strange

I'd not touch an HP PC with a long stick (but then I tend to cobble my own together so that's largely true of any off-the-peg PC really) and I have never touched Compaq... but my g/f had been wanting me to replace the printer since the heads went on our old Epson inkjet at home.

We don't use printers much so I just wanted to get something cheap-n-cheerful that'd do for a year or so. Got a little HP from Dabs (it was cheaper elsewhere, but Dabs allow for evening deliveries) for £40, was just expecting, well, a bog standard inkjet like my old Epson. But it's actually quite a nice little printer, with slots for various memory cards and USB ports so you can just chuck your camera or flash drive in without booting up the PC, if you want. The print quality isn't bad (once the magenta ink was flowing properly - took a couple of head clean runs) and it can (apparently) do photo printing, you can switch out the black cartridge for a photo-print one and use glossy paper.

I was actually quite impressed, possibly because I wasn't expecting much, but if HP can keep this up then they deserve to reap the rewards... not much of an advertising slogan though "HP - much better than I was expecting".