I have also been having margin problems on my HP 990cse. HP has been no help. Other forums have told me that the problem is inherant in the driver, which has assigned minimum margins to the print engine, which may be similar to the engine in the HP 500.
For a portrait print on the 990cse, these margins seem to be 0" (top), 0.25" (sides) and 0.60" (bottom).[for a landscape print the 0" is the left and the 0.60" is the right]
I have experimented endlessly and have found that the ONLY way I can equalize the margins is to use third party software to create a frame into which I drop my edited photo and print it from there. The software I use is MS Publisher, which is easy to use. The margins I have been able to equalize are a fraction less than 0.60" -- this works most of the time, if the rollers grab the paper uniformly -- squaring the paper 'snugly' in the tray is important.
If you want, I can give you the MS Publisher settings which yeild these results -- e-mail me at the below address.
I am amazed that there have not been more complaints directed to HP on this -- probably because most people printing photos on 8.5x11 paper are trying for an 8x10 print [or smaller] - a conventional photo size -- and don't mind the work of trimming. I tend to make collages and want as large a palette as possible -- however, require equal margins to fit in frames I have had made for 8.5x11 photo paper.
If you get any other ideas on this matter let me know