HP OfficeJet G85 All-in-One

by HP

Product Details

Product Manual [5.87mb PDF]

• Product Dimensions: 18.2 x 17.4 x 19.9 inches ; 32.4 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 40 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00004SPW7
• Item model number: G85
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (47 customer reviews)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes
• Date first available at Amazon.com: November 15, 2001

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

The Hewlett-Packard OfficeJet G85 All-in-One can save you time, space, and money in your home or office. It combines a printer, scanner, fax, and copier into one reliable, networkable product.

Designed with built-in multitasking technology supported by separate paper paths, the OfficeJet G85 allows printing while you are scanning images or sending faxes. You can also make copies while sending print jobs or scan while copying documents. Additionally, the copier can work as a stand-alone unit to produce quality copies in color and black ink with 600 x 600 dpi at copy speeds up to 12 copies per minute in black and 9 cpm in color with automatic collation. Efficient multiple copies can be selected from 1 to 99 copies. The reduction and enlargement options range from 25 to 400 percent.

All the best qualities of the G85's copier functions translate to the scanning and printing features as well. The flatbed scanner features resolution of 600 x 3,600 dpi (up to 9,600 dpi enhanced) with 26-bit color and 8-bit gray scale (256 levels of gray for improved contrast) and includes optical character recognition (OCR) for easy text editing and revisions. The printer produces pages with 600 dpi resolution in black and 2,400 x 1,200 in color, in print speeds of up to 12 ppm in black and 10 ppm in color. The unit holds 150 sheets in the input tray, handling plain paper, ink-jet papers, labels and transparencies, glossy and matte photo paper, iron-on transfers, and more.

The 14.4 Kbps fax modem receives messages at up to 10 ppm, sending at 6 seconds per page. The fax feature holds up to 125 speed dials and 125 pages in memory, and the automatic document feeder with 30-page capacity further frees you for other projects. Plus, you can fax directly from your PC. E-mail images can be sent directly with one-touch operation. USB and parallel port connections, color ink cartridges, CD-ROM installation software, a user guide, and bidirectional IEEE 1284 cable are included. The one-year limited warranty covers parts and labor. --Barbara Price

From the Manufacturer

The HP Officejet G85 combines four functions (print, scan, copy, and 14 Kbps fax) along with the convenience of a 30-page automatic document feeder. The flatbed scanner-copier lets you include pages from books and 3-D objects in your projects. The 600 x 3,600 dpi optical scan resolution (9,600 dpi enhanced) with 36-bit color makes up to 99 copies at once, with fine sharpness and rich detail. Further increase your productivity with the included 30-page automatic document feeder.

Print beautiful photos and color graphics with up to 2,400 x 1,200 dpi resolution in color (on premium photo paper). Plus, when you're in a hurry, HP's enhanced Color Layering Technology from Photoret III gives the same exceptional print quality as 2,400 x 1,200 dpi, but faster.

The G85 has USB and parallel connectivity for PC and Mac. It is network capable with Jetdirect external print servers (optional accessory).

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

161 of 163 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Can't find any flaws - I LOVE mine, May 31, 2000

By 

T. K. Schonhoff (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: HP OfficeJet G85 All-in-One (Office Product)

This wonderful machine has so many advantages over using my printer and scanner that I barely know where to start. Here's what I fell in love with in my little home office:

1) Stand-alone fax and copying. Even if the PC is completely turned off, or busy doing something else, this is a "real" copier and fax machine. It makes my office feel all grown up.

2) A document feeder that didn't feel cheap or added-on makes a big difference. This thing doesn't just do what a copier or fax is capable of doing, it does it the same way. It has a 100% intuitive, sturdy document feeder and stacker.

3) Really good print quality, and good speed. The color print is better than my Epson (which was very highly rated) and quite fast. The 600 dpm black and white is almost like a laser, although no inkjet has ever truly matched a laser yet.

4) It's got all the serious features, like a decent-sized paper tray, that my printer never had. Unlike the scanner/printer solution I'd been using, I can copy and fax without storing files on the PC. And when I do scan, the software is smart enough to do things like re-orient the document a little when it's not scanned squarely. Cool!

5) The setup was trivially easy on my 3-year-old PC (which, admittedly, is running Windows 98).

6) Even though it LOOKS big, it's really no bigger than my printer was - just taller. Frankly it's got a certain "real office" cachet that's very appealing.

7) Obvious, well-labeled controls that never required me to read a manual.

8) Smart features abound. I noticed that as a copier, it starts printing the portion of the page that it has scanned already even before it finishes scanning the entire page. This makes the output (or faxing?) faster - very sensible.

For me (and my wife) this was the one multi-function gizmo worth waiting for. For those of us who used scanners and printers separately for years, we learned the hard way that they just weren't very good at being fax machines and copiers. Having one device that can do ALL those things and still be a great home printer is just wonderful.

One quibble, though - the scanner top is not legal sized. The copier can copy legal documents and accept them through the document feeder, but you can't scan bigger than A4 paper.

105 of 107 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fab overall, but some users might have specific problems, December 29, 2000

By 

tropic_of_criticism - See all my reviews

This review is from: HP OfficeJet G85 All-in-One (Office Product)

For what this machine does, and the market it serves, there's no better equipment out there. There are many office situations where having a separate scanner, printer, and FAX is simply impossible. For reasons of sheer space allocation alone, you need to compress all three into a single unit. If you're in such a need, it's doubtful you'll find a better overall solution than the G85.

There's a lot that's great about this machine. I love the front panel button array, and the vast extent to which the device can be used without referencing the computer. The computer doesn't even have to be on for you to get faxes. The printer is, as you'd expect from HP, entirely top-notch. It's very cool, too, that you can choose to fax and copy in either black and white or color.

Still, it falls short in a number of mostly minor, but hugely frustrating, ways.

First, I personally think it's ridiculous that it only scans letter-sized paper. No other combination product I've seen does any better, of course, but clearly an office needs to be able to scan legal sized paper.

Second, this printer doesn't support DOS applications. In fact, no modern "combination" product does. And that makes sense, I guess. DOS is a non Y2K compliant operating system, so why bother maintaining it? Well, you bother, it seems to me, if there are still businesses out there who could possibly be running critical DOS-based software where the Y2K problem has been overcome, or where it was never relevant in the first place. And there are a lot of programs like that, really--especially for smaller businesses.

More frustrating than the fact that it didn't support DOS was DISCOVERING that it didn't support DOS. I would have preferred some disclaimer in the manual in large type saying, "Hey, don't try to hook this thing up to a DOS program. But if you really, really, really have to, here are some ideas." As it was, I had to find, buried on page three of the "read me" file, that it didn't print from DOS, and HP wasn't gonna try. That cheerful note sent me to the web, where I discovered one of the great things about owning an HP: their extensive self-help support site. And, fortunately, even though they again say that they don't officially support it, HP does give an idea of how it might be possible to juryrig the G85 to accept printing from DOS. But you really have to search their website for it. And even then it might not work.

Third, it requires more than just a few drivers to work. Like many advanced HP products, the G85 takes a big chunk of system resources because it needs both drivers behind-the-scenes, and software in front. The G85 pops into your System Tray from the first instant you use it, and it doesn't leave just because you go on to other things. You can turn it off, if you remember to. But if you don't, it will be sitting there, draining some amount of system resources the whole time. If you like to have lots of windows and programs open simultaneously, expect that this device will make you need to reboot slightly more often. Just because it needs to load in that software, it will also add some time to boot-up. Again, though, it's not like other combination products by other manufacturers have a better solution.

Finally, other reviewers are correct when they report basic problems with scanned images. It has indeed taken several revisions of software for HP to get it more or less right. Even so, it's still very clearly the weakest part of the product. To be sure, with enough fiddling with graphics software, you can compensate for the problems, but why should you have to? Given the exceptional performance of HP's other scanners (and, indeed, of the G85 while faxing and copying), it's odd that they've had such a devil of a time bringing this one up to speed.

With the possible exception of the scanning issue, none of these problems is so great that a star should be taken away from the rating. After all, it's not like there are other products out there which do a better overall job than this one. Still, be forewarned: despite the general quality of this product, there are some niggling problems which may be significant for your specific use of the product.

40 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Bugs to be worked out, August 30, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: HP OfficeJet G85 All-in-One (Office Product)

I am now on my third OfficeJet G85 in the last three months. The first had a faulty modem for faxing. The second had a scanner fault. The third is having problems with delivering a reliable power supply to the unit.

When it worked it was a fine unit and performed all the functions one would need in a home office.

HP needs to work out a few bugs in their product before I could recommend it to friends. Also, Customer support takes up to three weeks to ship a replacement unit