This is just a quick look at a new printer that I recently picked up for the family.

HP – Printer/Scanner C4385

We purchased this from our local Office Max for $129.99. It is a pearly white little printer with a small LCD screen in the bottom left hand corner of the navigation system on the printer.  It’s designed for high quality photo printing and you can even get a dedicated Photo Ink Cartridge to maximize the value on the final prints.  I’ll break it down step by step as I installed it.

Installation

Contents of the Packaging (According to HP Website)

  • Power supply
  • Power cord
  • USB cable
  • HP 74 black cartridge (4.5 ml)
  • HP 75 tri-color cartridge (3.5 ml)
  • CD with software
  • Set-up guide
  • Basics guide
  • Photo Paper Samples
  • Registration card
  • Pen shopping card

Easy, easy, easy.  Printers these days tend to just be a cinch to set up initially.  The only time you have troubles is after a user alters settings/configuration details on the machine.  Unpacking was easy, as you open it up there was all the CD’s and cables required for the installation.  Setup the Printer where it needed to go around the computer and then installed the software.  After the software was successfully installed, it prompted for the printer to be powered on then plugged in via USB. Make sure to walk through the initial setup on the printer through the LCD screen as it will prompt for a piece of paper to print out the calibration form.  Afterward, place it into the scanner so it can analyze the calibration automatically.  Once that was completed, toss away the calibration paper, plug in the USB cable, and ta-da! It will immediately connect and finish installation.

First Use

That was easy.  Tested it out with Word Documents and Text Documents.  It prints pretty quick with the normal mode activated.  I haven’t tested out the High Quality mode or Draft mode, but it would appear they function appropriately.  The site boasts the printer can run 30 pages per minute in black & white while capable of 23 pages per minute in color.

Last Thoughts

I’m going to have to play with the wireless settings to figure out how to get it to speak with my router, but other than that function, it installed very easily on Windows Vista.  It’s compatible with Windows 2000, XP, and Vista as well as Mac OS.  I’m impressed, it’s relatively cheap for the quality of images that come out of the printer on Normal Mode, it’s quiet, and it’s quick.  Nice addition to the technical family, and it’ll appease the grandparents since Windows Vista made their original printer, the HP P1000, outdated.  I still would recommend the HP P1000 as a solid performing printer since it has lasted about 7 years now. The scanner on the machine functions very nicely as it works with both the Vista scanning program or the HP software included.

So there ya go!  Nice addition, $129.99 isn’t too bad, and the ink for the printer was $39.99 for a combo pack of ink which had both color & black included.  Enjoy and have a great day.