Printer Update Help

Robert from Atascadero, CA is in the market for a new, more fully-featured printer.  He writes “I have a HP Photosmart 5510 and the driver is VERY weak, does printing but little else, not both sides, no gutters, no reverse, etc. Is there others out there that can be, heaven forbid,even bought, that would be more featured?  Thanks for you fine articles, read them every time they come out.”

Hi, Robert.  Thanks for the great question and for being a constant reader.  It’s always nice to know that our articles are helping people.  That’s what we’re here for.

The most direct answer to your question is that there are a lot of good printers out there that have a lot of good features.  But the first question that you need to answer for yourself is how many of these features will you actually need?  I ask because more features, many times, do require more money.  If you don’t need something, there’s no reason to pay for it.  The next thing that I’ll say is that your printer SHOULD already have most or all of these features.  I am a frequent HP user, and I find that their drivers are frequently pretty heavy-duty, including more features than I will ever possibly use.  I have an HP Envy printer that isn’t nearly as expensive as your Photosmart, and it has the gutter feature.  The way to find this is to go into the printer settings for the document that you wish to change the gutter settings on and go to PRINT.  Then click on the margin settings.

Click the down arrow, and, on the resulting menu, click CUSTOM MARGINS.

Here, under margin settings, you’ll find the gutter settings.

The next thing that I would suggest is that, if you still can’t find the settings that you want, then you can try to find a better driver for your printer.  You can find a past article on updating drivers here:  http://www.worldstart.com/where-to-get-drivers-for-windows-8/.  You can also do a Google search for your driver, using your product name and the word “driver”.  Just be careful of any site that wants to charge you for a driver.  A new driver should never cost you money, unless it’s for a very old device that the manufacturer no longer has drivers for, which is very rare.

But if you still want to buy a new printer, I would just recommend using your preferred store (say, Amazon) and when you find one that seems to suit your needs and budgets, you can contact the printer’s manufacturer and ask about any specific feature that you need.

I hope that this helps!

~ Randal Schaffer