HP sent me an email showing this model on sale. I already had an older Photosmart C7180 but I thought this one might be better - it had an ADF for one thing. After setting it up, it wouldn't print. Had to call tech support at India Central, and I spent four hours with a nice enough fellow who, alas, didn't know much about the printer. Okay, so it finally would print.
But it wouldn't scan. I then did some checking and found out most people had the same problem. The scan software didn't work, or if it did, you had to reconnect it to the computer each and every time you wanted to scan something. If you have a big stack of photos to scan, this is impossible.
Today I spent two hours with tech support, and they finally admitted I had a bad printer. "But! We will send you another!" I just laughed and told him he was going to send me a return address slip and give me my money back. He finally gave in.
This printer is meant to be disposable. HP makes the big bucks off the toner.
Next time I want to buy an HP product, I'm going to read the users forums very carefully. I could have saved six hours, and at my age, that's kinda crucial. And finally - HP printer software usually provides you with an HP Solution Center that makes the various functions very easy. The 6500A does NOT have it, and from what the tech told me, it never will. It has, you see, this cute little color touchscreen that doesn't do much at all.
Swell. HP Officejet 6500A e-All-in-One (CN555A#B1H)
I choose the HP Officejet 6500A e-All-in-One (CN555A#B1H) (not the Plus version) because of its many great features at a very reasonable price. But I was really blown away after I had printed a test page and then copied that page. The test page had blocks of the primary colors in addition to blocks of very fine horizontal and vertical black lines. Except for a few small areas in the fine lines, the original and copy were indistinguishable; and in those areas the difference was barely distinguishable. Perfect!
The lack of a wireless connection within the printer is not a problem since I connected the printer (via an Ethernet cable) to my wireless router. This makes the printer accessible even from computers with only a wireless connection to my home network.
My one area of initial disappointment was the lack of some advanced printing features such as preview, manual duplex, and booklet printing. But all of these features became available after a fairly simple change. First I removed the printer as installed by the HP software, and then re-installed it using the "Add Printer" tab on Windows 7 "Printer and Devices" screen. This finds and installs a different set of drivers that provide the missing advanced printing features. (I did this under Windows 7, but was unsuccessful in achieving these features with Windows Vista.)
Addional info added April 2, 2011... Before my initial review, I had only used manual duplex in conjunction with booklet printing. But when I later tried to print normal full pages with manual duplex the pages were streched so I lost the bottom lines on each page. After a lot of experimententation, I discovered that when adding "another" printer if I selected "HP" and "Officejet 7400", then pages would print correctly even with full pages and manual duplex. The printing preferences are presented somewhat differently - manual duplex is selected with "Printed on Both Sides (Manually)", but it works as do Booklet printing and Print preview. And I failed to mention previously that adding the printer must be done as a network printer. Adding as a USB printer automatically selects the feature-poor driver.
I also checked using "Add Printer" with Windows Vista again. This time I was able to add printers both as "HP Officejet 6500 E709a Series" and as "HP Officejet 7400 series". (Time, Windows Updates, and/or inrervening re-boots must have changed the situation.) Both the 6500 and 7400 printer drivers provided the enhanced features, but only the 7400 avoided the full-page duplex-printing error.
I have owned several HP printers before this one. The last one was HP Officejet All-in-One that I purchased 3 years ago and had problems with paper hanging up, poor print quality, and faxing. I decided to try HP Officejet All-in-One once more for my home office. HP seem to have worked out all of those problems. I have not experienced any of those things with this printer. This printer have been very reliable, with my many tasks, since my purchase. I would recommend it to family and friends because of the reliability and print quality of photos and documents, scanning, faxing, and coping.
My son's a software engineer, so it was simple to setup:~), about 20 min. Prints great. Scanned only once- watercolor art, it overlapped the window so a bit faded, need to try again, but was still good. Has a color enhancer button before printing, have to try. Scanned to memory card, it goes in the slot, you scroll pics on the viewer. Haven't tried fax and don't want or need it. Ink is smaller bottles initial size, but I like the price on refills isn't bad, comparatively, a reason I bought this. So far, excellent value. - Color Printer - Amazon - Wireless Printer - All-in-one'
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