Hp Officejet 6500 Wireless Printer Review Review of the HP All-In-One Wireless Printer

[evought 0]

We bought an HP 6500 wireless printer a couple of months ago and now have some decent experience working with it, so I thought I would share our experiences. It seems to have some very nice features and a few interesting warts but overall works well, especially for the low price tag. (http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/)

 

Reasons We Purchased

 

Why did we get this printer now? I think a review is pointless if you don't know what the purchaser was looking for or expected. The same machine may work well for one person or horribly for another depending on what they expect to use it for.

 

We were looking for a replacement for our bulky HP color laserjet. We wanted something smaller, but especially we wanted something that took less power. We are in the middle of converting our home to an off-grid power system with DC circuits and a whole-house inverter. UPS (Uninteruptible Power Supply) and inverter systems all say they do not support laser printers. Laser printers cause serious power surges when starting up and will throw spikes back down the line, damaging sensitive equipment such as inverters and power monitor panels. So we were looking for low wattage both when printing and especially on standby, but we run a small business, so we still needed good color output, low cost-per page, and network support. The cost-per-page requirement meant we were looking for something with decent-sized toner or ink cartridges and separate cartridges for black and color so they need only be changed when completely empty.

 

We use Macintosh computers, a desktop Mac-Mini and an older MacBook. We may be setting up an additional Linux box as a server. We occasionally have people come over who may have a Windows laptop and might want to print something, so decent support for multiple operating systems was also important.

 

The HP 6500 Wireless

 

We started looking at the HP 6500 OfficeJet All-In-One Wireless because of its small desktop footprint and very low power usage. In addition to printing, it had copying, scanning, and fax. We digitize receipts and records on a regular basis (using a digital camera in document mode), and a flatbed scanner would make that task easier. In addition, in our handcraft business, we often need to scan pages from books while researching traditional craft techniques so that we can document historical reproductions (e.g. http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/). Copying was also of some use to use, but faxing, given that we have no land-line phone service (the lines out here are terrible, so we use cell phones for home and business), was of no use to us whatsoever. More importantly, however, the 6500 Wireless had 4 ink cartridges for black, cyan, magenta, and yellow, and had an option of buying longer-lasting "XL" cartridges for more economical printing. Unlike the slightly less expensive OfficeJet 6500, the 6500 Wireless had, not surprisingly, wireless network support, but also had two-sided printing and support for scanning from a 35-page document-feeder. The two-sided printing would allow us to save paper and make it much easier to print fliers, brochures and similar sales-materials in house. It printed faster and took up less space than the slightly more expensive 8500 Pro Wireless. It supported Windows and Macintosh with no major problems uncovered by a Windows search. It also looked like Linux drivers were available for Ghostscript.

 

We were able to find this in several stores, including Office Depot, Wal-Mart, and Best Buy where we were able to look at the the machine and check out its printing ability. The 6500 Wireless ranged from economical high-speed black printing on normal paper to stunning color on glossy or photo paper. It also would print T-shirt transfers. Ink cartridges were also in stock at quite a few stores and were easy to recycle and exchange. Oddly enough, Best Buy had a much lower price than Wal-Mart. Office Depot started a trade-in rebate for a laser printer to an ink jet the day after we bought at Best Buy (anyone want a used laser printer?).

 

Getting It Home/Setting It Up

 

The printer came in a number of pieces and some assembly was required. HP carefully labeled and color-coded all of the pieces so that you can assemble it correctly without too much trauma. I did lose one of the small parts in the box for a bit, however, and the instructions for preparing the ink cartridges for insertion were frighteningly vague: they did not make it clear that turning the small lever on the bottom was supposed to cause it to break off. This caused a bit of consternation until I was able to get the printer working and convince myself that I had not broken anything!

 

The AC adapter is external. Many people get annoyed at having a separate power brick, but this was an important feature to us: we can potentially use a transformer to feed DC directly to the printer without going through an inverter. We [will] have solar and wind going into a battery bank, direct DC circuits for things that will run that way, and then an AC circuit for those things which must run off of AC. We have a DC adapter for the Mac-Mini and the Macbook, for instance, and there is no reason we cannot do this with the printer. Inverters are not 100% efficient, and you lose power going from DC battery to AC inverter to AC adapter to DC printer. It is much simpler and more efficient to just use DC all the way.

 

Software installation was quick and painless. The printer spent a good bit of time initializing the first time and it took a few minutes to configure it for wireless use (we plugged it in via USB initially) but it appeared on the network and appeared to work perfectly. A test document popped out and I was reasonably satisfied.

 

The Software

 

The 6500 Wireless needs the included special drivers to support double-sided printing and its other special options as well as to support scanning. Two printers appear in your printer-selection dialog, one for normal printing and one for faxing (which we do not use). Scanning can be done by sticking a piece of paper on the machine and selecting "Start New Scan" from the HP printer support app. It is supposed to be possible to select SCAN on the printer front panel and select a machine to send it to, but I have not yet gotten that working. The HP drivers allow you to see supply levels and information more easily than past HP printers on Mac OS X and the print dialog allows access to quite a few options to control output quality and color matching.

 

A "Hewlett Packard" folder is created under Applications with a bunch of small utilities, including photo stitching and printing. Much of this duplicates functionality in iPhoto but allows some interesting options, including more versatile printing of photo albums that allows us to do better looking and organized product portfolios for instance. We have not done much with these utilities yet, but there are definitely some features to explore. Overall, the software seems much more polished and stable than previous HP printers for Mac OS X.

 

We use Mac OS 10.5.8 on both local machines.

 

Scanning has been excellent and painless. When you start a new scan (from the Scanner icon in the standard Macintosh Printer Status dialog), it will do a quick pre-scan to show you what it sees and select reasonable default settings, then let you override them if you choose. Output has been quite good with no tweaking, even when scanning identity documents for government/banking purposes. I have not tried OCR yet, but it is supposed to be able to save scans to text files.

 

There is a very irritating SNAFU with the wireless network support, however. If the printer is inactive for a few minutes, it will go into sleep mode to save power. It is supposed to continue monitoring the network and wake up when something tries to connect, but it rarely does so. If you force it to wake up from the front panel, it will seldom pick up and start printing any jobs you have already tried to submit. You often end up going through a little dance of pausing the print queue on the Macintosh, powering off the printer, powering the printer back on, and then resuming the print queue on the Macintosh. This pretty much always solves the problem, but part of the point of a network printer is to be able to print to it from across the home/office, print several documents without having to mess with the printer, and then pick them all up at once. That really does not work well in this case. It is possible that tweaking settings will fix the issue, but I have not figured it out (yet).

 

The Hardware

 

- Printer Output/Economy

 

The 6500 wireless prints very quickly, especially in economy ("fast draft") mode, even if you are used to mid-range laser printers. The limited size of the paper feeder makes it unsuitable for bulk jobs, however, and the 8500 is a better bet for that. The larger "XL" ink cartridges last a decent amount of time for an ink jet, but as I am used to a color laser printer, they seem to go very quickly to me. We keep spare cartridges on hand so that we do not run out just before a big event. Office Depot will issue credit for used cartridges returned for recycling, so we go in every so often to exchange them and this is much easier (and more reliable) than refilling the cartridges by hand. There are no 3rd party cartridges for this beast that we have found.

 

Double-sided printing either works perfectly or not at all, seemingly dependent on the document. The driver seems to depend on an even-odd numbering in the document that it can understand. If your document uses an odd numbering (e.g. Circus and Ponies Notebook http://www.circusponies.com/ can number pages by section: 1-1, 1-2, 1-3, 2-1, etc.), the printer will just print the front sides of the pages. With a bit of tweaking, you can sometimes save a printed document as PDF and then open it in Adobe or another program to tweak the page numbering, then send it to a printer. This is worthwhile in large documents but obviously not for everyday circumstances. The upside of this is that if you have a PDF which contains several documents stitched together (using Combine PDFs http://www.monkeybreadsoftware.de/Freeware/CombinePDFs.shtml or similar utility), the printer likes to start a new document on a new page which is usually what you want.

 

When it does decide to print double-sided, the first side will be printed, come half-way to the output tray, get gripped by a set of claws, then be retracted into the double-sided feeder to print the other side. The printer pauses to let the first side dry before retracting the page so that the ink does not smear. This greatly slows down printing but improves the output quality considerably. It seems to know to adjust the pause time according to paper settings in the print dialog, so be sure to set these if using special paper (e.g. glossy presentation paper). This is kind of cool to watch the first few times.

 

As mentioned above, output is crisp and clear. especially with quality paper and the quality ink settings. We use it to print double-sided business cards that are quite a bit better than what we were able to get with the color-laser printer. The color saturation is much better and more professional looking. I was surprised at this. True to advertising, the printing is generally quite resistant to water and smearing, depending on choice of paper.

 

- The Front Display/Hardware Features

 

The front display is well-organized, letting you have access to the major features without having to deal with deeply-nested menus and three-little buttons on other printers. You can copy, print, fax, and scan from the front panel (if I could get scanning to work that way), as well as printing photos directly off of a memory card (there are two slots in the bottom-right for memory cards). There is a bottom paper tray, an extensible output tray (I keep flipping the end tab down accidentally and it spews paper onto the floor...), and a separate document feeder for fax or scanning. The scanner is a full-page flatbed scanner. The top of the printer flips up for interior access and swapping cartridges is very easy. The print head is a removable component. As this is a common point of failure for ink jets, this makes the printer more durable and potentially longer lasting.

 

The printer has external ports for USB, 10/100 ethernet, and the memory card slots. The wireless is 802.11b/g and works well with the Macintosh. I have no idea how much RAM it has, but fairly large documents transfer smoothly and quickly, once you get the bloody thing to wake up from sleep.

 

The printer is lightweight, compact, but seems reasonably durable (I am not going to drop it to find out just how durable...). Paper loading seems reliable and jams are uncommon.

 

Conclusion/Summary

 

Overall, we are quite pleased with our purchase. The network/sleep problem is the biggest negative issue, followed by quirkiness with the double-sided printing. But good-quality output at relatively economical per-page cost lets us do quite a bit we would normally have professionally printed. We have even experimented with printing elegant gift boxes for Cathi's jewelry (she makes lamp-work beads) and specialty soap out of card stock. When we do get something professionally printed, we can experiment with it ourselves first and know exactly what we want when we go to the printer (with good CMYK color matching). The fantastically low-power consumption and DC option makes it perfect for a rural farm/off-grid situation. Copying and scanning is just added gravy.

 

I would definitely recommend this machine to others looking for a versatile small business device.

[evought 0]

A "Hewlett Packard" folder is created under Applications with a bunch of small utilities, including photo stitching and printing. Much of this duplicates functionality in iPhoto but allows some interesting options, including more versatile printing of photo albums that allows us to do better looking and organized product portfolios for instance. We have not done much with these utilities yet, but there are definitely some features to explore. Overall, the software seems much more polished and stable than previous HP printers for Mac OS X.

I just realized that the photo printing application that HP includes is set up as a printer in iPhoto. That means you can select photos in iPhoto and use HP's tool to arrange and print them. This is actually a very useful feature but it is not announced anywhere that I can find. I had to stumble on it by accident.

[demlasjr 0]

I simply love the HP things. I currently have a laptop HP Pavilion TX2532, which is a tablet pc and help me working. I have a HP Photosmart Multifunctional Printer. I thing the price of cartridges is lower, but the quantity if ink is to lower. I also cannot find something to deposit my cartridge when are not used. I have incompatibility with my pc (WTF, the both are HP, which was supposed to be higher compatibility) and I need to deactivate my touchscreen to be possible to use the multifunctional scanner. For wireless....I'm using a wireless router with USB port

[evought 0]

I simply love the HP things. I currently have a laptop HP Pavilion TX2532, which is a tablet pc and help me working. I have a HP Photosmart Multifunctional Printer. I thing the price of cartridges is lower, but the quantity if ink is to lower. I also cannot find something to deposit my cartridge when are not used. I have incompatibility with my pc (WTF, the both are HP, which was supposed to be higher compatibility) and I need to deactivate my touchscreen to be possible to use the multifunctional scanner. For wireless....I'm using a wireless router with USB port

We used to mail our used toner cartridges to a company which would send us a rebate for them. Office Depot now accepts them at their stores. We can take used ink or toner cartridges into the store and get credit for them (eventually: it takes a good while to process).

On the subject of cheaper cartridges but less ink, we are actually starting to have an interesting problem with this printer. We have printed just about 1200 pages (the driver keeps a count), mostly black-and-white, and quite a few of them in draft/low-quality mode to save ink. We are completely out of all three color cartridges for the third time (the color cartridges are supposed to print ~700 pages each and the black 1400 pages each) and have not yet changed the black cartridge. As this set of cartridges got low, we noticed that the "black" printing was starting to take on a green tinge. What the heck, we have a "black" cartridge, why is it using color ink to print black text?

I printed several pages printing specifically in "greyscale" and "use black cartridge only" and got the same result. I looked closely at the "black" text with a magnifying glass and could see that it was using all three color cartridges to print "black". Fiddling with all sorts of settings has no effect. From an internet search, this may be a problem specifically with the Macintosh printer driver HP provides. It seems to do it correctly for some documents and wrong for most others. It will actually do it differently for different web pages.

Anyway, if you think you are going through ink faster than you should be... maybe you ARE. Using three colors to create black not only makes a less black "black", it uses ink three times as quickly. We are going to see if HP will do anything about this situation. We cannot have it keep running through color cartridges on plain text and not have color available for our business printing.

[iGuest 3]

Wireless quirk with scanningHp Officejet 6500 Wireless Printer Review

This is an excellent review of this product. I am a huge all-in-one fan, and this is the second I've purchased--my previous one still works great (but is not Vista compatible).

I've been very happy with my 6500--love the wireless printing, but encountered a problem I've had to work around. I can't quite get it to scan wirelessly, then send info to my laptop, even though I do fine sending info from the laptop to the computer. Twice I had to end up plugging in the USB for the scanning job, but both times it forgot how to print wirelessly immediately afterward. It even forgot the USB--recognizing the printer USB plug as a "USB storage device". Weird.

All  printer settings including ISP addresses, permissions to share printing, etc. Are still there--it simply won't print. I had to uninstall the printer software, then reinstall it again to resume printer functions. It doesn't take long to do tha,t but is a nuisance considering that once a week I want to do a ton of scanning.

Have you encountered this problem, and if so, what did you do to get around it? 

Thanks, 

LWSargent

 

[evought 0]

<p>Have you encountered this problem, and if so, what did you do to get around it? </p>

I have not tried to scan to the laptop over wireless. I have had occasional trouble scanning to the desktop from the printer front pannel which is connected by ethernet to the wireless hub. My work-around for this has been to initiate the scan from the desktop rather than from the printer.

If you click on the Printer icon (usually open in the Dock) to pull up the print queue, you can select "Scanner" from the top row of buttons. An "HP Scan Pro" window opens and "New Scan" will be a button in the top left. This will let you pre-scan your image, correct it, then do the final scan and save the document without using the printer's front panel.

If your printer is not close to your computer, this means running back and forth to perform the scan (what networking was supposed to avoid in the first place) but with a laptop you can at least carry it with you to the printer.

[iGuest 3]

A sad story attached to this printer.Hp Officejet 6500 Wireless Printer Review

hi a very sad story is this particular printer, be aware it gobbles ink at an alarming rate.

Problem is it will not just use the black cartridge even in greyscale; instead uses all the cartridges.

I use it on a PC printing double sided.

In most cases the page comes out in green or blue, both pictures and in most cases the text too.

This is even when the original document is all black & white.

So before  buying an HP officejet 6500 wireless printer, Google it and you will see what I am on about.

And note HP couldnt care a dam

cheers.

[iGuest 3]

scanningHp Officejet 6500 Wireless Printer Review

I've had an HP6500 for several months.  It prints well, prints double sided and so forth. It faxes well, etc.  All things previous HP models have done well.

I had an HPx83 at the office five years ago and it had an interface which made faxing or scanning quite easy. I can't get comparable service with the 6500. Disappointing.

Periodically, I simply cannot scan. I use the networked printer with three machines with three operating systems (XP, Vista, and Windows 7). It is very difficult to get help from HP. 

I would not recommend this printer.

(Prof) Hal

[evought 0]

We got a letter at some point about the settlement of the HP lawsuit dealing with some of these matters, such as fraudulent ink usage claims and cartridges reporting "empty" almost as soon as you install them: https://www.hpinkjetprintersettlement.com/ .

We are seriously steamed. It looks like we can get about $9 in COUPONS toward more HP products as the result of having spent perhaps a few hundred dollars on cartridges we should not have had to spend, not to mention the personal cost of putting together the paperwork to get our portion. So, we are taking the easier route out--- never buying another HP printer as long as we live. We will keep using this one for a while but are looking for a more economical (non-HP) printer to replace it down the road. What I want is one of these: http://www.notebookreview.com/news/eco-ink-made-from-old-coffee-grounds/ , a hand-cranked printer using coffee grounds for its ink supply--- unfortunately only a prototype with no commercial production that I have yet found, but it would be great to pack with the Toughbook for use in the field.

[iGuest 3]

Defect with HP 6500 wireless inkjet printerHp Officejet 6500 Wireless Printer Review

Dear Folks, Given the large number of people who have written HP about the dreaded "Missing Cartridges or ink error messages that owners have experienced with this printer, I am strongly recommending that people boycott HP products. There is no reason except poor quality control for the many, many HP inkjet printers to have troubles with the printhead, requiring them to purchase a new one for a printer less than a year old, and costing anywhere from $55 to $80. HP has tumbled down a very long path to being a low end printer not worth the price, no matter how low. They should have recalled this printer and offered free print heads to any printer less than two years old.Ralph M. Faris

-reply by Ralph M. Faris

[iGuest 3]

Printer pausing is not that coolHp Officejet 6500 Wireless Printer Review

The pausing is annoying and time consuming. I have it set to regular paper and it still pauses. I have used many printer and never had a pause nor did the ink get messed up. Also, if this were the case, why do it pause on the first sheet with no sheet below it to wait to dry?I am not impressed with this feature.

-reply by Bodiddy

[iGuest 3]

Experiment to tryHp Officejet 6500 Wireless Printer Review

For those who are seeing color ink used to print black, what happens if you remove the color cartridges and set the printing to black only? Will the printer still function?

-reply by Steve

[evought 0]

Experiment to try

 

<p>For those who are seeing color ink used to print black, what happens if you remove the color cartridges and set the printing to black only? Will the printer still function? </p>

No, it refuses to work if there are not four functioning cartridges.

 

We have gotten an Epson Workforce 840, also a multifunction printer and I will probably have a review posted at some point. The HP still works, after a fashion. It is currently not refusing to print, but this has happened before, where I have to go in, reset it to factory default settings and set it up again. Overall, the printer is just not worth the hassle and is rapidly becoming e-waste.

[manuleka 0]

looks like an awesome printer... wouldn't mind having a wireless one, my current brother-130c printer was a pain setting up with driver issues... but eventually got it working and it's been with me for a few years now and still going