~~ HP's own Genie ~~. Review on HP Officejet 6500A Plus

I don’t tolerate tantrums unless I am the one having them ;-), when the scanner of my 5 year old HP Photosmart 2608 started throwing tantrums, I banished it to my Hubby’s office (Any better place than this to dump things? ;P ). All-in-one Printers are one thing that I can’t do without, so on the recommendation of my dear hubby I got myself a HP Officejet 6500A Plus ( he has one at his office which is performing well).

I must mention about the magnanimity shown by HP, they didn’t charge me full Rs 12000 but wholeheartedly gave me a discount of Re 1, I was setback by Rs 11999 only. Well as usual with all printers, it comes with a User guide, a USB Cable, Adapter, a phone cord for fax and the installation CD. Hp also gives an onsite warranty for 1 year.If you register with HP,you also get some free online classes ( right now these classes are unavailable) and support for your product. Touchwood! till now the HP Support has been really supportive.

This Printer is very easy to install and you can finish the installation within few minutes. You can connect the Printer to your PC by using USB Cable, Ethernet (LAN) or through your Wireless Router connection if you have one. Since I have a Wireless Connection, I chose this option as my Hubby uses his Laptop too sometimes at home, so saves the hassle of copying onto the PC and then printing.

6500A Plus is a sleek beauty, the black glossy finish is pleasing to the eyes. It weighs less than 5 kg and hence can be moved easily from one place to another. The Display Panel on the front is easier to access and navigate. Almost all of the work can be done while your PC is off, you need not fret in case your PC is not working and you need to use the Printer.

This Printer believes in More the Merrier, so it comes with four cartridges – black, cyan, magenta and yellow each costing approximately Rs 1300. The advantage here is if one ink colour gets over, I need to replace only that particular cartridge. I was told that the capacity for black cartridge is 1000 pages and a colour cartridge can print 1200 pages.

The dirty work of printing always falls upon me. Earlier the double sided printing was a nightmare for me but this printer has the facility of automatic printing on both sides. Another trouble saver is ADF or Automatic Document Feeder, wherein I can put up to 35 documents on ADF Tray and get them all printed without replacing a single document manually. The printing quality is much better than its predecessors. One can also enlarge or reduce the document size as per our needs. Borderless printing is also supported. Printing on variety of papers, envelopes, Iron-On, transparencies etc is possible.

Scanning is an experience by itself, the scanned images are very crisp and can be saved in a variety of formats. HP has really worked on the OCR software, I was really amazed to see that the scanned text needed very little editing. I am really thrilled with the text scans.

65000 A Plus comes with two memory slots. For printing of photos I can directly insert the memory card of the camera into the slot, use the photo option right from the control panel, either print them directly, publish them online or order online printing from sites that specialize in such printing. I don’t need to buy an additional Photo cartridge, so I save money. I tried printing a photo on plain paper with quite good result. All the editing for photos can be done from the control panel on the printer itself.

I often need to send or receive fax, all the usual fax facilities are there. As long as the printer remains switched on faxes are retained in the memory, you can resend or reprint them. Switching it off will erase the faxes from the memory. You can even receive faxes and store them on your PC. If you happen to be printing documents when a fax is received, the fax gets saved in the memory and will be printed after your printing job is complete.

HP has really tried to keep up with the competition as well as innovation. It offers lots of web enabled solutions which bypass your computer completely, making the printing jobs quicker and hassle free.

If you have an Internet connection, you can store, access and print business information without using a computer from the Control Panel by utilizing the HP Apps Menu.

HP provides a host of tools and services keeping in mind your business needs. Marketsplash is such a tool where templates for brochures, flyers, business card etc are available freely. I found them to be mediocre, far better quality materials are found on other websites.

The most important and my favourite feature of 6500A Plus is the ability to print from anywhere. This facility is called HP ePrint.You can be sitting at the other end of the world yet you can instruct the printer to print the job at your office or home. It is relatively simple, send the document that is to be printed in form of an email to your HP ePrint email ID, bingo your document gets printed and also you get an email back showing the status of the job you ordered. Just make sure your printer is switched on and connected to the Internet.

This is really a fast printer, if you need to cancel any command, you need to be a super hero :P

Even though this product deserves a 5 star rating I still gave it a 4 star rating, I always keep the margin of one star. Today I am satisfied with this product, tomorrow I may not feel the same.

If you are contemplating buying an All In One Printer then his should be your Ideal choice. It was my choice, will it become yours too?