Jewish World Review August 22, 2002 / 14 Elul, 5762




HP's desktop printing marvel

By Mark Kellner

http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | Over the past couple of years, "all-in-one" devices have become popular among users and with good reason: instead of "just" a copier, fax machine, scanner or computer printer, you get all four in one unit that, one hopes, saves space and money.

HP's officejet (stet) d145 (stet) is a $599 device that, even though it takes up a bit of room on a desktop, delivers substantial value for money, particularly for the small office or home office users the firm designed the machine to satisfy. Along with excellent ink jet printing and copying, the device does its faxing job very well and has a particular bonus for digital camera users: card readers for CompactFlash and SmartMedia (stet) cards as well as the Sony Memory Stick. The device will also read images from Secure Digital cards with an optional adapter.

Those options mean that it's a snap (no pun intended) to take photos from the removable media of a digital camera and get both a "contact sheet" of multiple images (and then select and print specific shots) and transfer images to a desktop PC (with the appropriate software and cable connections). I've tested the feature and it works very nicely, reading images from the cards and handling them well.

In a small office that depends on photos in its work - real estate, insurance adjusters, decorators, cosmetic surgery come to mind as examples - this is a perfect device for making quick work of taking digital photographs and ending up with prints. The device works with many varieties of paper, from plain to glossy and matte finished photo papers, and its 2400 by 1200 dots-per-inch photo printing (available on premium paper only) can create an absolute masterpiece.

Along with photos, though, the d145 is an excellent printer for documents, reports, spreadsheets, PowerPoint slides and other items. The sharpness of text and the vibrancy of color produced are impressive to say the least. It's nice, also, to be able to produce color copies that are very faithful to the originals, with just the press of a button. Print times are quick, even when using the highest quality settings, up to 16 pages per minute for color and up to 19 ppm (stet) for black and white. Those who have received items produced from this device have been uniformly impressed.

The device features a built-in sheet feeder in addition to a lid that lifts for single-page copying, or copying from a book or magazine. The sheet feeder is particularly useful when scanning a document, and I've used the d145 in conjunction with ScanSoft's PaperPort software to produce excellent results.

The d145 works with both Windows and Macintosh systems, although there are differences in capabilities between the two platforms. In early testing, the Mac software for the d145 didn't want to play nicely with ScanSoft's OmniPage 10 for Mac OS X, but this may have been corrected by now, or should be soon. On the Windows side, I did have some problems printing envelopes with postage using Stamps.com's Internet postage solution, but switching to address/postage labels was a good alternative.

If you're looking for a workhorse printer to serve your needs in a small office, or at home, the officejet d145 from HP is a machine to seriously consider. Ink costs per page are roughly 3 cents per page for black ink and 6.7 cents per page for color, the latter a little high though the quality is, in my view, worth it. Examine your printing needs and you may well find this device a picture-perfect printing solution. You can learn more about the printer at www.hp.com.

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JWR contributor Mark Kellner has reported on technology for industry newspapers and magazines since 1983, and has been the computer columnist for The Washington Times since 1991.Comment by clicking here.

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© 2002 News World Communications, Inc. Reprinted with permission of The Washington Times. Visit the paper at http://www.washingtontimes.com