I'll elaborate more on what I'm trying to do so it'll make more sense. I schedule appointments for technicians to go out and make repairs. Have to use pencil in the appointment book due to so many changes. At the end of the day, I have to make a photocopy of the appointment page and then fax that to the techs for the next day. Appt page will not fit in fax machine, too big, so I fold it, copy one side and then copy the other side. This was not a problem with my other printer but I have gotten a new computer and printer and now this one doesnt seem to print the hand written text as dark as my other one did. I can't find anywhere on the printer to adjust the settings to make it print darker. Thanks for your help.

I've got a HP All-In-One prnter, HP Photosmart 3210xi. Its a printer, copier, and scanner. This particular model has USB port. The next model changed the ports, but was essentially the same machine inside. I got this printer because I needed to have achival quality ink for genealogical records, and to print photos. This printer uses 6 cartridges of HP's Vivera ink, and fixed print heads. This printer has worked well for me. The inks are pricey, but the black cartidge does print a reasonable number of pages. To date, I have run 8000 sheets of paper through this machine. I was concerned about clogging of fixed print heads, but that has not occurred. However, I do follow, without fail, HP's instruction to shut the printer off and allow time for it to store the print heads, before removing power. Other HP printers had the print head on the ink catridges, thus, a clogged print head could be fixed by changing the cartridge. The fixed print head was a concern of mine since I had bad experience with a Tektronix printer with fixed heads at my work (when ink jets first became available way back in the 1980s.) Happily, I have not had a problem with my print heads and I have owned this printer for 2 years. The printer does have a habit that startles the user until he becomes familar with it. The printer has an automatic maintence program built-in to keep the heads and ink supply in shape. Periodically, the maintence program will start and may startle the user. The printer is not available for use while the maintence routine runs. There is no recourse but to wait. The maintence routine lasts from 30 sec to 1 minute. Ink cartridges are sold singlely, or in a pack of 6 cartridges with 50 sheets of 4"x6" photo paper. This photo pack, at first, appears to be a good deal until one learns that there is less ink in these cartridges than the regular ones. There is just enough ink to print the number of photo sheets in the package. I found it was economical to buy a couple of these photo packs collecting more photo paper than I would use for awhile, and then switch to buying the regular cartridges. The inks and printer does print nice photos when the special photo paper is used. One caveat: the ink is not as resistant to running if exposed to water droplets as one might hope based on advertisements. It smears even after a drying time of 1 day. But protect the ink from wetting, and the results are fine.

The latest high end HP all-in-one printers have fixed ink jets and separate ink cartridges. Both types of HP printers, ink jets on the cartridge and fixed print heads, can be found. Clogging of ink jet heads has always been a big problem and that is why initially, HP started with the print head on the cartridge. It was a patented feature. Later, HP develped a way to keep fixed print heads clear, and then they began to introduce fixed print head printers. Your grainy prints can have two root causes: 1) Poor scan and resultant poor file; 2) Poor printing of a good or bad file. I have an HP flat bed scanner that is going on 10 yrs old and that is the one I rely on when I need to have total control of a scan. it has a rugged mechanism and still produces excellent results. My last two HP all-in-one printers have done excellent work when copying photos. Both of these have fixed print heads. The alignment sensor failed on my first HP all-in-one otherwise I'd still be using it. I can't complain. I had run 11,700 pages through it. I discovered that the ink cartridges were being phased out for this printer (type 02) do I decided to update to a later printer. Glad I did. Although there are fewer cartridges, color prints are just as good and the ink has better smudge resistance.

Thanks, zep. It's not set to mirror image. I even tried checking that box to see if I could reverse it. No such luck. I don't understand the fix in your link either. I'll try un- and re-installing the printer (just in case the bits got turned sideways, ya know). This is such a dopey problem.