Authored by Kumara Velu in Computer Hardware 
Published on 02-24-2009

If you’re planning to set up an office, you would need a printer, scanner, copier and a fax machine to take care of your business needs. What if yours is a small office or a home office and you’re on a tight budget? In that case you could consider HP Officejet L7580 which is a printer, scanner, copier and fax machine all rolled into one.

One concern of users of inkjet printers is ink consumption. The high cost of color printing always unsettles those on a tight budget. With L7850 that matter would not be a cause for concern because the printer comes with four separate ink cartridges – cyan, magenta, yellow and black. What this means is that if you run out of yellow ink, you would only have to replace that cartridge. This saves cost compared to all-in-one cartridges. However, there’s a downside to this. If one of the cartridges runs out of ink, you can’t print even black and white documents although the black cartridge is full. This is the machine’s way of ensuring you’ve all the necessary colors ready for basic colour printing.

The L7580 will be ideal for small offices where space is a premium. You wouldn’t believe that this all-in-one wonder takes up only as much space as an A3 size paper.

Out of the box, the setup process could test your patience. Software installation and hardware alignment would take you up to a total of 30 minutes. That’s actually a small price to pay for reliability and versatility in the long run.

If you think that a four-in-one machine would be complicated to operate, think again. You will have no such problem with L7580 because all the buttons you need are arranged in a manner that’s easy to identify and are labeled clearly. You can also seek assistance from the LCD panel which among others, allow you to check on your ink level especially when you’re undertaking batch printing.

What if you want to print images from your digital camera? You don’t have to copy your images to your computer hard disk first. All you have to do is insert your CompactFlash or SD card into the card reader and you’ll be ready to print your images.

You may also be wondering about the machine’s print speed. Well, it could handle A4 printing at 10 pages per minute. That output is cut down by half if you print tables or columns as in a spreadsheet document. If you’re thinking about an A4 size photo, it could take up to six minutes to print in the highest quality. In best quality it would take about four minutes and a minute and a half to print in normal quality. The copier, on the other hand, can handle about five pages per minute.

Color reproduction is nothing short of superb for a machine of its range. With a document feeder that could handle up to 50 sheets of paper, you’ll enjoying bulk printing without much hassle.