Our new printer/scanner thingy arrived today, which is, as the title suggests, an HP Photosmart 2610. We lease our printers, so the Officejet G85 is going away *sniff*, but this thing promises new and better things! (Even if some of the software sucks — I’ll get to that, later.)
You can see the printer in that photo — it’s a fair bit smaller than the G85 was (before you go searching — because I know you actually care that much — I’ve only ever fleetingly mentioned that printer on here before. A quick search just turns up a whinge about drivers, from last July.), probably between two thirds and a half its size (in terms of bulk — it has an equivalent footprint, or maybe a bit shallower).
So what’s this thing do? Printing, scanning, faxing. Duh. It also has PictBridge stuff (which I doubt I’ll ever use), memory card slots, an LCD display, and network support.
I’m still uncertain which of the last two is cooler, but I’m leaning towards the network support.
The main control panel is very well planned out, and highly usable.
The LCD screen tilts backwards and forwards (into a recessed area within the printer), and is backlit.
Its viewing angle is pretty mediocre, but it’s good when you’ve got your head in the right place/adjusted the screen properly.
Now that I’ve got the trivial stuff out of the way with lots of pictures, time for some more exciting and slightly-less trivial stuff with even more pictures! The network feature!
Yeah, okay. We’ve all seen a plugged in network cable before. Probably even seen a network cable plugged into a printer before. So why’s this special? To quote Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “Let me count the ways” — okay, so I’m not quite in love with it. (Thank goodness).
For one, this is a dirt cheap consumer printer. Well, probably a little more than dirt cheap. But squarely in the home/SOHO market, so the network support (it does USB, too) is out of the ordinary.
Not only is the presence of a port out of the ordinary, the software side of things is also surprising. HP, of course, have their own “JetDirect” network printer protocol. Which isn’t IPP, and isn’t some crappy Windows share. It’s supported on Unix systems thanks to HP’s co-operation with the open-source community, and on Windows/Mac systems, HP bundle software to deliver this functionality.
Still nothing special? Okay. How about this.
You can not only use this network printer to print, but also to file share and network scan.
Yeah. Cool, huh? Whenever you plug a card into the memory slots, it will appear as a network drive on Windows systems with the HP software installed (with one caveat, but I’ll get to that soon). I’m not sure what happens with Mac computers, but I imagine it’d be similar — we haven’t got any of those here for me to test with, a situation I’m planning to remedy in the near future.
Whilst on the topic of those memory slots, it’s also possible to scan on the device direct to the card, so you don’t even need a computer with drivers for scanning. Also, much in the same way as many consumer scanners have a button you can press to activate scanning on your computer, this device similarly allows you to do that — only you’re given a choice of which network-connected computer to send the scan to!
Scanning needn’t be so complicated, however. The first thing I did after installing cartridges was to setup the network inteface manually to ensure the device had a static IP and couldn’t get lost on the network. In my usual compulsive geek-investigator state, I scanned the ports of that IP (I picked 192.168.0.4, the lowest static IP still available on my network — we also use 192.168.0.101 to 200 for DHCP, but that’s a story for some other time) and discovered that in addition to the JetDirect and Windows file sharing ports, there was also port 80 open.
Score! I thought, as I hadn’t expected anything so civilised as a web interface on this thing.
I loaded up the page, and was greeted with this:
It gives miscellaneous information about the status of the printer, along with links to various other functions. The most important of which is “Scan”.
Clicking through to “Scan”, I’m greeted with a simple enough screen that offers a choice of image type, and document size. One thing that does suck here is that A4 isn’t an option for the document size, so it’s impossible to scan the full size of the plate with the web interface. Standard desktop scanning software has no problems, this is just a usability flaw in the web interface.
You can preview your scan in this page, as shown in this screenshot…
…before progressing to the actual scan.
This next bit had me confused. At first, I thought it just didn’t like Firefox — so I walked over to a Windows computer and gave Internet Explorer a go. Same problem. It said the scan had completed successfully, but I couldn’t see anything. Internet Explorer, however, offered a more intrusive explanation of what had happened, proudly proclaiming that it had blocked a popup window.
So, back to Firefox, I added 192.168.0.4 to the list of allowed popup sites, and all was merry.
The experience has been a mostly positive one, with one exception. Their Windows XP software sucks. That needs some qualification — it only sucks if you’re using it in an environment that has been administered correctly. If you’re Joe-my-computer-is-full-of-spyware-from-running-as-administrator-Smith, then you’re in luck (for once): it’ll work fine. But, if you’ve setup user accounts (as could be expected, even in a small network environment) that aren’t running as Administrator (even the Power User group doesn’t work), then you can’t print or scan or read the contents of flash disks in the printer.
As I write, there is no known solution to the problem, and what I’ve read would suggest that HP are denying such a problem exists. Well, it does, and it isn’t solely because of inept administration.
In all, a good device marred by a few software flaws. If you’re looking for a network printer for a non-XP environment, be that earlier versions of Windows or Mac OS X or a *nix environment, I’d say it’s a great buy. Bonuses are the ability to use the flash card reader on all connected computers, network scanning, and an LCD preview display.
In terms of print quality, the colours are okay, though key (black) isn’t wonderful. I’ve only tested on 60GSM paper, though, so that’s obviously a contributing factor in my judgement. I doubt the quality would be of concern to most users, at any rate. It’s more than adequate for most desktop tasks.
I had to setup a few of these (or similar model) last month or so.
The features maybe nice, but I wouldn’t buy one. Two main reasons.
1) Build quality is sub-standard, the thing feels like a crappy piece of plastic.
2) Tiny ink cartridges, pretty useless really.
oh and as you’ve said, the drivers are bloated and buggy.
The cheaper models are even worse.
I’d disagree with the first criticism. Sure, it’s plastic, but it’s a fairly solid piece of plastic. My only criticism there is of the feed tray, which really isn’t great. The cartridge compartments and main hinge are all very solid.
I forgot to mention the ink thing: yes, they are tiny. Far smaller than the OfficeJet used. We’re just going to have to keep more in stock, but it’ll be annoying.
I can’t understand why anyone would buy an ink-based printer these days — granted, colour laserjet printers are somewhat costly (yet sub-$1000 if you look in the right places), but for most users, a black and white printer will be perfectly substantial — plus will equate to a saving of hundreds of dollars worth of ink cartidges.
With cartridges the size they are these days, you could easily be replacing one or more per week, which ends up in excess of… let’s say $50 per month — pfft.
Does this unit allow faxing over the network/web interface?
P.S. you comments form stretches crazily on IE 1024x786… boooooooo…
Laser MFD? I haven’t seen any on the market, and even for a standalone printer, $800+ is costly.
I’d also argue your “most users” is a gross generalisation, especially with the proliferation of digital camera devices. Incorporation of PictBridge and memory card support is in direct response to this, and people don’t want to print their photos in black and white. Most of the time.
We don’t pay for print consumables, but Officeworks sells replacement cartridges for roughly $40 each… fairly standard. For comparison purposes, our Officejet G85 had 42ml cartidges, and we probably replaced that once every two – three months. The standard sized cartridge for this printer is 28ml, which is nearly three quarters the capacity. The G85’s cartridges were $56 each, so cost wise it works out about the same.
You can fax over the network using HP’s software, but not via the web interface. I haven’t tested faxing, as we don’t use it normally (and hence don’t have a line available for it).
HP SUCKS !!!!!!!!!
I have one HP 2160 and i don’t will buy HP product anymore.
I’m using Windows XP Professional.
Only administrators can use the printer etc… ?
I called hp suport and they said that is a problem for Microsoft suport. But…
ONLY THIS CRAP CAN’T PRINT BY A USER ACCOUNT. Any other printer works fine as an simple user account, or users group.
I did all drivers updates at this moment, all windows updates for my Windows XP Professional.
Other comment…
I don’t found how to change the port of http printer server.
Maybe is impossible to chose other port than port 80
@Danilo, 9:23am:
Yeah, mentioned that in the above review. No known fix at the minute, except not using the HP drivers (but that could mean you can’t get the network thing to happen) and running it with whatever Windows XP automatically supplies. You obviously then have to network scan via HTTP, and lose fax capabilities.
@Danilo, 9:27am:
I haven’t seen a way to, either. But then why do you need to? That “problem” just comes down to good network architecture… plus seeing as this is squarely targetted at SoHo users I don’t think further complicating things by introducing port settings as well is within the product’s scope.
I have found a way to fix it !!!! (The problem that only admin users can print).
Just open the printer settings. (Right click on “HP Photosmart 2610 series, than left click on properties).
Click on the “Ports” tab.
“Add port“
You should choose “Standard TCP/IP port” or “HP Standard TCP/IP port”. I just can’t remember which one i have chosen.
Click “Next” at the wizzard screen.
On the next screen you need to put the correct IP address of your HP 2610 printer. Click “Next”.
There you go !
Now you can print logged in with any user account (not only administrators).
Oh wow. Only just got around to testing it, but yeah, works brilliantly. To clarify, you want “HP Standard TCP/IP Port”, and then type in the IP address and Windows XP will automatically fill in the port name for you — for me, that means it’s IP_192.168.0.4 (but I only had to enter 192.168.0.4).
This obviously means you need to statically assign your printer an IP, either on the printer itself or by setting up your DHCP server so it binds that MAC address to a specific IP when assigning — but chances are if you’re cluey enough to know not to run XP as a priviledged user, this won’t be too big a deal.
I’ll post this more prominently in a bit… right now I’m just enjoying printing from this (XP) computer!
[…] printer; any recommendations? try the hp photosmart 2610 all in one. go here to check it out http://josh.st/blog/2005/08/26/hp-photos… go for HP and its makes HP all in one is the cheapest and works well. Fax scan and copy and the […]
I’ve got a question; Does any know where i can find the driver for this HP Photosmart 2160,
Please post the link and email me, wout-erv14@live.nl.
Already thanks.
I’m using the network interface to scan (not thru the web port). I’m stunned at how long this thing takes to scan (and send over the network) and that no one else has criticized this yet! It takes over a minute to scan anything over the network, and if I open task manager in XP at the time and monitor the network, I can see that it’s sustaining only 4 Mbit usage of the 100Mbit connection. Not sure if the network was the bottleneck, I tested scanning to a memory card and it was lighting fast, confirming that the network is the choker. I haven’t tried USB yet, but I suspect that would be faster, and may be the reason this problem is apparently masked. Not using the network interface takes a lot of this printer’s advantages away though.
Other criticisms:
– Scan to email seems to ignore MAPI and *ONLY* uses Outlook clients? This stinks, but seems to be the case.
– Software is bloated, sucks, and takes ages to install. (WinXP at least)
– No option to manually add additional “Scan To” applications. Lame.
Open question:
Does Vista work any better with this printer, or at least, retain all the existing functionality?
If anyone else sees performance beyond the 4Mbit cap, I’m interested in what you’re seeing. Or also if you have information about Vista, my email is jeremyenosATyahoo.com if you care to discuss.
thx.
Thanks heaps for the info, especially for scanning. I have spent hours trying to work out.
after reading your post, it was working within 10 minutes!
You did ot answer my question…where ca I get the installion disc