This printer made a bad first impression on me. First off, I inserted the CD, and my computer (Dell Pentium III 450 with DVD drive) was unable to read it. I had to download the driver from the web. However, even after installing the driver, I had to look in the appendix of the (so-called) User's Manual to try to set up the USB connection. After following Lexmark's instructions, the printer would not support USB. I, too, had to go back to the parallel connection.After finally getting this thing up and running, I found the text quality to be very good, and photo quality (with optional photo cartridge) to be good, not great. I also found that the Z51 REALLY grabs the paper out of the automatic paper feeder. My paper shredder treats paper more gently. I also found it difficult to avoid skew misalignments with this printer.Shop around. There have to be better printers out there for the same price.