OJPro 8600
479 of 493 people found the following review helpful.
By Stephen Bang
HP Officejet Pro 8600 e-All-in-One Printer N911a
I had an HP Officejet R40 printer for over 14 years, and it finally broke. After considerable research, I replaced it with the HP Officejet Pro 8600. There are "Plus" and "Premium" models of the 8600, but I got the cheapest. As far as I could tell, the Plus and Premium models did not have much to offer that I cared about - a higher capacity document feeder, a larger touch screen, and a second paper tray. I was pretty happy with the R40, and I thought that 14 years was pretty good for a printer. I print less that 1000 sheets a year, I think. So I was predisposed to get another HP. They have "Photosmart" printers that allow you to edit photos on the printer, but I am happy to do my editing on my computer using Picasa. The 8600 does have slots for inserting several types of memory cards (SD, Memory Stick Pro Duo, etc.), which would be handy for photos. The Officejet 8600 does lots more than the R40 did, so it is just as well that I had to get a new printer.
Apparently this model replaces the HP Officejet Pro 8500, which was rated in PC World and Consumer Reports in December, 2011. PC World gave the 8500 four stars out of five, and rated it number one in their list of ten multifunction printers. They said the ink costs 1.6 cents for black and 7.2 cents for four colors, per page. The other printers cost two or three times as much for ink. Consumers Reports gives it a "Best Buy" check and rates it "very good" in all areas (quality and speed). I bought the 8600 model, and I believe it is essentially the same as the 8500.
The printer uses a black HP 950 ink cartridge and three HP 951 color cartridges (cyan, magenta, and yellow), so you can just replace the cartridge that is empty. The cartridges come in standard capacity and XL high capacity, but the high capacity cartridges may be hard to find - my local Walmart didn't have them and the Best Buy salesman said that they don't always have them. The high capacity cartridges have way more ink and cost only a little more, according to the Best Buy salesman.
During installation I hit some speed bumps but I was able to resolve the problems reasonably easily. I have a desktop computer, a laptop, and a Linksys wifi router. Both are about four years old and run Windows Vista Home Premium. The first decision was how to connect the printer to the desktop. It turns out that for my setup, it is best to not connect the desktop to the printer at all. The printer has wifi, and my desktop has an Ethernet connection to the router, so they are connected through the network. Given this setup, it is best to not connect the desktop to the printer via the USB ports. And it is better not to use Ethernet to connect the printer to the router. As I understand the documentation, an Ethernet connection (or USB connection) to the printer would disable the wifi capability, which would be bad for my laptop. I thought the documentation could have more clear, but I think I figured out the optimal solution and it is working fine.
I ran the included CD on the desktop and it installed without a problem, and I was able to print and scan. Now, how to install the printer on the laptop. The documentation does not discuss how to install the printer on a second (or more) computer. My first (wrong) guess was to find the printer in Windows Explorer, right-click on it, and select `install'. I did this, and it was unsuccessful. I tried the CD, and that didn't work. One of the failure screens guided me to an HP web site that had a help file to download. The help file had a convenient button to launch msconfig, and instructions to disable some startup programs and services, and reboot. The help file had a button that sent me to an HP download site to download the latest version of the printer software. I downloaded it, ran it, restored the startup programs and services that had been previously disabled, and rebooted. Now everything was fine. Printing from the laptop over wifi works great. We have an iPod Touch, and we can print from it using the Airprint protocol. The iPod did not require any installation or setup of any kind - it just prints, since I had already set up the wifi on the printer. Some people might think that I had quite a hassle installing the printer on the laptop; I wasn't bothered by it too much. I think if the quick-start documentation had just a little more information, I might have gotten it all done the first time without having to get the help file.
I have tried the scanner and it works fine. Launch the HP Scan application and it gives you a choice of PDF, JPEG, or Editable Text (OCR). OCR means optical character reader - scan a page of printed text and it recognizes each character and saves everything as text characters, and you can save the document as TXT or RTF (rich text format.) (This paragraph edited 1/29/2012.)
I have not tried the FAX. I don't have much reason to use a FAX, and don't even know who I would send a FAX to as a test. The documentation makes kind of a big deal about using the provided "special" telephone line to connect to the phone outlet. I don't know why an "ordinary" telephone line wouldn't work.
I printed a color picture on 4 x 6 inch HP Everyday Photo Paper, and it looks very good.
If the installation had been flawless, I would have given five stars.
155 of 160 people found the following review helpful.
By Traveler
I switched to HP when my Epson died after years of good service. The printer is excellent - great quality and features in a tough package. I love receiving my daily Motley Fool Newsletter from ePrint automatically. The scanner multipage feed and two-sided print is great. Installation of the hardware went according to the directions (with some guesses). The on-screen display and keyboard give me all the information needed with the WiFi connected indicator letting me know that it's ready.
The reason for the 3 of 5 star rating is the problems with connectivity. I use the printer via WiFi for my desktop and laptop. Frequently and intermittently, I get an error message on the laptop that print did not work. Yet while that message is staring at me in two windows, the printout is coming out just fine. Also, sometimes the scan process works great and other times it does not work at all. In both cases, the desktop does not recognize that the printer or scanner is available. This cost me over 5 hours working with the HP Help Center, to no avail. Their multitude of diagnostic software identified issues, but resolved none of them. Many 'uninstall/reinstalls' did nothing. Sometimes everything works perfectly; other times not at all. Also, the problem appears to be only with my desktop. The printer functions perfectly with my laptop. HP Help Center tried saying that the problem is with my desktop. They were embarrassed when I told them that it is an HP Desktop while the working laptop is a Dell. Also, these problems do not go away after switching to Ethernet from WiFi. The main difference between the laptop and desktop is that the former is on the network via WiFi while the desktop is wired to the router. It would cost me money and performance to attach the desktop via WiFi (added card), but I am curious as to whether that is the issue.
I really don't want to return the printer. It has all of the features and strength that I want; however, it is frustrating to not have function when you need it.
HP needs to improve their software development! Clearly it is lacking in software quality control! Total connectivity via a home network is a complex process that HP has not yet conquered.
UPDATE JANUARY 23, 2012:
After over 5 hours with the HP Help Center, not arriving at a solution to the printing errors and scanning problems, I was ready to return the printer to HP. However, I persevered. The printing was perfect as long as I did not let the error messages bother me. The scanner was not functional. Then a few days ago, I came up with an idea. IPv6 has been in the news lately due to the lack of internet addresses under IPv4. I wondered if my laptop and desktop were using the same IP versions. Sue enough, the laptop that did not have problems was using IPv4 and the desktop had IPv4 and IPv6 activated. So, I disabled IPv6. Ever since, the printing errors have disappeared and the scanning functions perfectly! YEAH!
I am not ready to declare 'VICTORY' yet, but after a few days, everything is still good. So, I will raise the product rating from 3 to 4. Too bad that the HP Help Center and their diagnostic software could not have saved me so many hours of frustration.
UPDATE JANUARY 27, 2012:
VICTORY! VICTORY!
Since implementing the solution of IPv4 above, I have not seen a single error message for print or scan. The device is working just great. At some point, after a long period of stability, I may test whether IPv6 alone works as well as IPv4 on a home IPv4 network. For now, I am enjoying the printer. I hope that you do not have to suffer my experience.
92 of 97 people found the following review helpful.
By Amy Harper
The printer was very easy and fast to set up. It is a dream compared to the old HP printer that I had replaced for setup and ease of use. My primary use is for printing, scanning and copying on standard paper and it is one of the easiest to set up and use that I have found. I did compare this printer with the HP7510 (which is the same price) at a store and chose this one because it has the ability to fax, has the ability to use an ethernet cable (unlike many of the newer wireless printers) and because the ink for this printer was almost 40% less than the HP7510 (assuming the page volumes for the ink cartridges are comparable).
The only difficulties that I have had was the eprint setup took several attempts. Not sure if this was a problem with the printer or a problem with the webservice. However, the printer seemed to lock up during this process. After turning the printer on/off and retrying several times, it finally did complete and printout a code to enter into the eprint service setup. The webservice then allows one to choose your printer's email address. The manual was not particularly helpful in giving instructions on how to complete this process. The eApps are cool.
The second issue that I had with this printer is the double sided printing feature. The manual again was not particularly helpful. After inserting the duplexer, one must also ensure that it is enabled under the customize settings/device settings section as well as choosing a double sided option under the properties when printing. However, I still have occasions when printing from pdf files where the printer only prints single sided. Another note is that the document feeder on top with the scanner is only able to scan single sided.
However, I am very impressed by this product thus far!
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