Hewlett-Packard C7280 All-in-One

It has to be said that I have something of a love-hate relationship with HP products. I've used several over the years and although some have proved to be a successful acquisition, far too often I just have had that niggling feeling that they are over-priced and that always there is something that just does not do what it should be expected to do. Nowhere is that more true than in the case of HP printers, especially where their replacement ink cartridges ...
...had several printers, not all HP. Some still roll on giving great service. Probably that is most true of my little Canon BJC-85, that I've had for years. It's a portable and combines in one machine a colour printer, a black-and-white printer and a document scanner, simply by swapping the print heads. It's by no means a bulk printer; the cartridges don't last long enough for that. However, to quote a well-known phrase, "It does exactly what it ... more

It has to be said that I have something of a love-hate relationship with HP products. I've used several over the years and although some have proved to be a successful acquisition, far too often I just have had that niggling feeling that they are over-priced and that always there is something that just does not do what it should be expected to do. Nowhere is that more true than in the case of HP printers, especially where their replacement ink cartridges are concerned.

Over the years we have had several printers, not all HP. Some still roll on giving great service. Probably that is most true of my little Canon BJC-85, that I've had for years. It's a portable and combines in one machine a colour printer, a black-and-white printer and a document scanner, simply by swapping the print heads. It's by no means a bulk printer; the cartridges don't last long enough for that. However, to quote a well-known phrase, "It does exactly what it says on the box!"

My wife works from home a lot and needs good, reliable printing at a reasonable running cost. I am currently training for a new job that will also be self-employed and working from home. It, too will require good printing and scanning capabilities when I eventually qualify and start work.

Until recently we were using another HP printer, a DeskJet 5550, which I bought a couple of years back. It only came with a USB/Centronics connection capability and so, with my wife as the major user, was attached by USB cable to her laptop. This was supplemented by a Canon LiDE 500F flatbed scanner. Each required its own USB port, which, together with the mouse pretty much took up all that was available on her Packard Bell Easynote.

We have a home network that provides wired and wireless networking. I have installed Ethernet cabling around most of the rooms in which we would want to access the Net and all of the family's various computers are connected together and to the Broadband via that. The gateway to the World is via a TrendNet Wireless Broadband Router (TEW-431BRP) but on the inside of this firewall, since it has only 4 RJ45 ports, the connection capability is extended with an 8 port Belkin network switch. In all that gives us the ability to attach up to 10 devices. The wireless connections are in addition to that.

I have been able to access the old DJ5550 attached to my wife's laptop by defining it as shareable over the network. I had defined it to my own machine using the WindowsXP Printer and Fax "Add Printer" dialog. It worked well enough that way although it required that my wife's machine was always switched on when I wanted to use the printer from my own machine. That was a major limitation but one with which I could live.

Then the printer broke!

I don't know what's gone wrong. It just complains about the colour ink cartridge. If I take it out it will print fine in black-and-white but changing the colour cartridge makes no difference. So, taking this as a hint, I decided that now was probably the time to get a new printer, and one that would be significantly cheaper to run that the DJ5550; ink cartridges for this are extortionate, even compatibles, and they don't really last very long either!

Initially I was going to look for anything but an HP machine. Also, I was going to get just a simple printer, but one that was network and wireless enabled. I needed something reasonably quickly so I tried the usual suspects, Comet, Currys and PC World. I guess I could of got something off of the Internet, and probably cheaper, but where purchases such as this are concerned, I'm a touchy-feely sort of person.

Eventually it was down to PC World and after much perusing I had to come to the annoying conclusion that really only an HP machine of those available offered just what I needed at an acceptable price. That was the PhotoSmart C7280 All-in-One.

Why not just a printer? Well, true, it would have been cheaper but for the princely sum of just under £170 I got a printer with full duplexing capability; a scanner that would accept multiple sheets via an auto-feeder; a fax machine, a copier and a photo quality printer as well. Not only that but it would connect via USB cable, wired network and wireless networking as well.

On the consumables side, the printer has six ink cartridges, which can be individually replaced when each runs out. This is a major plus. The colour cartridges are £7 each in PC World, whilst the black cartridge is £12 for the standard size and £30 for a jumbo cartridge for those who need to print forests of documents. I expect we may invest in one of those in due course. These are all HP genuine ones. I don't know if compatibles are available but I expect I can get the HP ones cheaper on the Net.

The C7280 is a fair sized machine, about the size of a small microwave, and feels quite solid and well put together. The paper tray faces towards you and the scanner bed is on top, with a flap that lifts up if you want to use the scanner directly but with the autofeed tray on top of the flap for bulk copying, scanning and faxing. It comes well protected with peel-off film on just about every surface that could be damaged!

First you have to plug it in and this is where the first disquieting feeling was felt. The printer is powered by the usual power brick and this is plugged into the mains with a two pin lead. The lead was about 18" long! The lead on the power brick was about five feet long but even so, together they were no where near long enough to reach the wall socket. So far I've only unpacked three things and already I'm having to replace one of them with my own!

The first thing you have to do, before connecting the printer to anything, is to fire it up. The printer has its own little colour screen on the left and from here you can do much of the initial configuration, such as choosing language and country.

I say, before connecting the printer up but, in fact, you do at this stage also connect the printer to a convenient phone socket since testing the fax capability is part of the initial install. In my case the nearest socket was further away that could be reached with the supplied UK style lead. This lead has a BT type adapter connected at one end and an international standard RJ11 plug at the other. The adapter also has a socket so if you are currently using the wall socket for a phone then you can plug this into the adapter after inserting the adapter in the wall socket. I had a BT extension lead so I plugged that into the wall and then plugged the adapter into the socket on the other end of the extension cable. A male-to-male RJ11 lead is also provided.

Once you've been though these initial stages it is now time to connect the printer to something. Initial choice would seem to be, sensibly, a computer. Where's the USB cable? No USB cable! It doesn't come with a USB cable. If you want a USB cable you're going to have to buy one separately. Fortunately I still have the one from the old printer.

The rest of the install takes place from the computer. You slap the CD that comes with the printer in the disk drive and the software installation commences. You can now go and make a cup of tea because this is going to take some time. The software mainly consists of the "HP Solution Center" from which you can do most things that can also be done directly on the printer. It includes various tools like displaying an estimation of the amount of ink left in each cartridge.

Part of the install includes doing some calibration of the printer and printing a sample photo, just to show you how good the printer is at this. In the box is a small packet containing a few sheets of glossy 6x4 photo paper so you can run this test without having to skip it or dash out for some paper. You will, of course, need ordinary paper for the calibration test. That isn't supplied.

Just about everything worked OK on the install, with the exception of the fax test. It complained about a "wrong kind of lead"! I tried dragging the printer nearer to the phone socket, plugging the supplied cable in directly and rerunning the test. This time it worked. It looks like I'm going to have to get a female-to male RJ12 extension cable instead of a BT one!

Once successfully installed you can then try out all the other features. Everything else, I found, worked well. The print quality is very impressive. I copied an existing colour document and then laid them side by side. It was hard to tell which was the original and which the copy. The colours were very accurate and the print pin-point sharp. The only photo I tried printing was the sample one as part of the install tests but this too was impressive. The colours were vibrant and the detail precise. If you hadn't known it would have been difficult to tell that this wasn't a "traditional" 35mm print.

I now wanted to try to access the printer from my own laptop over the network. First I made the printer shareable on my wife's machine. I then inserted the install CD in my own machine and went through the install process to add a printer accessed over the network, since this is what I was doing. The quick install leaflet doesn't really cover this; it assumes only that you will access the printer either directly attached by USB cable or else wirelessly over a wireless network or via a cable attached network connection. Even the more extensive "Basic" Guide doesn't cover this, so I was in unknown territory as far as this printer was concerned.

Sure enough, when I got to the "detect network printers" part of the install, it persistently claimed it couldn't find any. When I checked the Advanced tick box, all it would allow me to enter was an IP address or a Hostname. Nowhere could a network address such as \computernameprintername be entered. I abandoned the install and tried installing the printer using the Windows Printer and Fax "Add printer" dialog from the Control Panel. That worked just fine and I was successfully able to print a Test Page.

So, I knew I could use the printer over the network, it just seemed that I couldn't do it with the HP software. I would not have the benefit of the easy management functions that the HP Solution Center application provides in order to remotely manage the printer functions.

I contacted HP Customer Support using their "Chat with an online support technician after you buy" option. This is just like using any IM type tool except this uses Citrix GoToMyAssist. Initially this didn't look too promising. The pop-up window for the Chat didn't display the whole contents and the window couldn't be resized. I use a display screen size of 1680x1050 and I know that quite a few applications have problems with this. I had to reduce the font size twice before I could see it all. Not a good start!

Anyway, I only had to wait a minute or so before a technician contacted me, which is good. I explained the problem and told him what I'd tried already. Eventually he confirmed that HP's software for the C7280 is incapable of dealing with shared printers. This is a pretty poor show considering that the basic Windows facilities can handle it. It seems that this is just not something they have ever included in its capabilities. It is only designed to interact with wireless and wired networks where you want to share a printer between multiple computers. Tough!!!!! So, problem diagnosed but no solution to the customer's requirements. I did ask for my request for an enhancement to be passed on but I won't be holding my breath.

So, if using the printer as a shared printer through another computer, whilst functional it wouldn't provide all the supposed benefits of HP's facilities. What about wireless network access? HP provides two forms of wireless communication; first and simplest, direct from a computer to the printer. This is pretty much like a wireless USB connection. However, to be really useful, the second form of access is better; to link the printer directly to the Broadband Router's wireless access point. That way the printer becomes just another network device and should be accessible anywhere on the network.

Now, I have to admit I wasn't getting my hopes up about this. We are unfortunate enough to have an emergency services radio broadcast mast about 200 metres away and it has long been my suspicion that its emissions interfere with a clean wireless network signal. My daughter has recently had an accident with her laptop when she tripped over the network cable and now has to rely on a wireless connection. She reports that it regularly drops out.

Much of the set-up of the wireless network has to be done directly on the printer. I have WPA encryption on our wireless network and so the printer needs to know the security passkey before it can connect to the router. This has to be entered via a little keyboard displayed in the printer's little screen, using the navigation and OK buttons. It's a bit long-winded but it does work and the screen confirmed that it had locked on to the router and been allocated an IP address. Now the question was, would I be able to see it from elsewhere in the network?

Well, eventually I could. It did take a while and several scans said there was no printer there but eventually, between drop-outs, it was located and installed. It works but I wouldn't want to rely on it regularly, at least, not where we live. It may work better where you are.

So. lastly, how about the preferred option; wired networking. The only problem with this for me is that where the printer is located, in my wife's study, I have only installed a single network wall socket. For this, on a permanent basis I would need two or, alternatively, I suspect I might be able to get away with something like the Belkin 2-port Passive RJ45 Hub. This is essentially a splitter that plugs into the network wall socket and accepts two network cables; not ideal but saves me having to run a new cable into the room.

So as to try out the connection I borrowed the network lead from my wife's machine. Plugging it in and turning on the machine, I checked the network status on the printer's little screen and it confirmed that it had connected to the network and been allocated an IP address by the router. All this had taken just seconds. Would I be able to see it on my laptop?

No problem there. The installation process quickly identified the printer, installed the rest of the software and printed a test page just to confirm that everything was in order. This was by far the easiest way of setting up the computer. For now, however, until I solve the network cable problem, I will have to go back to accessing it through my wife's machine.

What about scanning? That was what I would be using the printer for much of the time in my new job and scanning multiple sheets at that. How ell would it do that, especially using the autofeeder? Well, a bit like the curate's egg; good in parts. I started off doing it from the printer itself since it was in a different room to my laptop. If multiple computers are on the network then the screen on the printer will list them and let you choose to which computer you want the scan sent. By default the scan will end up in the C drive My Scans folder in My Documents though you can change that on a machine by machine basis.

I tried scanning an A4 page as "Picture to File". That didn't come out too well as it only captured the middle of the page when fed from the autofeeder. When laid flat on the scanner bed it worked OK. I then tried scanning as "Document to PDF". That worked fine but when I immediately tried another document, although it said it was scanning it actually wasn't doing anything. I tried switching off and on again and this time got a message "No Scan Options".

What I hadn't realised was that for every scan a message popped up on the target computer's screen asking if you wanted to do another scan. If you are not at that computer you don't see the message so you can't respond to it and so all subsequent scans are actually blocked! Not very useful.

Scanning is not just limited to a computer destination. The C7280 also has various slots for plugging in memory devices such as USB thumb drives, CompactFlash, SD, xD and so on and you can scan documents to these instead. These slots can also be used as network attached removable storage if you don't have the capability to plug memory devices directly into your computer, which could be useful.

I have started experimenting further with the printer's capabilities and I have came across a strange thing. I started using the printer's ability to print double-sided automatically. The problem was that when I asked the printer to do this it sent back a message saying that the duplex unit wasn't attached and I could either print single-sided or not at all.

The problem was that I knew for certain that the duplex unit *was* attached. However, if I selected the "print single-sided" alternative, the print actually printed double-sided despite what the "error" message stated! This was only when printing with the printer network attached. When attached by USB cable, no error message was produced.

I have been battling with HP Technical Support for days but the long and the short of it is that they now admit that the problem is a bug in their software that will require them to write a fix in order to rectify.

I haven't yet tried photo printing as I only have the residual pack of 6x4 photo paper but I have no reason to believe that the results won't be every bit as good as the test print done in the install process. I'll get around to it in due course. What I have noticed is that the C7280 supports direct photo printing and will also print directly from memory data cards plugged into the slots I mentioned before. Not only this but there's a dedicated Red Eye elimination button. In theory your photos don't need to go anywhere near a computer! Bluetooth connection is also supported so you can download those photos from your mobile phone as well.

So, overall, what's the verdict. Well, I have to say that I am very impressed with the results that I am getting from the printer. The print quality is exceptional, certainly very close to the results I used to get from the professional office laser printers we used where I used to work. The support software is another matter though. I am very disappointed with the quality of HP's software. Adequate is probably about the best rating I can give it. Certainly HP need to give much more thought to how customers would want to use their products.

I found the whole installation and configuration process extremely frustrating. In the end I'm going to have to make do as best I can in order to get the best out of this printer. I don't expect to see any improvements in the short term. The support I received from HP, whilst not providing the solution I was looking for, was effective and customer-friendly. I know that dealing with customers can be very frustrating; I've done enough of it in my time. Dealing with HP's support was almost a pleasure... almost! It's just a shame it was necessary. Nevertheless, the quality of the actual printer itself drags back up what otherwise would have been a very average overall rating.

Just as well really, isn't it, HP? 

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