HP Officejet 6500A Plus e-All-in-One

Looking for a great home or small home office printer, without spending hundreds of dollars then you need to look at the HP 6500A Plus All-in-One.  This printer is a couple of years old, and if you are now in the market for a new printer, seriously consider this one.  Most online retailers have halved the price on this, and locally (Vancouver, BC) you can get this on sale for $129.99 (about $70.00 less than the retailers original price).

There are actually two versions of the 6500A – the regular one which does not support auto-duplex mode (printing on both sides of the paper, automatically) and the 6500A Plus which does support printing on both sides of the paper automatically.

What attracted me to this printer are a few great features:

1. ePrint – you can print from anywhere you can send an e-mail from.  Most people have smartphones, and virtually every smartphone can handle e-mail as can many applications (such as news readers).
2. AirPrint – exclusive to HP, airprint allows you to print directly from your iPhone, iPad or iTouch – mind you, with ePrint you’re covered regardless of the device you have.
3. 250 sheet paper tray – no more having to run to the printer to add more paper!

Looking for multiple functions, look no further.  The HP 6500A Plus has you covered.

You can print, fax, scan and copy.  It’s a photo printer that also suppored wired and wireless connectivity (think: printer can be ANYWHERE in your home or home office).  Touchscreen is nice, and allows you to print without having to be connected to a computer.  It’s also web connected (think ePrint) and features ePrint and AirPrint technology.

If you check out the reviews on Amazon, there are a lot of negative comments – however I was able to install the printer and set it up within 30 minutes.  The initial [auto] configuration takes about 10 minutes (or less) and it’s probably the printer going through all its internal checks.  Once you set-up the wireless connectivity to your router (so that it can connect over the Internet) it goes out and performs an firmware upgrade (as near as I could tell).

A lot of the reviews were about how difficult it is to set-up (it’s not) or complained about the quality (it’s great for general documentation printing – need professional, high quality printing?  Spend good money for a better quality laser printer), or that the scanning speed is too slow (it’s more than acceptable) and that ink is expensive (umm, ALL ink for ANY printer is expensive)

One of the key features of this printer is the ePrint.  This was the first thing I tested out, and it works PERFECTLY!  You connect to the HP ePrint site, create a login and attach your printer to it using the code that the printer provides during its initial set-up.  Once connected you can open it up to allow anyone with the unique ID you create (or use the assigned ID) to print to it OR provide a list of e-mail addresses that can print to it.

The ePrint is a superb feature and something that will get used a lot.

Ink for inkjet printers is expensive no matter what, however the ink that comes with the printer is good for up to 420 sheets and you can by XL cartridges from HP (or a reseller) that allows one ink cartridge around 1,000 pages.

Yes in a small office, or home office ink costs can add up – but at the current price for the printer $129.99 – it’s ideal for home use where you may go through 1,000 pages every 4-6 months.

What’s in the box?

Everything you need to get you started:

The only thing I wasn’t overly happy with is that Windows VISTA did not find the drivers, so I had to use the CD — however for two of my other printers (an HP PhotoSmart 7150 and Brother MFC 420CN) VISTA had the drivers.  Not a big deal, but just thought I would mention it.

The printer is blindingly fast.  We print most things in draft mode and in all honesty, draft is perfectly fine for 99% of what we do.  The text is crisp, and clear though not as dark as it would be in normal mode.

ECO Hilights

HP claims that this printer is up to 40% more energy efficient that color lasers, as well the full-duplex feature means that you potentially use up to 50% less paper (OR MORE – you can print 1-4 pages per sheet, per side) and faxes can be stored electronically and viewed the same — so no printing out faxes unless you really need to.

The printer is also an Energy Star qualified product.  It goes into sleep mode, and wakes up quickly as soon as you send something to it.  Some of the complaints on Amazon is that the printer doesn’t wake up – I’ve yet to experience that.  Having been in sleep mode for over 4 hours, I sent it a print job and the printer promptly woke up and printed the document.

AirPrint

I didn’t even talk about AirPrint, because with ePrint it doesn’t really matter.  I also discovered that you have to buy apps that will support AirPrint, it’s not part of iOS for iPhone, iPad of iPod touch.

For Android you also have to buy an app.  Here are a few, note that I’ve not purchased any as ePrint works perfectly fine for me:

 

1. PRINT by EuroSmartz Ltd at http://mobile.eurosmartz.com/products/print.html, apparently they also develop a version for iOS devices as well.
2. HP ePrint Home & Biz
3. HP ePrint Service

I haven’t tried any of these, however did download HP ePrint Home & Biz and will report on that at a later date.

If you are looking for an awesome printer and a fantastic price, then the HP OfficeJet 6500A Plus is the printer for you.

Run Your Own Internet Dating Site

Internet dating is still BIG BUSINESS.  There are several high quality dating websites that offer YOU the opportunity to run YOUR VERY OWN internet dating website.

White label internet dating websites give you the opportunity to build your own business that provides recurring income – very little for you to do other than collect the cash!

Interested in a niche segment of the population that is E-X-P-L-O-D-I-N-G?  Consider the domain THESINGLEBOOMER.COM – nothing developed yet, just an awesome domain catering to … the single boomer.

Some good resources below to help you decide if getting into the dating business is for you:

• http://www.perfectmatch.com/onlinedating/over50/singles-over-50-dating-facts.asp
• http://www.babyboomer-magazine.com/news/165/ARTICLE/1437/2011-09-19.html

Interested?  E-mail me, my contact information can be found on the About Me page.

Need Unlimited Cloud Storage For Free

Wanted – CLOUD STORAGE, willing to pay $0.00

Yup.  I know I’m dreaming, there will always be a cost associated with cloud storage.  Many services out there will give you between 1gb and 5gb free.  Google will give you 25gb with Google Apps for free but come on, the days of measuring storage in the GB are done.

I was speaking with someone the other day and the topic came around to storage, and media.  He told me that he has 12tb (yes TERABYTES) of documentaries stored on a home server all connected to every TV in his house.  Many friends that I have are doing the same, perhaps not on as grand a scale, but have successfully networked their home so that they can pull TV shows, movies and music from anywhere in their house and in some cases when they are outside of their house as well.

For power users in the home measuring storage in TB is the new normal.  But what about for devices such as iPad, iPhone, Android phones and tablets, or even Windows powered phones and tablets?

iOS devices don’t allow for any additional memory other than what you purchase — and trust me 16gb is not enough (I’ve since learned with respect to my iPad).  For Android and Windows powered devices you have more options in way of micro SD cards – however the largest I’ve seen is 32gb and for the prolific picture or movie taker (on your portable device) this is still not enough.

What is the solution?  Cloud storage.

Who is out there, what will you get and what will it cost for more?  I did a bit of research to see what’s being offered and at what cost.

I found several companies offering the type of service that I wanted: Apple, Amazon, Dropbox, SugarSync, ZumoDrive, MemoPal, and Box.

All offered between 1gb and 5gb of free storage and then plans if you needed more. Companies like Apple and Amazon will allow you to store products purchased from their services without any limit, so you could have several hunderd GB of music stored on Apple or Amazon and it won’t cut into your free space.

Most offered an iOS app or Android front-end. There were some that also offered Windows and BB applications as well, but I wasn’t interested in those.

I’ve not looked at any other platforms other than mobile, as the intention is to look at mobile solutions I’ve also not considered pure storage type of services (for backup purposes only) as my needs are primarily to be able to store photos and HD video to an online service that I can access through an Android or iOS app over several devices.

While all these services did offer something for free, I really wanted TRUE unlimited space and well, there isn’t anything out there — at least nothing I was able to find. So that’s when I started looking at GPL solutions that I could implement onto one of my own domains. The one I found most promoted and talked about was something called ownCloud.

Some of the information that follows is taken directly from ownCloud.org, I’ve added my own emphasis in certain places to stress things that were important to me:

ownCloud started with a keynote by Frank Karlitschek at Camp KDE’10 where he talked about the need of a self-controlled free and open source cloud. It is part of KDE’s, a project connecting you with your peers in the community. The Social Desktop aims to bring the power of online communities and group collaboration to desktop applications. What’s more, the Social Desktop integrates sharing and exchanging knowledge into your apps.

They don’t currently have a version of the client for Android, but one is in the works – you can find a beta version at http://gitorious.org/owncloud/android. However there is a WebDAV client available for Android, iOS and BB available at http://seanashton.net/webdav/.

I have only started to work with ownCloud and hope to get some time to install it in the next few weeks on one of my domains. Once I’ve had a chance to install it, use it on my iOS and Android devices I will provide an update.

Setting up ownCloud will require some technical skills, it’s not as easy as installing WordPress - however if you’re inclined to try it yourself you can learn more about ownCloud by visiting their site at http://www.ownCloud.org.  To learn more about what ownCloud can to today visit http://owncloudtest.blogspot.com/2011/06/what-you-can-do-with-owncoud-today.html.  Development is ongoing, here is the latest post of recent enhancements and additions to the application http://owncloudtest.blogspot.com/2011/08/new-in-owncloud-overview.html.

A whole bunch of goodness has been added to ownCloud – check the blog post http://owncloudtest.blogspot.com/2011/08/new-in-owncloud-overview.html for more details:

• Contact syncing
• Tomahwak media player
• Bookmarks
• Sharing
• Interface improvements

I’m really looking forward to installing ownCloud and working with it on my Andriod and iOS devices.

If you’ve installed ownCloud and are working with it, I’d love to hear from you – what challenges did you have when setting this up?  Is it meeting your expectations?  What should someone be aware of when installing ownCloud?

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