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HP Officejet 6500

By Ian Urie

I decided finally to get rid of my printserver and buy another setup.
The printserver worked well, but there wasn't any feedback letting me know what was wrong, if anything happened.
Couple that to having to connect via USB to a computer to find ink levels, and it was time to upgrade.
I searched around and found that the 6500 was marked down in price .



The printer is wireless enabled and uses its own webserver.
Installation under Windows was painless on both XP and Vista , although it failed on Windows 7.
I expect that this will be rectified once the final version of 7 comes out (expected around September).
Speaking of which, did everyone take advantage of Microsoft trying to exhort users to upgrade by  selling pre-orders of Windows 7 at  £49 ?
I know I did.
Linux, of course, simply installed the drivers when it was switched on.

Anyway, back to the printer and why I bought it.
It is a fax/scanner/copier/printer, one of those all in one jobs.
I've always found that HP runs quieter and more economically than Epson's, which are the two printer companies I tend to use.

All functions are available from the onscreen menu, if you're away from the printer and feedback is there as well.
If you're at the printer, you can access all functions from the front panel , which also has a small display.

There is a top sheet feeder , for doing bulk copying, scanning, which was one of the reasons for choosing the printer.
Faxing is something I usually never do, but it is there and appears to work well, in trials I have carried out.
There is a small phone socket (RJ-11) on the rear of the printer for this.
Auto-answer, speed dialing, delayed sending etc. are all available in the settings menu on both the printer and the software on the computer

The printer also is able to take files straight from the memory card slots.
The slots are for MS-duo, XD, SD and MMC. Compact flash is conspicuous by its absence.

In operation, the printer is reasonably quiet and the ink is proving remarkably long lived, so far.
Speed of the printer is excellent.
Figures from the HP website quote 32ppm for mono and 31ppm for colour.
As per usual, these figures may well be true on really low density pages, but I'd put it a lot lower at 8-10 ppm for mono and around 3-5 for colour.
If you switch to draft mode (lowering the quality considerably), you can double these speeds, but the quality difference is noticeable. 
Since speed isn't really my aim, I'm happy with the speed of the printer and it also does a nice photograph.

The printer uses 4 ink tanks and all of these come with a high capacity option.
I've bought the large replacements, but haven't needed to use them yet.
The standard tanks are rated at 420 pages.
Switching to the high capacity gives 1200 for the black, and 700 for the colours.

Scanning is rated at 2400dpi 48bit.
Quality is good, although you would expect more from a standalone unit.
Speed of scanning/copying is excellent, and gives the ability to export in pdf, jpeg or TIFF to any computer on the network,
 You can even send it to a memory card inserted in the machine.



Best of all, the printer has an automatic duplexing unit.
Watching the printer spit out double sided documents is a joy.
Irrational, I know, but the difference is unbelievable.
So far, the printer hasn't jammed, has had no problems with loading any of the types of paper I've used
 and the automatic document feeder (capacity:35 pages) is a joy forever.
Capacity of the paper input tray is 100 pages, while the output tray is 150 pages.
Suffice to say, this is more than required in our household.

The printer itself, is able to connect via USB or 802.11 b/g wireless.

This may well be the best printer I've ever bought.
Everyone has managed to print from their laptops in the household, and I've rammed quite a few copies, scans through it as well.
The print quality has been excellent, as I expect from HP, and it simply sits in the corner, ready to do everyone's bidding.
HP touts the printer as having lower running costs than a laser, and I fully expect it to be true.
It will never catch a laser for speed, but has so many nice touches that I expect this to last for a considerable time in our house.
If you're upgrading your printer soon, I highly recommend this as a very useful tool in the household for multiple users.