Which HP printer?

I recently bought an HP 7760 Photosmart, but the store's policy will allow me to take it back. I do not yet have a digital camera, but will probably get one soon.
I now hear that Pictbridge is the "thing" to allow digital cameras to connect to a printer without using the PC. As far as I can tell the 7760 does not have Pictbridge. It does have slots for most media cards, and an input port that seems to be a USB port, but the shape is more like a slice of bread (3 sides square, slightly rounded top) rather than the flat oblong of most USB connections. The printer's instruction book says "Direct printing port. Use this to connect a notebook computer or an HP direct-printing digital camera to the printer ". Seems like I would be limited to HP cameras, which I am not likely to buy.
Now HP offers the 8150 Photosmart. It has a Pictbridge port (and also has the media card slots). It costs $50 more than the 7760.
Does anyone know whether Pictbridge really is more effective versus just using the media card slots which both printers have and therefore worth the addditional $50?

 

Print quality is my first consideration, and ability to crop prints for best effect is only available on the computer. I wouldn't buy a printer for its connectability to a camera.

 

sparrow--Good point, but hard to know whether one printer is better than the other in that aspect. Both got good reviews for picture quality. In fact the latest PCMag rates the 8150 quite highly for picture quality and I believe mentions that some cropping is possible (it has a little screen). And I believe the specs are approximately the same for the two.

 

My vote

Put the $50 tward a camera. You'll love it.

 

If you are interested enough, have a look at cameras that you might expect to get. Go to the manufacturer's website and have a look at the manual for how it connects and if you may need to purchase other pieces of equipment (like buying a pinter nowadays that don't come with a cable). See what else may be involved, otherwise you may end up having to purchase special cables/adapters.

The 7760 may have information on the drivers CD (if you can run it without making it impossible to return).

That connector port sounds(?) like a Firewire port.

Matt

 

Good topic to bring this up.

I just attended a little Digital camara corse at a local high end photo shop.

Do you know how long that print from your HP printer will last and how much it will cost?

 

Welshjim,
As Sparrow says:

I Agree. I’ve used Hp’s PhotoSmart Printers for several years now, and I must say the Quality of the finished product is very excellent. I’m still using my HP1100XI, but have used and have seen the prints from HP7760 and my comment still remains the same…excellent results. Of course this is based on a decent Photo Editor program on the PC. After all one never knows when some serious editing may be needed for that Digital photo to bring it to its fullest potential.

 

Appreciate all your comments. I think the vote is to save the $50.