HP Photosmart C5280 All-in-One Multifunction Printer

By DianaJ  Sep 27, 2008

By DavidW  Dec 4, 2007

A printer with "issues"

By Yahoo! Shopping User  Nov 17, 2007 | 2 out of 6 found this HP Photosmart C5280 All-in-One review helpful

Pros: None found so far

Cons: Incompatible with MS Works 8.0 and earlier, Chat support clueless

I have used one of two HP printers in recent years. My personal printer was a Deskjet 810 purchased around 2000. The other (family) printer was a Deskjet 920 purchased around 2002. Both these printers functioned well despite having an occasional tantrum. Both recently ran out of ink around the same time. Instead of investing more than $60 to replace black and color cartridges in either HP I opted to buy a new HP Photosmart C5280 all in one printer/scanner.

I had been using MS Works 7.0 for several years without a problem, printing or otherwise.

The problem came when I attempted to print my car's miles per gallon file (a Works Spreadsheet) or a small file of eleven lines (a Works Database) on the new HP. Even with margins reset the new HP couldn't print these files in "landscape." I would get an error "Works is out of Memory." (These files were both less than one page long and my Dell has 2GB of RAM.)

On HP "chat" I found that HP Photosmart printers have compatibility problems attempting to print Spreadsheets or Databases under MS Works 7.0 or earlier.

HP suggested a cumbersome workaround or updating to Works 8.0 where, they said, "the issues have been resolved." I have a copy of Works 8.0 so I updated to that version and restarted my Dell. Well, HP was "fibbing," the "issues" have not been resolved.

The "issues" were still present. After installing Works 8.0 and going around and around for a couple of hours on HP Chat--where they insisted that the problem only exists on the 7.0 or earlier versions of Works (that I no longer had since updating to version 8.0)--I gave up.

So then I purchased Works 8.5.

After installing Works 8.5 the "issues" with the Photosmart printer seemed to have gone away.

Unfortunately there are some other bugs in Works 8.5. I downloaded and installed a small Works 8.5 "patch" from the Microsoft website. That may have corrected some bugs but still others are present. I have a Works Database index for my DVDs. The index was created under Works 7.0 but has now been resaved several times under Works 8.5. It is sometimes difficult to open this file. (The file is around 1.5 MB in size, a little more than will fit on one floppy disc.) If the file fails to open in the normal way it usually may be opened by clicking OK in the error box advising that Works can not open the file.

Ah, Microsoft and HP. Isn't technology great?