HP Deskjet 6980 Color Printer: An Amazing Photo Printer With Astounding Results

Recently, I was faced with an interesting dilemma. I had written a biography of a family member, and I wanted to publish it in a “book” form with a limited number of copies to distribute among several family members. I had dutifully typed it on the computer in MS Word, and taking advantage of MS Word’s ability to insert digital images of the life of my family member, I had a couple of choices. I could either take it to a commercial printer and have it reproduced, which would be pretty expensive, or else I could choose to print it myself.

I have a decent little HP Printer, a $99.00 “breadbox” printer, which is fine for most “standard” jobs, but I was wanting something which could profuce a higher quality job. So, weighing the options, I decided to buy a Hewlett Packard 6980 Printer. I was not at all disappointed with the results.

The final “biography” printed out to some 150 pages. A few years ago I purchased a medium-level “biography-maker” software program on the net which helped- you ask the person questions about their life and the “biography-maker” brings it all together, and then you do a little editing to round out the story.

I used a number of “personal” images, many of which were taken with digital cameras, and with a decent scanner I also scanned in several “old” family photos into the jpg. format. Along with these I also downloaded several generic images from the net of cities, landscapes, and other places where my family member had lived. The net result was that I had a biography with lots of pictures in it. I might have had it bound, of course, but I decided to put the pages into 3-ring binders, on the theory that my family members might want to get some plastic sleeve pages and insert some of their own personal pictures from their own collections of photographs of the person in question and keep them all in the same binder. Having them in a binder of this type also allowed them to add to the binder copies of personal letters and their own personal; reflections as well. My family members thus have an interactive biography of the person, and they have all received the biography gladly. A little expensive? Yes, but worth it.

As I said, though, I wanted to have the heart of the biography, the story I had collected, to have not only the printed text, but also the images. in a very excellent form.

The HP Deskjet 6980 Color Printer is actually a very affordable color image printer for a project like this. It is, of course, very useful for printing photos of all kinds, and HP and other manufacturers have paper available which can produce many sizes of photos that can last for years and years just like anything you would have done by your local photos shop. You can use it wirelessly with Wi-Fi or directly connected to your computer.

The print speeds are very nice. “Straight” black and white pages will print through at 36 pages per minute and with color the prints will come out at 27 pages per minute in the fast draft mode. You can print color images using the HP “Vivera” Inks at up to 4800 optimized dpi or optimized 6-color ink. PictBridge-enabled cameras can print directly from the USB port.

You can create standard or custom-sized pictures up to 8.5 by 24 inches with or without borders. There is an automatic paper-type sensor, and an optional 250-sheet plain-paper
tray (sold separately).

All in all, I am very happy with his unit. It does the job very well, and there is a very professional feel to the whole unit. The images are very pleasing. I would recommend
this printer to anyone who needs a very good quality printer for the home or small office. It produces excellent prints and is highly suitable for projects like the biography
project I have described. Ink cartridges are about $35.00 a piece, which is pricey, but I only plan to use the printer for special photo projects,so that’s no biggie. If you are looking for a photo-printer that will produce excellent results for occasional use, this is well worth considering.

Technical Data:

Print Speeds: Up to 36 ppm black.27 ppm color; 4800 optimized dpi.
Pict-bridge-enabled cameras have direct photo printing
Wi-Fi Wireless Capability along with wired printing
Size (Footprint): 17.7”W X 14.5”L X 5.7”H
Weight: 14.04 pounds
Hardware Platform: PC & Mac
RAM: 32 MB
Device Type: Workgroup Printer
Printer Type: Inkjet
Output: Color
Media Size Maximum: 8.5 ” X 14”(Legal); 8.25” X 11.7”(A4)
Printer Resolution, bw, horz & vert: 1200 dpi
Printer Resolution, color, max., horz= 4800 dpi & vert= 1200 dpi
Max print speed (bw): 36
Max print speed (color): 27
Max Sheet Tray Capacity: 150
Scanner: None
Price as purchased: $180.00
Warranty: 1 year.

Five Stars/ *****