Beware the DeskJet 340

While I normally endorse Hewlett-Packard's printer products, I've got to suggest staying away from their DeskJet 340 model. I've worked on two of these now, both were brand new, out of the box, and both of them took at least 45 minutes of fiddling to get right, with some of the functionality remaining impaired. On the one I just set up, I had to install the drivers four times before they produced anything other than garbage from the printer. I still can't use the auto-select feature to detect which print cartridge installed, the user must manually tell the drivers that they've swapped the color cartridge for the black one.

Why, in the year 2000, is HP producing a printer where I have to swap cartridges? Couldn't they have made room in there for both of them? I realize that this is a portable printer, and it's fairly small and lightweight, but how much weight would it have added to add that capability? It would have been a lot less hassle than carrying the little box with your other cartridge everywhere you go.