HP Officejet 6500 Wireless Printer, fax, copier, scanner with photo printer-

Yikes. Doesn't anyone just make a normal printer anymore? It happens, I guess- but they are getting to be harder to find now that the all-in-one machines have gained so much popularity. Is this popularity deserved? Well, it does seem that it makes more sense than having to buy individual machines to do each function. One thing I do not like about this is that I may not really want to have or use a photo printer or scanner anymore. And I only have rare need of a fax machine. But, I do need a printer and these other features are more and more a part of that one desired thing.

One such device that includes all of the above functions is the HP Officejet 6500 wireless. It has it all, and does it all. It does so much I have not even touched the surface of discovering all of them yet. In fact, some of the features I have little need for I may never use. The all-in-one printers are like that I guess. Why did I get one then?
I wanted a duplex printer capability for one thing, and I had prior experience with HP printers. I also figured that a home copier may be in order to save me from driving across town every time I needed a small number of copies. For larger jobs, I will still use Kinko's. And, once in a blue moon, I have need of a fax machine. Having one will also take away a further need to drive across town. So, those features while not really necessary will be convenient at times.

How is the 6500 on ease of use? It seems fairly straight forward so far. You click one of the buttons for a feature, and a screen prompt helps you through the needed steps. The 6500 has an auto-feed try for convenience. In my installation, I do use that since the thing is a bit tall for my available space and it is not easy to open the scanner bed manually to place the original without pulling the unit out on my extended shelf. It has a fairly easy to load paper tray for blank paper, and a finish tray that is easy to get to on top of the feed tray. You can extend a piece on top of the feed tray that becomes a catcher for finished prints. If you do not make use of that, your prints end up shooting out onto the floor or whatever you have unit sitting on.

The scanner, copier and photo printer controls are on the left side of the control surface. In the middle you have a LCD screen that shows various menu screens like status of the printer and allows changes to settings. On the right of that, you have a key pad and other controls related to the fax machine and also the main power button. The 6500 is pretty bulky, and you should note that if you use the duplexer it will add another couple of inches to the back.

I do not plan to utilize the photo printer feature. But, if you do, it uses memory cards described here: Secure Digital; Secure Digital High Capacity (SDHC); MultimediaCard; Secure MultimediaCard; Reduced-Size MultimediaCard (RS-MMC)/MMCmobile (adapter not included, purchase separately); MMCmicro/miniSD/microSD (adapter not included, purchase separately); xD-Picture Card; Memory Stick; Memory Stick Duo; Memory Stick PRO; Memory Stick PRO Duo

Set up of the 6500 is a bit involved. Unpacking it is a chore in itself with all of the tape, paper and padding to remove prior to setting it up. You have to install the printer head and cartridges, and attach the duplexer and make sure the feeder trays are set correctly. There is an enclosed sheet to follow steps one by one. Pieces that could be installed incorrectly are color coded. Line the colors up, and you should be good to go.

Small Ink cartridges included-

The one disappointment about this part is the size of the included ink cartridges. They look pretty tiny compared to the machine. I think I had seen that there are larger cartridges available and I will tend to use those once my current ink is gone. These are the higher ink capacity cartridges, HP920XL. These are much better in use, but still run a bit on the pricey side for their size. I recommend getting them at Costco. I tried one of the ink cartridge recyling places, but at the time anyway, this particular cartridge is not one they offer in the recycled format.

Printer software included is a resource hog- And a possible fix

The other thing that I had a problem with is that when I turned on the printer, it tended to freeze my computer for a number of minutes while it went through its sign-on procedures. Something was taking a huge amount of resources from my computer. I have a lap-top. Maybe a normal faster computer would not have the issue.

I spoke to an IT guy about this and he told me it is a common problem particularly with the Officejet combo types of HP printers. He suggested a possible fix was to uninstall the software, and goto the HP website. There he said I would find a listing for my printer that had three software packages to choose from. The full package is 191 megabytes, a medium package is 57 megabytes, and an IT professional package comes in at a svelte (by comparison) 25 megabytes.

I uninstalled, and reinstalled using the smallest package. I still had a problem.

UPDATE to my main system resources problem. . .

I found that I had a file called "HPWuSchd.exe" loading to my system. This is an HP program update helper that looks for updates to printer software. It is also a known resource hog- and can be usurped by mal-ware. I closed it, and printer now runs fine with no freezes. If you have such a problem, you might try to see if this program is loaded. It is not needed for printer function. Without the freezes, this is a diecent printer, adn teh extras can be a plus for the few times you may need them.