The Computer Next Door

Rethinking the All-in-One Printer

My new HPJ6480 has recently replaced...

2 Inkjet printers...

A copier, and a fax machine...

Five years ago, when I first bought my Apple PowerBook G4, I got a "great deal" on an Epson All-in-One printer.  The CX5400 was offered to me for $50.  Since then,of course, I have spent many hundreds of dollars on Epson ink jet cartridges - the sale of which I now understand to be the real cash cow for companies selling ink jet printers and related devices.

I was never 100% satisfied with the old Epson All-in-One machine.  It boasted Print/Scan/Copy as its 3 main functions. The color fidelity was so-so, although the fast color draft mode was useful in office documents and printing Web pages.  The Epson's scan quality has always been pretty good, but the process to scan something in was  tedious, especially if the ultimate goal was to convert the scan to a PDF.  I had to keep detailed notes about the process, it was so complex.

So I wasn't too upset when the Epson CX5400 gasped its last All-in-One breath.  One day it simply stopped printing out normal copies, preferring instead to print alternating, garish stripes of pure color.

I called Epson, who walked me through a number of diagnostics tests.  At the end, the technician on the phone recommended the next step up to a newer machine.  Within about a week, another office machine broke down - an old, large format HP ink jet.  Similarly, the problem seemed "unfixable."

It was time to replace the office printers.

After reviewing some of Consumer Reports recommendations, I went shopping (at Staples) for office machines.  I was open to ink jet, color laser, and All-in-one printers.

I came back with a solution that would replace the 2 kaput ink jet printers, my old Brother fax machine, AND the Canon copier: the HP J6480 All-in-One.

The reason I bought it was I wanted the ability to do 2-sided copying (a nice feature if you're trying to reduce the amount of paper you use for your print-outs), but it also has:

• Printing speeds up to 31 ppm
• Color and B&W copying
• Scanning up to 4800 dpi
• OCR Scanning
• Faxing
• Auto-feed mechanism
• Built-in wireless networking

The advances in the underlying technology from the old All-in-One to my new model is impressive.

The J6480s's Device Manager allows a quick scan to PDF file.  I use this all the time when I need to, for example, send documentation to our accountant.  With the old Epson All-in-One, I had to hop out of my chair constantly for each page, scan, then convert the scan to a PDF (then REDUCE the size of the usually large PDF created, which added a step or two).  Now, the J6480 Device Manager takes care of all that for me.  I just feed the document in, press "Scan to PDF" and off it goes.

Equally easy is the fax capability.  You can do this from your computer, again with the built-in Device Manager or by pressing a few buttons on the machine itself.  It pleased me to me to find out you can also set up the fax capabilities on the Web, such as programming in speed fax capabilities.

But perhaps the best feature of all is that I now freed up considerable desk and counter  space throughout the office.  And for a very affordable price ($169).  It seems All-in-One office machines have come of age.

Slogging along with My New Roku

Over the summer I visited with a friend of mine (who shall remain unnamed), and her high-tech household of gadgets. 

Everything about my friend is large. Her house, her living room ceilings, her TV, her library of movies.

This is, of course, very comfortable when you are a guest.  It was a nice experience to settle down into her large, comfy sofa and watch movie after movie, simply by selecting one from the large list of available movies, which played so nice on her very large flat screen.

Hoping to duplicate the experience on a (much tinier) budget, I promptly ordered myself a Roku, which is a small device that works with a Netflix subscription. Roku promises to enable a Netflix customer with high-speed Internet access to "stream" the movies on their television. You have to have an account that allows "unlimited" movies which I did have (my subscription costs about $9/month).  I figured, I was good to go.

Here's what was positive about the experience of buying my Roku:

• It was cheap ( under $100).
• It  was easy to set up.

Here's what was not so great:

• Viewing the movie on our "mid-level" DSL line. The picture quality was, frankly, horrible.

Although Netflix lists mid-level DSl as a viable viewing option, we found that it only provided the "basic" (read "low end") quality for watching streaming Netflix videos.

The quality was so low, in fact, I can't recommend it for most movie viewing - it's more like a reference video if you're a movie researcher and you really want to refresh your memory, or if you simply don't mind an incredibly grainy look in your home entertainment.  Titles are unclear.  Actors are just a tad on the fuzzy side.

What Netflix says in their FAQ about picture quality is this:

    ⁃    Your Netflix ready device automatically analyzes the speed of your Internet connection whenever you start a movie or TV show and chooses the optimal image quality for your connection. For fast connections (3 Mbps or more), picture quality is comparable to DVD quality.

What I say, is: Stay away from Roku unless you have a connection speed of 3 MBps or more. Until then, find your movie fare through a different channel.