The HP DeskJet 340 portable printer gives you the flexibility to print whether you're on the road or at your desk. Lightweight and compact enough to fit in a briefcase the HP DeskJet 340 portable printer makes it easy to print when traveling or anywhere space is limited. It's an ideal printing solution for notebook PC or PowerBook users.Why leave your color printer behind when you leave the office? With the HP DeskJet 340 portable printer you don't have to. The included HP Color Kit with color print cartridge and storage container makes it easy to go beyond black. Just snap in the color cartridge and print. HP ColorSmart technology eliminates the guesswork and allows you to add vibrant color no matter where work takes you. You don't have to trade off performance to get portable printing. The HP DeskJet 340 portable printer delivers crisp clear black with HP Resolution Enhancement technology (REt) and brilliant color printing. With an included 30-page sheet feeder and flexible paper handling for printing on a variety of media such as legal paper transparencies and labels the HP DeskJet 340 portable printer is a no-compromise way to print from your desktop or anywhere. For a true wireless printing solution consider the HP DeskJet 340CBi portable printer. It includes all the features of the HP DeskJet 340 portable printer plus the HP Infrared Adapter and HP NiCAD rechargeable battery. With a battery print life of 100 sheets and no need for connections the HP DeskJet 340CBi portable printer allows you to completely cut the ties-and cables- that bind you to a workspace.[]More detail ...

CL) H/P PS335 4X6 PHOTO PRINTER

• Resolutions up to 1200 x 1200 dpi black 4800 x 1200 dpi optimized color


• Prints borderless 4-by-6 and 4-by-8-inch photo cards and 4-by-12-inch panorama shots


• 1 USB port and 4 memory card slots; 32 MB standard memory


• 1.5-inch diagonal image display to view and select photos


• Lightweight compact design; Windows and Mac compatible

More detail ...

HP OFFICEJET PRO L7780 Color All In One Printer/ Fax/ Scanner/ Copier. It is the worlds fastest desktop AiO for business color with up to 25 percent lower cost per page. It produces laser quality prints faster than most color laser all in ones up to 12 ppm black/10 ppm color. It contains a breakthrough inkjet draft mode with speeds up to 35 ppm black and up to 34 ppm color. The built in wired networking allows user to share powerful all in one capabilities. Features outstanding scanning with up to 2400 dpi CCD optical scanning for documents photos projects and more. Scan and store documents up to legal size and photos directly to a network folder with Direct Digital Filing. Quickly and conveniently copy scan and fax multiple page documents using 50 sheet auto document feeder. Never miss a fax even without power faxes store in memory when device is on or off. Enjoy efficient high volume printing with optional 350 sheet paper tray for a total of 600 sheets. Archived documents retain laser quality black text and lab quality photos for decades without fading. Do more without a PC using the large 2.4 inch color graphics display and intuitive control panel. Easily preview select and print photos from memory cards using HP Photo Proof Sheet.

• Robust professional-grade all-in-one printer fax scanner and copier


• High-quality scans at 2400x4800 dpi resolution


• Prints up to 35 pages per minute


• Windows and Mac compatible; built-in network card


• 1-year limited manufacturer's warranty

More detail ...

Experience true mobility with HP's new full-featured mobile printer that delivers optional Wi-Fi and Bluetooth wireless connectivity and high-quality printing for documents and photos.

• Professional portable mobile InkJet printer


• Crisp and clear 4800 dpi print quality


• PictBridge-enabled for printing straight from mobile phones and PDAs; SD/MMC card slot to print straight from memory cards


• Super-fast USB 2.0 connectivity; accepts HP Bluetooth and WiFi network cards (sold separately)


• 1-year limited manufacturer's warranty

More detail ...

Want a multifunction color printer that offers the convenience of wireless networking? Our Officejet 6500 is right for all your small-office printing faxing copying and scanning. You'll get professional-quality color at up to 40% lower color cost per page and using less energy than laser printers. And you'll be able to scan photos and documents (up to legal size) directly into folders no PC required.

• Speed Up to 7 ppm Black and Color Maximum 32 ppm Black and 31 ppm Color


• 2 Line Text LCD Display and Embedded Wireless 802.11g Networking


• Color Print Color Copy Color Scan and Color Fax


• 250-Sheet Input Tray 50-Sheet Output Tray Automatic Two-Sided Printing 35-Sheet ADF


• 32 MB Memory and Processor Speed 192 MHz

More detail ...

Quick Reliable Compatible

I purchased this printer through a local retailer and was debating between the HP and a similarly priced wireless printer from Brother. The replacement toner cartridges are a bit more for the HP but then again they come with the drum assembly built in. This greatly reduces maintenance and potential hardware failures.



Setup:

As for setup under Windows it's a snap. Put the CD in and follow the directions.



Under Linux (I'm using Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx)) the install was easy. I visited [...] web site and downloaded the drivers. From there I just followed the directions on the web page and it works like a charm.



I've not used it with a Mac but I did note that OSX is listed on the box.



Printer quality:

As for the printer itself. It has a very small footprint on the desk when the paper trays are not extended and a small one when they are. It has excellent monochrome print quality and is very fast. As with all laser printers the ink is waterproof once it's on the paper. I'd recommend it any day of the week.



The printer's body feels solid when you handle it. The input trays are similarly solid. The output tray feels a bit light but as long as you aren't abusing the tray it'll be more than sufficient.



HP Experience:

For me HP printers are generally very reliable and always has good driver support both under Windows and Linux.More detail ...

Having trouble? Perhaps this will help. (BTW: This really is a decent little unit)

First let me preface by saying that I am not "tied" to any particular brand or model. I've had and/or still have: Epsons Canons HPs and Lexmarks (I tend to shy away from Lexmarks low end units but the higher end units work fine) and they ALL have their good apples and their bad apples. I for the life of me simply cannot label this as a bad apple. And believe me after reading all the negative reviews I tried! It works without flaw on Vista 32 bit Vista 64 bit and Windows 7 64 bit RC1(Using the Vista 64 bit drivers). Both via USB and via WiFI with an old Linksys WRT54GL.



/PREFACE OFF



I work out of my SUV and needed a small printer/copier to use while I was on the road. This so happened to be on sale a few weeks ago and was the cheapest AIO with the exception of the Lexmark which I was not willing to purchase so I bought it. I got it home preformed the normal new printer setup ritual contemplated some sort of ceremonial dance due to all the negative reviews and dug in.



---FIRST RULE OF THUMB WHEN INSTALLING ANY NEW HARDWARE: Create a restore point! If anything goes haywire you can just "roll back" to this restore point.



---SECOND RULE OF THUMB: Do NOT use the drivers provided in the box. Ever... Instead download the drivers and/or firmware/system updates and/or patches from HP.



---AND THE FINAL RULE OF THUMB: Unless you love bloatware(God knows HP wants you to...) find the most BASIC and SMALLEST driver set available that still allows full feature operation. When I searched (What a novel idea right?) there were two "junior sized" drivers for this particular unit and both gave summaries as to what they do. The first one was the "HP Officejet Basic print&scan driver" and the second was the "HP Officejet Basic Driver - IT Professional Use Only". Now don't let the "professional use only" scare you. It installs just like the beefier versions with a setup.exe it's just WAY faster to install and WAY smaller. Once installed you have the normal scan and print functions without the hassle.



I have successfully scanned via Windows Scanning & Printing (WIA) and also via Adobe Photoshop CS4 (WIA). I then printed numerous photos and documents on both photo and standard printer paper with not so much as a peep or a jam. Yes I'm serious. And no I'm not even close to being "easy" on it. It sits in my truck all day and night with inside temps reaching a scorching 115 degrees Fahrenheit and has worked every single time I called on it. Trust me I'm as shocked as you.



This brings me to my last point that I'm certain someone is just dying to call me on: "Why should people have to use workarounds? Why can't it just work?". That is a very good question. But it is also a question you will find yourself asking more and more in life as time goes on. This is unfortunately a fact of life. As things get cheaper and cheaper manufacturers have to cut corners to keep up with their competitors and quite simply things get overlooked. It sucks big time and we as customers shouldn't HAVE to use workarounds but if you want a machine that does everything this one does for less than the price of just a basic inkjet a few years ago you're gonna have to make exceptions. It's a necessary evil folks.



In closing might I suggest one thing: Before jumping on the Haterade bandwagon (and this includes mindlessly rating me down for no particular reason other than you couldn't get it to work for you so therefore I must be lying) try to put forth a little effort on your part to rectify the problem. Is a simple Google search or a simple visit to HP.com really THAT difficult? Lord knows you'll spend MUCH more time than that on the phone with the foreign "help desk". Not to mention the time it takes to create such negative reviews.



Now this isn't to say there's been no bad hardware shipped as I'm more than certain there are some who got lemons straight from the factory and even all the research in the world won't rectify that problem. But after reading all the reviews I found that the majority of the issues are either due to user error or fixed in a software driver update that the user never bothered to check for.



If you want jack of all trade items at bargain prices sometimes you have to do a little work.



More detail ...

A GREAT WIRELESS PRINTER

I PURCHASED THIS PRINTER FOR MY WIFE. SHE COMPLAINS ABOUT "ALL THOSE WIRES AROUND HER COMPUTER" SO I ORDERED THIS ONE. ALTHOUGH MORE EXPENSIVE THAN MY HP LASERJET P1006 IT IS WIRELESS SO I SUPPOSE THAT JUSTIFIES THE ADDITIONAL $60 COST. ANYWAY I SET IT UP BUT COULD NOT GET IT TO WORK WIRELESSLY. A CALL TO HP TECHS GOT IT WORKING AND WIFE IS VERY PLEASED WITH IT AS AM I. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT.More detail ...

Great Portable Printer with optional WIFI Bluetooth or Wireless

This is a very good portable printer and comes in three versions. The printer for all 3 versions is identical but difference is in the rechargeable battery the wifi wireless and bluetooth communicator.

There are some negative reviews for this printer stating poor photo print quality or subpar text. But this is due to the user not reading the manual which clearly explains that the supplied cartridges are for general use. If you are going to print photos then you need to purchase the photo cartridge for superb prints. If you want deep crisp text then Cartridge #88 does the job. So the negative reviews are not fair to HP or the prospective buyer.

This is a great little printer which can go on the road by either powering it through the car adapter or rechargeable battery (not included with the basic model)

Also this printer can print from cellphone pics and other handheld devices such as PDA (via bluetooth technology). The photo's are clear crisp sharp images

and the text prints are also good. Not a bad investment at all just buy the proper cartridge for the job and you'll be a happy camper. Not a bad choice at all.More detail ...

Well-suited for the home or the home office

I thought I would make what is normally the conclusion the beginning section because not everyone may have the time or the disposition to go through all these paragraphs unless actually interested in making a purchase. I am providing more detail that should support my conclusions AFTER the evaluation section.





Evaluation

----------

This is esentially the HP Officejet Pro 8500 Wireless All-In-One Printer with an extra paper tray 3 extra ink cartridges and some promo materials. The unit I reviewed did not have the extra paper tray.



The reviewed unit meets the claim of it being a all-in-one solution. While it is not likely that any individual user would take advantage of all its features on a regular basis it is reassuring to know that the features are there. The supplied software and the printer's own console interface allow for a tremenduous amount of flexibility and customization. Some of the more advanced features will require an above-average level of computer expertise but even without a lot of customization this will be a useful worthy printing/faxing/copying/scanning appliance.



While the superior quality of output would make this printer a good 'small office' candidate its speed would probably disqualify it if the small office was doing any significant amount printing. I provided some personal benchmarks so that any prospective small business buyer could decide. As a 'home' printer this comes as close to perfect as they come. I will be using it as a home printer so please do interpret my rating within that context.



A minor observation regarding 'design'. I found it interesting that some of the functions available on the touch screen are duplicated on physical buttons on the printer's console. This was striking because I actually saw this model for sale at New York's Fifth Ave. Apple store. It immediately occured to me that an Apple designer would have none of those buttons if allowed to redesign the product. This is not criticism it's only an observation also prompted by the fact that for example when specifying the number of copies to be printed I could NOT use the physical number pad but had to punch the number on the virtual keypad displayed on the touch screen.



The strong almost violent shaking the printer brings itself to when not on a perfectly steady surface was a little disturbing to me. I have little doubt that if improperly placed the printer would quickly lose its printheads alignment and it might even experience other technical trouble.



Finally I am happy that the HP Tech support solved my Vista-related problem but it would have been better if a printer that was manufatured only a few days before I received it had an updated CD or at least a flyer advising Vista users how to obtain the updated driver.



Considering all of the above the this printer gets a strong very positive 4 stars. However my view is that the OfficeJet Pro is basically a 'home' or 'home office' unit not a 'small business' printer. As such I see no advantage in purchasing the Premier' model instead of the 'one paper tray' less expensive version.



_______________________________________________________________________________





First impressions

-----------------



The HP Officejet Pro 8500 Wireless All-In-One Printer integrates print copy fax scan document and photo-processing functions. HP supplies the printer itself 'starter' ink cartridges print heads and a phone wire. Ethernet or USB cables are not included. Thin manuals are provided for wireless and FAX setup. A quick installation poster is provided as well. The full 300+ manual can be downloaded from the HP site. The CD has drivers for the several supported Operating Systems and a number of additional applications such as OCR (optical character recognition).



Besides the Ethernet and USB ports other physical IO include 2 telephone jacks in the back and slots for several types of memory cards in the front. The printer can be controlled from a PC or directly through a touch-screen color display and several buttons that generally duplicate options on the menus available through the touch-screen interface. To satisfy energy saving concerns the printer goes to sleep if not used for a while but it can be reactivated by either touching the screen or one of the buttons or remotely from a networked workstation.





Software

--------

Drivers are available for the most recent flavors of Windows (Vista XP 2000) and for the Mac. It can be configured to either a local printer connected to a PC via a USB cable or as a network printer wired (Ethernet) or wireless (802.11g). Another option (not tested by me) would be for one PC to connect the printer via USB and then share it over the network. I experienced problems installing the Vista drivers but HP's tech support addressed it by replacing the CD-supplied drivers with a version available at HP's site.



While installing the drivers HP will also install a number of applications and services. Of these the HP Solutions Center is the most versatile. It monitors the printer's status including the ink levels and allows for configuring printing scanning faxing and other capabilities such as the forwarding of documents to network folders (tested) or to email (not tested yet). In addition the home page can be used to control fax and scan operations to convert a graphic image to text and to launch other applications such as the HP Photosmart Essential. I posted images of the Home and Configuration screens.



I did not fully test the Photosmart Essential application yet but I expect it to meet most basic photo management and printing needs and perhaps more.



If staying with the defaults at drivers installation HP will install other generally unneeded or unwelcome applications and services. One of them the HP Customer Participation Program seems to be taking hundreds of megabytes but not doing anything useful from the end-user's point of view. I found Web discussions indicating that the 'program' was guilty of a memory leak. I removed it. Another unwelcome (to me) addition is the 'Yahoo Toolbar' to my Internet Explorer which I don't use anyway. This was done without asking for my permission. I had to use Vista's Control Panel to remove it after the fact.



Finally one 'glitch' that occured after my initial installation from the supplied HP disk had a pop-up constantly telling me that the "HP product assistant" had to be installed or updated and asking me to provide a path. Providing the path for the requested file which I found burried 3 levels deep inside the supplied CD was not helping and the cycle kept repeating endlessly. Some Web research revealed that this was a common problem and there were not many known solutions. I was able to find at the HP site a utility that tried to remove all HP drivers software from my PC but 4 reboots later and after re-installing the drivers the popup returned. A call to the HP support was answered and a technician was able to address the problem after taking over my computer performing the 'cleanup' job that I tried myself and then installing an updated version of the drivers downloaded from the HP site. The file name for Vista 32-bit is OJP8500vA909_Full_12.exe. I will post an image showing how to get to the drivers from the HP Solution Center. The HP suppport remediation completed after about 2 hours. The HP technician stated that 'only Vista' installations experience this problem. XP or Mac users should be safe.



Print

-----

Ink-jet printing outputs clean documents even on the 'normal' resolution. Printouts can be either color or black and white one-sided or two-sided. Print quality can be set to anything form 'general everyday printing' to presentation photo-quality or to ink-saving 'fast/economical printing'. The supplied paper tray can be loaded with up to 250 sheets up to 'legal' size. One-sided print speed is adequate but duplex printing can be quite slow.



The print operation appears to involved a great deal of physical movement inside the printer. If placed on anything but a very steady platform the printer tends to swing quite violently from left to right and back. This had me concerned enough to move it from its initial location.



Copy

----

The copy function allows for anything from one-sided/one-sided to two-sided/two-sided copies. As in the case of printing two-sided copies are much slower to produce. The copy quality is good enough to make the copy almost indistinguishable from the original.



Fax

---

I did not fully test the FAX capabilities but it's worth menioning that a lot of flexibility is provided including the ability to direct the faxes to a network folder (which I did test with the scan function) rather than having them printed. It is also possible to block 'junk' faxes by maintaining a list of the offending phone numbers.



Scanner

-------

As a scanner one can file the output to any of up to 10 preset network folders or if when the scanning process is initiated from a PC output can be directed to a designated user's local folder. Scanned documents can be translated to text via the integrated OCR function. My experiment with a printed document produced with Microsoft Word returned 100% accuracy for content but as expected the formatting (headers footers margins) was not properly handled.



Photo processing

----------------

Photo processing can be controlled either at the console and the interactive touch screen interface does allow for some flexibility. Input is provided by inserting one of the supported memory devices containing pictures (MMC SD CF XD MS/DUO or USB). Some crude cropping and sizing is available as well as color processing - sepia or gray scale prints can be produced and the colors can be manipulated to be darker or lighter. The more flexible solution and the one more likely to be used is via the provided HP Photosmart Essential application. Either through the touch screen interface or via HP Photosmart the printer can be configured to use photo paper from either HP or 'other' manufacturers. Inks more suitable for photo printing are available from HP but the quality of prints that I produced with the supplied ink on Canon Photo Paper Pro was satisfactory.



Document Management

-------------------

I did not test the claimed document management capabilities yet.



Support

-------

I was satisfied with the quality of support provided. After a slow start (20 minutes) where the Help Desk person asked many questions related to my identity the printer's identity and the nature of the problem I was forwarded to a technician that was able to actually solve my problem (see above under 'software'). It's hard to tell whether the better than expected support came because I mentioned that I was in the process of reviewing the printer on behalf of a known vendor.



In addition the HP Web sites provide a lot of material including updated drivers and the full manual which I still have to print.





Benchmarks

----------

I am including a few personal benchmarks with the hope that they might help someone make the right decision when it comes to purchase a home-printer or a small office printer.



- Printing



Was done on 10 pages of a Microsoft document that had some graphics and some color. The print quality was set to 'General everyday printing'.



10 pages (10 sheets) one sided - 56 seconds.

10 pages (5 sheets) duplex - 2 minutes 56 seconds.



- Copying



Set to 'color' 'General everyday printing' quality.



1 page 1 copy 1-1 side - 24 seconds.

1 page 5 copies 1-1 side - 1 minute 6 seconds.

5 pages 1 copy 1-1 side (5 sheets) - 1 minute 22 seconds.

10 pages 1 copy 2-2 sides (5 sheets)- 3 minutes 55 seconds.More detail ...

I love the wireless convience

This seems to be a great printer. I am using it as a replacement for my old Cannon PIXMA 3000 which just gave up the ghost. When you read the other reviews that talk about a 30 minute set up time don't look at that as a sign of difficulty or potential incompetance on the reviewer...this unit does do a 20-30 self diagnostic as part of the set up process. Images are clean and clear. And HP finally has the message to create separate ink carts for each color rather than having to toss them all out when you run out of one single color.



What I like:

- The wireless capability. Can print from any PC in the house on this one.

- Separate Ink Cartridges

- Duplex printing

- HP has pre-sent usage pattern ready for you - like fast utility print duplex printing printing for photos etc.

- Tools that help you see what your ink usage will be like.

- According to the HP site low cost per page printing. (fingers crossed here).



Dislikes:

-Big footprint on the desk. Oh well.



Bonus: If you act before year end your old printer may qualify for a $50 rebate when you return it to HP. See the HP product site for details. This helped knock $50 off this price.More detail ...

Nice small cordless printer but get the wifi

Set up easily - bluetooth has about a 15 foot range - the wifi is probably multi-room with a longer range. The printer takes up less space than most wired printers but isn't all that small. It's a lttle bulky and heavy for carrying around but the print quality is fine. Cost is a major drawback but if you want a small bluetooth or wifi this is the way to go until something smaller and/or cheaper is available.More detail ...

An excellent inexpensive all-in-one device

I've been a user of HP printers for many years now most recently a Photosmart C7250 All-In-One. The new HP Officejet 4500 Wireless has many of the capabilities of the C7250 for a much lower price. Both are inkjet printers of course both are color fax machines both can copy in black-and-white or color both have a high-resolution scanner with document feeder and both have wireless connectivity.



Of course you do give up some things for the lower (by about half) price: the 4500 has only a black and a tricolor ink cartridge with integrated print heads (the C7250 has six independent ink tanks) the 4500 lacks automatic two-side printing lacks "photo printing" (though it does a decent job at printing images) and doesn't have a built-in card reader. The 4500 is also considerably smaller which can be an advantage in a small or home office.



Setting up the 4500 is easy. Even if you are going to use it wirelessly you must connect it by USB to a PC (or Mac) for the initial installation. After it is set up you can disconnect the USB and run wireless-only. A 3-foot USB cable is provided which I consider too short but at least it's there unlike with many other printers. The software installed smoothly for me which was a novelty - I've had a lot of trouble with the latest HP software for my C7250. In addition to the standard printer software HP includes a basic I.R.I.S. OCR capability. I tried the OCR and it did a good job of capturing the text but it lost all formatting. OmniPage it ain't.



I was pleased to find that the network setup was handled through the PC (or Mac) software during the initial install - I was not looking forward to having to enter network keys on the printer's keypad. I use WPA2-AES wireless and the HP 4500 had no problem with it.



When you install the ink cartridges the printer spits out an alignment sheet which you then scan in so it can see how the print heads line up. Clear prompts appeared on the lighted LCD panel on the printer and this was easy.



I tried a variety of printing tasks and the 4500 handled them all well. Text was clear and colored backgrounds showed no banding. Although this is not a photo printer it did a passable job printing a photograph on plain paper. The scanner worked well too both using the glass and the document feeder. Printing is quiet and fast.



Faxing I thought a bit awkward - you use the left-right arrow buttons to select color or b+w fax enter the number (or use the address book) then press the green start button. It then asks you to press 1 if you're scanning from the glass or 2 from the feeder which I found annoying. However the faxing worked well and when the number was busy it automatically retried after one minute and then five minutes. HP includes a special phone cord which you are supposed to use for the fax connection. I don't know what is special about it but if you use a regular cord you must use a small adapter that HP also provides.



HP claims that the 4500 meets EnergyStar requirements so I tested power consumption. When the 4500 was turned off my meter read zero (the meter does not register tenths.) When on and idle 2 watts; when actively printing 10-15 watts and when in standby mode 1 watt. I thought this exemplary.



The only real gripe I have is a minor one - the paper feed tray (which doubles as the output tray) sticks out from the front quite a bit. It does have a retractable output catcher so it's not as bad as it could be. However I understand this is a trade-off for the box being so small.



The "901" ink cartridges are not insanely expensive but I don't know how long they last. HP claims that cost-per-page is lower with the HP Officejet 6500. If your usage is modest the HP Officejet 4500 may be just what you need at a very reasonable price. If you print a lot you may want a model with a higher-capacity paper tray and of course if you print photos there are better choices. All in all a very competent and modestly priced all-in-one device. Recommended.More detail ...

Well-suited for the home or the home office

I thought I would make what is normally the conclusion the beginning section because not everyone may have the time or the disposition to go through all these paragraphs unless actually interested in making a purchase. I am providing more detail that should support my conclusions AFTER the evaluation section.





Evaluation

----------

The reviewed unit meets the claim of it being a all-in-one solution. While it is not likely that any individual user would take advantage of all its features on a regular basis it is reassuring to know that the features are there. The supplied software and the printer's own console interface allow for a tremenduous amount of flexibility and customization. Some of the more advanced features will require an above-average level of computer expertise but even without a lot of customization this will be a useful worthy printing/faxing/copying/scanning appliance.



While the superior quality of output would make this printer a good 'small office' candidate its speed would probably disqualify it if the small office was doing any significant amount printing. I provided some personal benchmarks so that any prospective small business buyer could decide. As a 'home' printer this comes as close to perfect as they come. I will be using it as a home printer so please do interpret my rating within that context.



A minor observation regarding 'design'. I found it interesting that some of the functions available on the touch screen are duplicated on physical buttons on the printer's console. This was striking because I actually saw this model for sale at New York's Fifth Ave. Apple store. It immediately occured to me that an Apple designer would have none of those buttons if allowed to redesign the product. This is not criticism it's only an observation also prompted by the fact that for example when specifying the number of copies to be printed I could NOT use the physical number pad but had to punch the number on the virtual keypad displayed on the touch screen.



The strong almost violent shaking the printer brings itself to when not on a perfectly steady surface was a little disturbing to me. I have little doubt that if improperly placed the printer would quickly lose its printheads alignment and it might even experience other technical trouble.



Finally I am happy that the HP Tech support solved my Vista-related problem but it would have been better if a printer that was manufatured only a few days before I received it had an updated CD or at least a flyer advising Vista users how to obtain the updated driver.



Considering all of the above the this printer gets a strong very positive 4 stars.



_______________________________________________________________________________





First impressions

-----------------



The HP Officejet Pro 8500 Wireless All-In-One Printer integrates print copy fax scan document and photo-processing functions. HP supplies the printer itself 'starter' ink cartridges print heads and a phone wire. Ethernet or USB cables are not included. Thin manuals are provided for wireless and FAX setup. A quick installation poster is provided as well. The full 300+ manual can be downloaded from the HP site. The CD has drivers for the several supported Operating Systems and a number of additional applications such as OCR (optical character recognition).



Besides the Ethernet and USB ports other physical IO include 2 telephone jacks in the back and slots for several types of memory cards in the front. The printer can be controlled from a PC or directly through a touch-screen color display and several buttons that generally duplicate options on the menus available through the touch-screen interface. To satisfy energy saving concerns the printer goes to sleep if not used for a while but it can be reactivated by either touching the screen or one of the buttons or remotely from a networked workstation.





Software

--------

Drivers are available for the most recent flavors of Windows (Vista XP 2000) and for the Mac. It can be configured to either a local printer connected to a PC via a USB cable or as a network printer wired (Ethernet) or wireless (802.11g). Another option (not tested by me) would be for one PC to connect the printer via USB and then share it over the network. I experienced problems installing the Vista drivers but HP's tech support addressed it by replacing the CD-supplied drivers with a version available at HP's site.



While installing the drivers HP will also install a number of applications and services. Of these the HP Solutions Center is the most versatile. It monitors the printer's status including the ink levels and allows for configuring printing scanning faxing and other capabilities such as the forwarding of documents to network folders (tested) or to email (not tested yet). In addition the home page can be used to control fax and scan operations to convert a graphic image to text and to launch other applications such as the HP Photosmart Essential. I posted images of the Home and Configuration screens.



I did not fully test the Photosmart Essential application yet but I expect it to meet most basic photo management and printing needs and perhaps more.



If staying with the defaults at drivers installation HP will install other generally unneeded or unwelcome applications and services. One of them the HP Customer Participation Program seems to be taking hundreds of megabytes but not doing anything useful from the end-user's point of view. I found Web discussions indicating that the 'program' was guilty of a memory leak. I removed it. Another unwelcome (to me) addition is the 'Yahoo Toolbar' to my Internet Explorer which I don't use anyway. This was done without asking for my permission. I had to use Vista's Control Panel to remove it after the fact.



Finally one 'glitch' that occured after my initial installation from the supplied HP disk had a pop-up constantly telling me that the "HP product assistant" had to be installed or updated and asking me to provide a path. Providing the path for the requested file which I found burried 3 levels deep inside the supplied CD was not helping and the cycle kept repeating endlessly. Some Web research revealed that this was a common problem and there were not many known solutions. I was able to find at the HP site a utility that tried to remove all HP drivers software from my PC but 4 reboots later and after re-installing the drivers the popup returned. A call to the HP support was answered and a technician was able to address the problem after taking over my computer performing the 'cleanup' job that I tried myself and then installing an updated version of the drivers downloaded from the HP site. The file name for Vista 32-bit is OJP8500vA909_Full_12.exe. I will post an image showing how to get to the drivers from the HP Solution Center. The HP suppport remediation completed after about 2 hours. The HP technician stated that 'only Vista' installations experience this problem. XP or Mac users should be safe.



Print

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Ink-jet printing outputs clean documents even on the 'normal' resolution. Printouts can be either color or black and white one-sided or two-sided. Print quality can be set to anything form 'general everyday printing' to presentation photo-quality or to ink-saving 'fast/economical printing'. The supplied paper tray can be loaded with up to 250 sheets up to 'legal' size. One-sided print speed is adequate but duplex printing can be quite slow.



The print operation appears to involved a great deal of physical movement inside the printer. If placed on anything but a very steady platform the printer tends to swing quite violently from left to right and back. This had me concerned enough to move it from its initial location.



Copy

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The copy function allows for anything from one-sided/one-sided to two-sided/two-sided copies. As in the case of printing two-sided copies are much slower to produce. The copy quality is good enough to make the copy almost indistinguishable from the original.



Fax

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I did not fully test the FAX capabilities but it's worth menioning that a lot of flexibility is provided including the ability to direct the faxes to a network folder (which I did test with the scan function) rather than having them printed. It is also possible to block 'junk' faxes by maintaining a list of the offending phone numbers.



Scanner

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As a scanner one can file the output to any of up to 10 preset network folders or if when the scanning process is initiated from a PC output can be directed to a designated user's local folder. Scanned documents can be translated to text via the integrated OCR function. My experiment with a printed document produced with Microsoft Word returned 100% accuracy for content but as expected the formatting (headers footers margins) was not properly handled.



Photo processing

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Photo processing can be controlled either at the console and the interactive touch screen interface does allow for some flexibility. Input is provided by inserting one of the supported memory devices containing pictures (MMC SD CF XD MS/DUO or USB). Some crude cropping and sizing is available as well as color processing - sepia or gray scale prints can be produced and the colors can be manipulated to be darker or lighter. The more flexible solution and the one more likely to be used is via the provided HP Photosmart Essential application. Either through the touch screen interface or via HP Photosmart the printer can be configured to use photo paper from either HP or 'other' manufacturers. Inks more suitable for photo printing are available from HP but the quality of prints that I produced with the supplied ink on Canon Photo Paper Pro was satisfactory.



Document Management

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I did not test the claimed document management capabilities yet.



Support

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I was satisfied with the quality of support provided. After a slow start (20 minutes) where the Help Desk person asked many questions related to my identity the printer's identity and the nature of the problem I was forwarded to a technician that was able to actually solve my problem (see above under 'software'). It's hard to tell whether the better than expected support came because I mentioned that I was in the process of reviewing the printer on behalf of a known vendor.



In addition the HP Web sites provide a lot of material including updated drivers and the full manual which I still have to print.





Benchmarks

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I am including a few personal benchmarks with the hope that they might help someone make the right decision when it comes to purchase a home-printer or a small office printer.



- Printing



Was done on 10 pages of a Microsoft document that had some graphics and some color. The print quality was set to 'General everyday printing'.



10 pages (10 sheets) one sided - 56 seconds.

10 pages (5 sheets) duplex - 2 minutes 56 seconds.



- Copying



Set to 'color' 'General everyday printing' quality.



1 page 1 copy 1-1 side - 24 seconds.

1 page 5 copies 1-1 side - 1 minute 6 seconds.

5 pages 1 copy 1-1 side (5 sheets) - 1 minute 22 seconds.

10 pages 1 copy 2-2 sides (5 sheets)- 3 minutes 55 seconds.More detail ...

Had to return the first one

I did a ton of research and finally decided to go with this unit despite no reviews at the time. Installation was a breeze (using Mac OS X) except for one part where it asks you to set up a print queue. After doing so it didn't recognize it after multiple attempts. I finally decided to click past that step and it worked fine anyway.



We printed about a dozen photos over the first three days. On day 4 the printer booted up and slammed the print cartridge hard to the left then came up with a "Carriage Jam" error. The nice thing about the touch screen is that it also visually walks you through pictures of the areas that you need to check for paper jams etc.. Alas after going through every trouble shooting step provided it didn't solve the problem.



We returned it to Amazon (Very hassle free I might add--can't fault them a bit) and decided to try a second one since we did like the features. I was glad to see that Amazon ships you another even before you return the defective one. So far this one is working fine although it's only been a couple of days.



Our last HP was probably 4 years old. I have to say the print speed on this one is amazingly fast by comparison. I'm impressed it can print a 4x6 photo as fast as it does. Copy and scan work well too although I've found I have to initiate scanning from the Mac. Didn't seem to work if I tried to use the touchscreen to scan. I was pleased how easy they make choosing options with scanning. You can scan a document straight to PDF JPEG TIFF Memory Card USB drive OCR...



Overall it does seem as though this printer is very well made. It's also great having a tray for both paper and 4x6 photos. Unlike so many printer reviews it doesn't appear as though this printer is burning through much ink at all.



Although I would definitely recommend it I can't give it 5 stars due to the issues mentioned above.



More detail ...

The All-In-One That Does it All

If you're looking for a printer with all the latest technologies check out the HP Officejet 6500 Wireless. Keep in mind that HP makes two 6500 models--one is wireless and one is not. This is the wireless model. With copy scan print and fax functions this all-in-one is a real workhorse.



Fast speed (up to 31 ppm) and extremely easy to use. The setup function is all done via software--you don't even need to touch the 6500's keypad controls. It links directly to your System Preferences control panel making the wireless and fax settings easy. It uses 4 separate color inks so you can control your print costs when only a single color needs to be replaced.



Main drawback is HP's decision to only include a 2-line text display. For a printer in this price range HP should have included a 2.5" color LCD screen. If you're looking for a multifunction machine that does it all seriously consider the HP 6500 Wireless.More detail ...