Dr Jeff Cornwall

I have been test driving the new HP Office Jet Pro 8500 printer this week.  The last couple of days I have been exploring some of the other features that this all-in-one can offer.

The printer has slots that allow for many standard sized photo cards to be inserted directly into the printer.  Since our camera’s card does not fit one of the slots sizes on the printer, I used the front USB port to serve as a bridge.  It was reasonably easy to use this way, and the colors on the printed photo were excellent.  The print and copy quality of the printer would allow for reproduction of brochures and other promotional materials at a level of quality that would be more than satisfactory for most small businesses.  I printed a full size photo on an 8 ½ by 11 sheet that had bold colors and a reasonable picture clarity.

When it comes to using a new fax machine or scanner I tend to want to curl up in a fetal position in the corner.  It is a situation where the Luddite in me comes out in full force.  I was one of the very last in my circle of entrepreneur friends to install a fax machine back in the late 1980s.  I claimed it was because I did not see the cost benefit, which was partly true, but it was also because the thought of having to learn another new technology overwhelmed me.  After all, I had just learned how to use the personal computer only a couple of years before that time, and I was still getting over that trauma.

Luckily, the fax and scanner controls are simple enough on this machine for even someone like me to figure out without too much hyperventilating. 

The feature I was most interested in trying out was that it is wireless.  I tend to roam about our home with my laptop – although my home office is in our upstairs loft, I spend many mornings blogging and catching up on things on the back porch, or on colder or rainy days working in our family room.

To use the wireless feature, the printer has to be connected to your wireless router.  Unfortunately, our wireless hub is set up at my wife’s computer station at her kitchen desk.  The printer is just too large to put by her spot, so I cannot try this out until I move the modem and router to my loft office where I keep my printer.  That project will have to wait until things calm down from this busy spring term.

As for my conclusion about this printer?  It is a great workhorse for small businesses than need a reasonably robust and versatile all-in-one.  It is probably overkill if you have only occasional or very light use of its features.  But if your business regularly needs high quality printing, faxing and scanning, this machine is a reasonable value, as it is comparable in quality to a laser printer and much more efficient to operate.

As part of this blog marketing initiative, my readers can receive a coupon code to get 20% off the HP Officejet Pro 8500 Wireless All-in-One by clicking this link.

(This is a sponsored post).