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Week Four
August 17, 2009
Well it might be week 4 and the end of my blog, but I know it's not the end of learning new uses for my HP 8500 Office Jet Pro. This week I've been checking out the HP web site, specifically their Creative Studio for Business, and the choices are HUGE. There is a multitude of template choices for flyers, brochures, postcards, labels, stationery, presentation kits, logos, posters, signage, direct mail, business cards, power points ... the list goes on and on. They even have a blog template. While many of the choices require a fee, I was impressed with the number of choices that were free. Great for a business just starting out or a non-profit where every penny counts. I could see myself using this for flyers or event invitations. There's even an HP Creative Studio for Home that can be used for greeting cards, scrapbooking and school projects. I know my kids would use that for school reports and power points.
I decided to try a business application flyer and it was a lot of fun. So easy to use. I picked the one I wanted, downloaded it and started to add my own pics and text. I could choose font styles, sizes, colors, shading, bolding. Move things around wherever I wanted them. Delete boxes I didn't need. Borders, no borders. Pretty much anything I wanted was possible, but I had a template to start with, which made it so much easier to finish the project quickly. A blank piece of paper can be scary for a lot of people. I personally love the challenge of a blank page, but seldom have time to start from scratch. Time is money and creativity takes time. A template gives me a good jumping off point. A mix of efficiency and creativity.
The big surprise came when I printed my practice flyer. I usually email most everything, so what gets printed in the office is drafts on cheap white paper. But since HP gave me some nice brochure paper I decided to give that a whirl. I personally didn't expect much. I always thought paper was paper, even though toilet paper companies spend big bucks on ads trying to convince me differently. Guess I was wrong; the paper does make a difference, because the flyer looked beautiful and it felt great on my tush! No really, even with off center headings and misspellings the flyer popped. The photos especially. They had almost a three dimensional quality that I think was caused by the rich, deep dark colors and the shimmering, light colors. I chose all nature shots because those can be hard to replicate, but these were like looking out the window. Actually better than looking out the window, because my lawn is fried after a summer of unusually high 100 degree months! And the feel of the paper was substantial. Heavy in my hand, not prone to crinkling up. The combination of the printer and the paper gave me a professional printed document, without having to take time to run to the printer or pay the big printer's fee.
Given the flyer success, I decided to try printing some of my family photos. You know those years and years of vacation photos that are living on my memory card? The ones saved in folders on my computer, never to see the light of day? That chore I keep putting off because it means going through all of them, loading them on a flash drive, making the trek to the local Walgreen's to get them printed? No way I could even consider printing photos on my old printer. Photo sized, 4x6 pages never fed through right, and the pictures turned out grainy and blurry. Like the photos on the roll of film that were so bad, Walgreen's didn't even bother to print them for you.With the 8500 and the great premium photo paper HP gave me, I now have great photos ready to frame. Fifteen years of my kids' birthdays and Christmases can now come out of hiding. Wonder if this stuff comes in 8x10? Wonder if it's this easy to get all those home movies off the 8mm tapes I have stockpiled?!!
I copied a couple of old photos too. Ancient pictures of my grandparents and semi-ancient pictures of my parents. I wanted to blow them up, recenter and crop them. It worked so beautifully using the touch screen. I'm well on my way to having a family photo gallery. Now all I have to do is paint the upstairs hallway so I can hang all these things. I knew there was a down side to this machine! Wonder if I can talk my husband into doing the painting?!!
Seriously, as I wrap all this up I can honestly say the HP 8500 Office Jet Pro is a wonderful all-in-one printer. If you're thinking about getting a new machine, please consider this one. I have been completely happy with it and feel so very lucky to have won it. Many companies tell you all the things their machine will do, but this one actually delivers. Cheers! – Cindy
| Week Three
August 10, 2009
Week Three is here. All my computers are now printing to the HP 8500 Officejet Pro. I re-read my first two blogs and I sound like some psycho stalker raving about this printer. My son said if I love it so much I should marry it. I'm just so happy it's such a wonderful machine. I could have been given some crappy piece of office equipment that didn't work. Since there are so many of those types of machines out there it wouldn't be surprising, but still to get a machine that works so well is amazing. I can't imagine trying to come up with good things to say if the machine sucked. I'd have to make up things like the black plastic case is so crisp, it matches everything in my office! LOL!
So far the machine is zipping along. Speed is so important when it comes to a printer, so I'm so greatful that this one screams. I was scrambling to finish my last pages and get to my tax protest last week. I had 4 more pages of photos that needed to be printed before I could leave and I was already late. I set the machine to 2 sided and let her rip. The 5 sets blasted out in Technicolor glory in about 2 minutes. Then I had to make copies of some things. I was sweating it because the machine chose to clean the ink heads at that point. The touch screen told me it would "take a few moments." I didn't believe it and screamed a few profanities. I turned on my old machine and before it could even power up my HP 8500 was ready to copy. I couldn't believe it. When my old printer cleaned heads it sounded like some old man coughing up phlegm in the morning. It was a long, drawn-out process. Anyway I won my tax protest, thanks in great part to my new printer and as Arlo Guthrie would say, "the 27 eight-by-ten colour glossy photographs with circles and arrows." Nothing says Ike damage like the close up picture of a baseball sized hole in your window frame and a downed tree laying near by.
I still haven't learned to scan. My bad. I know it will be easy since everything so far has been. Haven't had to call tech support yet. I just haven't had time to sit down and play with it due to a friend's crisis with a leaking water bed. That was a two day fiasco as water poured out and we bailed! Still it was nice to know that even though I was away from the office my staff was in good hands. Anything they needed to do the 8500 could handle. As far as I know no one has tried to copy their butt, but it's a very sturdy machine and I'm sure it could handle the weight. Do I really want to know what my staff does when I'm away?!!
| Week Two
August 3, 2009
Well it's week two with my new toy. I'm burning the midnight oil preparing for a tax protest for my home. Not work related, but very print heavy. Every bit of evidence has to have 5 complete copies. My 8500 printer is holding up great though. I found the double-sided print feature and have started using it exclusively for this project. Half as much paper, so half as much to carry to the meeting, and half as much paper cost. Love that! Just click the double-sided setting and print. Easy! The machine does all the work pulling the paper back in to print on the other side. My old machine required me to re-feed the paper if I wanted to print double sided.
My tax protest also requires me to print a bunch of photos to show the damage hurricane Ike did to the old homestead. Normally that would required a trip somewhere to have the photos printed. Photos on my old printer were grainy even on the photo setting. This time I'm doing it all on the 8500. I can print with or without a boarder, and there is a poster feature so I can blow up a photo. It prints on four pages that fit together seamlessly to make one large poster. Previously that would have required a trip to the printer and a big hit to my pocket book. I'm already thinking of ways to use the poster feature in the future. My husbands 50th is coming up and I'm sure some of those embarrassing childhood photos would look great hanging at the party!
I also had to copy multiple pages and it was so easy. I wonderful touch screen allowed me to just touch and copy. Enlarge, reduce, darker, lighter, collate, crop, even a copy preview all with a touch on the easy to read screen. I can even copy in color! Photos I had to copy turned out AMAZING! No loss of quality at all. I even blew a few up to 8 1/2 x 11. I'm LOVIN' this machine!
So far I don't seem to have even made a dent in the ink. My old printer sat up on the counter, sprawled like some old alley cat, and coughed up empty catridges like hair balls! I've got a whole bag of the sticky, hairy things from my old machine. They need to be recycled, if I could only find a place that takes this brand. I noticed Office Depot accepts HP so I just have to drop them off when I go to shop and they will pay me for them! Kinda like my own little stimulus check each quarter. The other great thing I've found is the fast/economical printing feature. Uses even less ink and I can make that a default setting. My old printer had it too, but it reverted back to normal after every print job. I had to remember to reset it each time I printed. Leaving it on normal meant slooow printing. Not with my 8500. Even on normal or photo it prints lighting fast.
I can't believe HP is giving me what I want! Money saving features that I control. Easy to use and understand features that don't require me to read the directions each time I use them. In fact except for set up I haven't used the directions yet. The Office Jet Pro 8500 does so much more than print and copy. I haven't even played with the scanner and photo features. Guess I need to try something more challenging!
| Week One
July 27, 2009
I had put off getting a new printer for a couple years because the last one was such a pain to set up. If the old one worked why go through all that bother, right? So what if scanning was a pain, and ink was expensive, at least I didn't have to pull my hair out trying to get a new one to work. Winning this HP Office Jet Pro forced me to take the plunge. I was so surprised that setting it up was amazingly easy! I only had to use the quick set up sheet and shortly after the printer was up and running.
I love that there are four ink cartridges. The black is twice the size of the colored cartridges, it's huge, so I won't have to replace it as often. And the price for a new one is the same as the little ones I've been buying for my old machine. I'm already thinking about how I'll spend the money I'll be saving, cha-ching! Even the color cartridges are very large and so easy to install. And there are removable separate print heads. No more running to the repair shop paying hundreds of dollars in labor charges to get the heads changed. Now I can just buy and install my own. More money saved. It's almost like it's printing money for me! Currently I don't have a wireless network, but this was so easy I'm now psyched to try setting one up. Hope HP makes one!
So far I haven't been able to put the machine through all it's paces, but I did notice that the ink didn't run when I spilled my iced tea on the test page. Given that it's been over 100 here I could just as easily have sweat all over it! This is so amazing. I didn't realize there was paper available that had ColorLok Technology. Guess I need to get out more! I plan to use it on all my presentation printing from now on. I had a laser printer for years just so I wouldn't have to worry about the printed page running off into the sunset if it got wet. Of course the cost of laser toner kept getting higher, and the machine seemed to get so hot when it printed, I finally broke down and switched to ink technology. That was like the difference between black & white and color TV. I've never looked back. Ink that doesn't run is just icing on the cake.
Today I plan to really work the machine. There will be 4 computers using it. They say it can handle up to 10 users so my test should be an easy one. Lets see, print me 30 pages on card stock, 150 colored flyers, and ten sets of press notes. The press notes are only 50 pages each and two sided. That's right, two sided! Lets see my old printer do that! More money saved when I can print on both sides. Think I'll use my savings to buy an additional paper tray so I can keep both white and colored paper in the machine all the time. What a time saver. Can't wait to keep playing with my new Office Jet Pro 8500 all-in-one. This machine seems to do everything except call my mother on Mother's Day!
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