Very good all-in-one machine
Written: Dec 06 '03
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Pros: All in one unit, fast, small footprint, reliable HP brand name.
Cons: none to keep you from buying the unit.
The Bottom Line: Great all-in-one printer/fax/copier/scanner for the money.
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| mike_sutton's Full Review: Hewlett Packard Officejet 5510 All-In-One InkJet P... |
We've just recently bought the HP 5510 OfficeJet All-in-one system. It combines a Printer, Fax, Scanner, and copier all into one machine. It does all operations in either color or black-and-white. I'll try to cover all the areas to help you decide if this is the system for you. This review might be a little long, but there are alot of features to cover since it does so many different things.
Overview
We chose this unit for it's all in one functions and because we were needed both a new printer and fax machine and wanted one that would do all to reduce clutter in the home office.
There are several other brands and models to choose from, but we liked this one for it's fast print quality & speed (up to 17ppm black and 12ppm color), fax features, auto-feed document feeder, and the "small footprint" on the desk it requires. This unit also hooks to the computer via USB, which is faster and allows more flexibility. (Note: USB cable is not included with printer)
Setup:
Setup is quick and easy. Unlike most products now days that don't include manuals, this unit came with a 125 page printed manual. Nice for when you need to look something up. If you have pre purchase questions about the unit, you can download the manual from the HP website in PDF format. It also comes with a numbered step-by-step setup procedure for those who "don't read the manuals".
To get the unit working, simply remove from box, remove all tape that's holding the access doors down and cardboard inserts. First you'll want to start the install of the software and then at a certain point, you turn on the printer and install the print cartridges. It will print an alignment sheet which you then put on the scanner main glass and it checks the print cartridge alignment for you. After all this the computer senses the printer is ready to finish setup and you click NEXT and finish the software installation. The software installation isn't real quick and will take about 15 minutes as it has to install drivers for the printer, scanner, fax, etc. After that, you are ready to use the unit.
HP Director:
The software installs an application called HP DIrector. This program has icons in it to do all the unit setup and also to control any function such as copy, fax, scan, etc you want to do from the printer. Example: you can copy a document by using the application instead of the printers buttons and you can zoom in/out, change darkness, etc.
Printing:
Printing is very easy. By default it sets your HP 5510 as the default printer. You simply just hit print from the application menu and a few seconds later the printing starts. The HP 5510 prints up to 17 ppm (pages per minute) in black and up to 12ppm in color. So it's pretty fast. Print quality is very good also, even on pictures. Tyipcally I just use plain white paper, but HP includes some paper samples of nicer paper and picture quality paper.
Copying:
You can copy in either black-and-white mode or color mode. You put the item you want to copy either directly on the glass or in the document feeder and hit the start button. You have two start buttons, one for black and one for color. This is how you choose between doing a color or black copy, fax, scan, etc. The copy quality of making a color copy of something like a picture is very good. If you used photo quality paper, I doubt you'd be able to tell it was a copy or came from an inkjet printer even. I was very impressed with it's color picture copy/print quality.
Having the document feeder is a real plus too if you need to copy more than one page.
Scanner:
The scanner is pretty easy to use. Put the items on the glass and hit the scan button or go to HP director and choose scanner. You can choose to scan in an image or picture or scan in Text. You can then scan your document into certain applications directly such as MS Word or save it as a file. It also saves it as a PDF format file which is nice since PDF has become a standard way of transferring documents. The only thing I didn't like about the HP director scan window was it didn't give you many choices or give you much of an update to what it was doing. You just had to kinda 'wait and see'. It all works fine, I just expected a fancier user interface.
Fax:
Faxing is easy and simple on this machine. To start, need to set up your fax header and put in your fax number in the machine. You can do this from the HP 5510 setup menu or on your computer using the HP Director software. After that you're set up.
You can set up your unit to automatically answer all calls or you can manually receive faxes if you use this on a normal home phone line. To manually receive a fax you press the fax start button when you hear the fax tone over the line. If you aren't anywhere near the fax machine, simply press 1-2-3 on your phone and the fax will pick it up automatically upon hearing those tones.
The HP 5510 also has a feature to use "distinctive ring" or "ring-master" as it's called in some areas. This allows you to get a second phone number for your phone line that rings in a double-ring or triple-ring pattern. You then set the fax machine to answer only on the double-ring or triple-ring pattern. When you hear the double-ring at home, don't answer the phone and let the fax answer it. Pretty simple. If you've got an answering machine at home and don't want it interfering with answering faxes, set your number of rings for your fax machine to less than that your answering machine has and you wont have to worry about the answering machine picking up first. This way all your voice calls come in to your answering machine and fax calls are answered by the fax machine.
Sending a fax is pretty simple too. Simply put the document in the feeder, press fax button, enter the phone number, and press start (black or color). This fas machine will send a fax in color also, but I've never tested that as I don't know anyone else who has a color fax machine.
You can also send a fax from your computer by clicking on the Fax icon in the HP Director software. The good thing about this is that you can type your fax and send it without ever having to print it.
The installation software also installs another printer driver called the "HP 5510 Fax". If you want to fax a document from an application, such as MS WORD, you simply print the document and choose the HP 5510 FAX as your printer. It will then print it to a temp fax file and bring up the HP Director fax cover page editor where you put in the phone number and name of the person, any comments you want on the cover page, etc. Click send and the coverpage and the document are faxed without ever having to print it first. This not only saves paper but also saves time.
The HP 5510 also has some speed dial numbers you can set and a fax forwarding feature. I've never used the forwarding feature, but it seems like a neat idea.
It can also fax at speeds up to 33kbps, which reduces fax time and long distance charges.
Ink Cartridges:
The HP 5510 comes with both color and black ink cartridges, but they are only what HP calls "starter" cartridges with only about 20% the ink of a real cartridge. So you'll most likely want to go ahead and purchase some new cartridges to have on hand to replace these. The HP 5510 uses HP Injet cartridge #56(black) and #57(color). A set of both of these will run you about $50
Tech Support:
I had to call HP Tech Support to ask them a question about something and surprisingly they were pretty good. Wait times were very low and the service engineers had very good knowledge of the product. They have a toll free number answered 24 hours a day.
Gotcha's:
As I mentioned above, you can answer any fax manually by pressing 1-2-3, well our answering machine uses those numbers to listen to messages if you call in to check them. So the HP 5510 would pick up the line thinking it was told to receive a fax. Since we couldn't change our answering machine menu choices, we called HP and they walked us through how to change the 1-2-3 to another number that wouldn't interfere. Just wanted to mention this since it was an issue we ran into that we didn't have with our old fax machine.
Sumamry:
So the HP 5510 is a very good all in one system and we've been happy with it. I would definately reccomend buying it as you get alot of function value for the cost.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 199
Operating System: Windows
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mike_sutton
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Reviews written: 49
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