HP Officejet 6500 Wireless All-in-One Inkjet Printer

Comment: This is an excellent printer, and for a bunch of Macs in our home, no problem to set up for wireless printing.

But what's with all the ecofriendly ad-banter? When it is on, it uses about 5 watts unless printing, when it goes up to 20 to 40 watts. All very well. But then you would expect it to use less energy in sleep mode, right? Nope- still 5 watts. So one has to wonder what the point was of even engineering a sleep mode, with its flashing power button, etc. To lull consumers into a false sense of saving energy? 5 watts, day in day out runs into 43 kWh per year, or $4.30 of electricity per year. That's a bit of a vampire!

Anyhow, for the users who had problems with their wireless setup- for macs, the order of operations makes a significant difference. The Airport connection for your computer has to be fully on (with network selected) before firing up the HP utilities. And if you use the remote scanning software, don't turn off the HP utility base application or the scanner will lose your connection.

Comment: Purchased on April 24th, 2010. By June I was having to photocopy taped receipts to a plain page to get them to feed through on a fax. (my Canon multifunction took two years before the sheet feed stopped coping with my expense report receipt pages) By July 23, 2010 anything autofed resulted in a copy with two dark black lines from top to bottom. Two complete sets of ink cartridges in 60 days (for two reams of paper). Cheap but not a bargain by any stretch of the imagination.

Comment: I purchased this printer with high hopes as my last HP printer lasted three or four years. This printer was a nightmare since I took it out of the box a few months ago.

The first issue was print quality, which was very poor. Lines would blur frequently for no apparent reason. Next it wouldn't print at all. The first time I called customer support they kept me on the phone then said, well, it's a printer problem, let me transfer you to a printer tech.

Customer support tried but had me on hold for long minutes while the tech (and I use that word very loosely) apparently asked his supervisor what to do. It solved the problem for about two weeks, when then it began to grab large chunks of paper at a time and feed them through, finally printing sometimes and sometimes not on final pages. A phone call did not help on that.

I had more problems with printing and I called again and computer support could not help at all. They offered me a refurbished unit, which I refused since this is TWO MONTHS OLD! Would you take a refurbished unit for a two-month old unit? Now it will not print at all. I am so frustrated I went out and bought a cheap Canon printer. Four calls to HP and no resolution and an offer that is absurd for a refurbished unit. Great customer service, right?

In a nutshell, this $150 plus dollar printer has from week two not worked right and HP's customer support is TERRIBLE. The techs know NOTHING. I WILL NEVER BUY ANOTHER HP PRODUCT AS LONG AS I LIVE. I run a business and do not have time for this.

Read my review on the HP Pavilion p6230f I bought, which is another nightmare.

Comment: I bought this printer in May to replace an old OfficeJet 6310 that finally bit the dust. I was a bit reluctant after reading all of the negative reviews, but bought it anyway and am quite happy with it. I have experience repairing printers, and I am fond of the HP line.

The printer was easy to set up. I chose to use the network connection so that I can use it with all of my computers. On the Mac side, it was a breeze -- the driver was already built into Snow Leopard, so it was just a matter of selecting the right printer in preferences. As for Windows, I had to go online to HP's website to download the XP driver -- no big deal, and a good idea anyway so that you have the most recent drivers installed.

The scanner also works great. I have scanned quite a few pictures into the computer, and the color levels are just right: No need to make any adjustments. When the picture is reprinted on the printer, it matches the original exactly.

As for the negative reviews, I have no idea why they could be having problems. The 'noise' the printer makes is typical, and nowhere near as loud as some of the claims. All of my prints come out looking great. The only issue I had was that the duplexer left black streaks on a few pages, but that went away after a few pages went through the printer.

One word of advice: Do not turn the printer off; just let it go to 'sleep' on its own. Every time you turn the printer on, it has to run a purge/clean cycle to ready itself for printing. This is the nature of any printing system where you replace just ink cartridges, and not the printhead -- and that includes Brother printers.

Comment: I've owned my fair share of printers over the last couple of decades, and I can easily say this is the absolute hands down worst printer I've EVER owned. If it was just the noise or the speed, I would be irritated... but most likely not inspired to write a review. But for a WEEK now I've been trying to get this printer to consistently print the color black from the same source document, and the thing REFUSES! I've gone so far as to run the colored ink cartridges completely dry - which now means I get about two prints of black ink, and then the same document starts running through the printer - and spitting out a blank sheet of paper. Sometimes a restart of the program works, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes the document will print black, sometimes pink, sometimes light blue. It's BLACK TEXT for crying out loud. Add to that - the printer IS loud and slow as molasses, and of the three computers in my house it would only work with one. I can't get the scanner to scan. I've noticed (though I only bought this a few months ago), that my local Staples has this printer in the discontinued clearance section of the store.