bad printer, it printed, scanned, faxed, printed pictures and seemed like a good all around item. I also figured that the $200 odd dollars I spent on it would pay off in the end as I would be able to get ink cartridges for it at a reasonable rate and in time the unit would pay for itself...boy was I wrong!
I spent over $200 dollars to buy this unit and only printed about a dozen small pictures before the printerhead went on it. After some research on the issue, I discovered that this is a common and re-occurring problem with this line of printers. So, I emailed Kodak and they did send me a new printerhead for my unit, I figured great, all is well, at least I didn't have to fight to get the issue resolved.
I wish I was that lucky...these printers are not what they seem, I am a very disappointed consumer and very disappointed in a brand that recognizable would sell such a disaster of a printer. I am not a heavy user of my Kodak EasyShare 5500 Printer, I printed a handful of pictures and mainly used it every now and then to print postage for shipping my Ebay sales. So, basically, it was rarely used. This whole "hype" about Kodak ink cartridge replacements being cheaper then the competitions is a joke, want to know why...because the cartridges become "empty" quickly and you are always replacing them, case in point, I replaced both black and colour cartridges for my unit recently, just to print out some postage to ship some items, I printed 3 labels and then 3 months later went to fire it up and guess what...the colour cartridge was said to be empty!
Are you kidding me! Oh, by the way, the printerhead is shot again! But the really worst part of this all is the fact that once the printer tells you to replace a cartridge you can do NOTHING with your unit at all, it makes your entire unit non-functional until you replace the cartridge. So, I can't scan or send a fax, two features that don't require ink usage to use. Neat huh! That's right, Kodak is holding my all-in-one EasyShare 5500 hostage until I fork over for a new cartridge. Great way to do business Kodak!
And Guess what...I'm not doing it anymore, I don't care how much money this piece of crap cost me and how little use I actually got out of it, I will NOT buy another single cartridge for this piece of crap, that's right I am junking this unit as of now. I have nothing good to say about these Kodak printers and guess what I am not alone. All you have to do is spend a little time online going through blogs and forums about these printers and they are filled with the very same complaints and about how Kodak is doing nothing to address these issues. I myself spent many hours, after this last kick to the shins, trying to figure out how I could at least get my unit to function using the scanning and faxing features and the bottom line is...you just can't! That might be the biggest kicker of them all, it renders your entire unit USELESS. Who designed this and who thought that was a neat thing to do, force your consumers to buy your "cheaper" ink cartridges and save, what a load of BS!
I also discovered during my research that during a study conducted by one of their competitors, Kodak ink cartridges "read" as empty and ready to change when they actually had more then 64% ink left in the cartridges, check out this article that spells it all out http://arstechnica.com/hardware/news/2007/06/study-inkjet-printers-are-filthy-lying-thieves.ars
I have nothing good to say about my experience with the Kodak EasyShare 5500, it's been one issue after another since I've had this unit and considering what little use it did get its even more surprising. I won't recommend this company to anyone, I won't ever buy another Kodak item. Never. Period. As far as I am concerned this brand now means nothing more then a way to waste your money.
Cheaper Ink? How is it cheaper when you have to replace cartridges that aren't actually fully empty? And don't start with the argument that it's to protect the printerhead from damage, I've already gone through two printerheads, on full cartridges, I would say that that's about one to many. There are far to many design flaws in these Kodak printers to just excuse away, flaws that Kodak has done nothing to address, not really. If I had known prior to purchasing my Kodak 5500 printer that the entire unit would become non-functional once the machine said it was time for a new cartridge...I wouldn't have bought the damn thing. I bought this item when it was newly released and the sea of complaints didn't yet exist. What use is it to me to have a multifunction printer that cant even "function" with it's other non-ink uses...it boggles the mind folks, it just boggles the mind.
To those out there that do own this line of Kodak printers and haven't had any problems, consider yourself lucky, I wish I had been that lucky, I just kissed hundreds of dollars good-bye.
