I just bought the Photosmart 2610xi and I have had 2 days worth of headaches trying to get the software installed. I've received one fatal error after another only to be told how to correct it by an HP technician THEN only to have MORE errors pop up. After spending an hour and a half on the phone w/ a technician again today and downloading updates, I was told to expect to spend another FOUR TO FIVE HOURS on the phone with a technician to install all of the downloads. I'm sorry, but I don't have time for this....HP you need to figure out how computers work b/c mine is a basic Dell. I am not sure that I'll ever buy HP again b/c of the software.

In the end, I only have myself to blame. I knew HP had lousy software the last time I tried using an HP inkjet printer back in 2000. Back then, HP tech support tried asking for so much free GDI memory that only a clean machine with no installed software could achieve those levels. But hope springs eternal, and I thought that 5 years would be enough for HP to hire some decent programmers. Unfortunately, that was not the case.

I wanted to have this printer to replace an aging scanner and be able to print out quality photos. Shouldn't be an issue in this day and age. Although I didn't scan much (enough to send a fax), the quality seemed pretty good for a multi-purpose device...better than I expected. I did print out a number of photos, and they did turn out first rate.

However, the initial innocent error regarding "volume" got worse in just a few days. Rebooting the computer resulted in "Windows could not load the installer for Volume". Soon Microsoft Automatic Updates started failing 10 to 20 times upon each reboot, and by the 3rd day Win32 services were having problems. Thinking that I had a virus despite plenty of firewall and anti-virus protection, I spent the better part of 2 days trying to isolate what was going wrong. Eventually I uninstalled the HP software (you have to download special software from their site and run it 4 times in a row to clean everything off). And that still wasn't enough...I had to reinstall windows. And I have a standard Dell PC; I shudder to think if I had a custom PC.

So, before installing HP drivers, my computer was fine. While the HP drivers were installed, 3 significant software failures occurred. Fully removing the HP drivers results in the computer operating fine again. Sorry HP, it was you causing the problems 5 years ago, and it is still you causing the problems today.

My wife and I wasted hours and hours trying to get HP service. HP has outsourced customer service to several developing countries, and each time we called, the representatives were unable to locate the record of our previous call. We were told time and again that we would be contacted by a "case manager" but that never happened. After weeks of trying, it became obvious that we need to discard the product (still under warrantee) and buy a new (non-HP) product ourselves.

HP software is some of the most horrible in the world. I would say it is almost class-action-lawsuit bad in terms of how much time and grief it will cause users. The following are my experiences with it, and I consider myself to be an expert in software installation and maintenance. Maybe I just got unlucky because of particular features of my system, but I doubt it -- I suspect the software just blows.

First, installation was buggy and took many hours between the huge 700+ MB software and the fact that installation consisted of: try install, hang your computer, try unstall, hang your computer, repeat.

Second, if you don't have your computer behind a firewall, you are probably doomed. It takes only a few seconds hooked up to the Internet without a firewall for your computer to get infected with viruses. The HP Photosmart software SHUTS OFF YOUR WINDOWS FIREWALL AS IT STARTS UP, leaves the firewall down for a bit while it poops around, and only then starts back up your firewall. Unbelievable!

Third, the HP software causes problems with other software. HP software starts up sessions that drop me out of full-screen games, for example. This has happened to me at many critical times in on-line flight simulators, for example, causing me to crash -- after a long time of setup.

Fourth, if I don't have the printer turned on, booting up my computer takes about 10 times as long. Now I get to leave the printer on always.

Fifth, uninstall doesn't work. Don't like this crappy software having its inept claws into your operating system, making it slow and unreliable? Too bad. If I uninstall, I find that all kinds of HP crapware didn't get uninstalled and still starts up every time I reboot my computer.

HP makes great hardware . . . and some of the world's worst software. I knew this before trying this product but figured, "Hey, it's been years since I last tried HP products (and was screwed by their crappy software). Maybe they turned it around by now." Nope. This is bad enough that I probably won't buy HP computer products ever again, no matter how appealling they seem at a hardware level. I have to remind myself of this (and past) software horrors.

This is just a great printer/copier/scanner/fax machine! With two Desktop Win XP Pro SP2 computers, an Apple Mac using OS 10.3.9 and an HP PC laptop using Win XP Home SP2 (wireless only), I was just sure that I was going to have major install problems....

I was gloriously wrong! All four computers connected via "through the Ethernet" (an install option) on my hard-wired home LAN in a matter of minutes as a part of the very, very good install HP software provided. If you cannot make this fantastic 2610 all-in-one device work, I'd say you cannot follow amazingly simple directions or have other computer/network problems.

BTW, the print text/photo quality is the best I've seen on an inkjet printer. I'm a very Happy Camper! Attaboy, HP!