Photosmart 7550 prints images crisply at high resolutions

Hewlett-Packard has created such great printers in the past that expectations for the company's latest photo inkjet printer line have been high. It's fair to say the expectations have been met.

The HP Photosmart 7550 color photo inkjet printer comes with a small (2-by-2-inch) tilt-up LCD screen for viewing photographs.

The printer has readers for Sony Memory Stick, Compact- Flash Type I and II, SmartMedia, Secure Digital and MultiMedia cards so that you can print without a computer.

The Photosmart 7550 ($299) can be set up within five minutes for printing from a computer. And it supports USB 2.0, the new version of Universal Serial Bus connection that can speed up your connection to a PC from the current USB 1.1 standard.

HP's only fumble here is that it doesn't include a USB 1.1 or USB 2.0 cable in the box with the printer. Don't forget to purchase a connection cable when you buy the printer if you go to a local computer superstore or order the printer online.

The 7550 sports impressive stats. On photo paper, you can print beautiful high-resolution images at 4,800-by-1,200 dots per inch. On plain paper, you can create 1,200-by-1,200 dot-per-inch prints.

The printer will work with Windows 98 or later versions and Mac OS 9.0 or later.

Photo prints from the 7550 looked very good on photo paper, with almost no pixels showing, very little dithering and little else that kept the prints from looking as if they had been printed professionally.

Text was sharp and clear on most of the papers we tested, but notably good on plain paper, which is what most households and small businesses will likely use for their correspondence, reports and other documents.

Information: 888-999-4747 or www.hp.com.