Customer Reviews

Presto A10 Printing Mailbox for Presto Service

5 star:		(84)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

My elderly mom has memory problems and can't check her email by herself, or at least she couldn't until we got her the HP Printing Mailbox. Now ALL she has to do is retrieve the printed email. It really couldn't be easier. Our family and friends send Mom pictures, interesting articles, puzzles, and family emails. Presto provides an additional selection of newsletters. Attach a gif, jpg, or bmp to your email and it will print it out. Add a command to the subject line and your picture will be inserted in a calendar or any of the other selections of holiday, special event, and other colorful formats.

Think of this Mailbox as a printer with a modem in it. The only cost to you is purchasing the HP Printing Mailbox, and paying the $[...] monthly fee for the Presto service (or $[...] for a year). After that your only expenses are plain white paper and an occasional inkjet cartridge.

[...] The website is well done and user-friendly. You choose the email address and set us a "white list" of email addresses that are allowed to send email to the Presto account. That eliminates spam and phishing emails. There isn't any way to reply to emails using the Printing Mailbox, but the Presto folks print out the senders phone number on the emails. You aren't charged for the Presto service until the Printing Mailbox calls in for the first time.

Setup of the actual mailbox was easy too. Instructions are clearly written. Plug in the phone line and power cord, install the inkjet cartridge, put some paper in, wait a few minutes and you start receiving emails.

The Presto website tells me if the printer runs out of paper, and it tells me how much ink it has left. The only thing I would change if I could is to have a paper tray that holds 500 sheets of paper instead of just 50.

The HP Printing Mailbox is one of the best uses of technology I've ever seen. If you have an elderly parent you'd like to email, or perhaps someone who is living alone and may be lonely, this is a great way to brighten their world and to make them feel like they're participating in current technology.

Rosa, our Grandmother, is an 83 year old that does not even want to see a computer, much less touch one. The TV remote is pretty much her limit.

Since half of us live on the East Coast away from her, we purchased the HP Printing Mailbox for her. At first, there was suspicion that this was "one of them new fangled computer things" that she wanted no part of.

That feeling lasted about one day. She called us after her first batch of printed Email and told us how thrilled she was to get all that "Email." Every time we talk to her on the phone she tells us how much she appreciates her new "Email" link to the family. She even uses the term "Email" now in her conversations.

Things we like:

1. Low price for printer and service vs value provided
2. Very simple for Rosa to use. Just loads paper and occasional cartridge
3. Link to G'Kids who don't know how to write an old fashioned letter
4. Ability so share pictures with her
5. Daily automatic calls to pick up Email while Rosa sleeps
6. Pure Email, no spam. Only people I designate can send Emails to her
7. Gives Rosa something positive to look forward to when she awakens
8. Hearing over and over how much she loves her "Email Machine."

Things we don't like:

1. Frankly, I can't find anything. The HP Printing Mailbox has functioned flawlessly. Sure, the pictures are not photo paper quality, but, she has pictures to look at and at 83 that is good enough. It also keeps the supply cost very low.

Suggestions:

With all the new found messages and pictures, Rosa needed a way to organize them rather than a pile of paper. So we gave her a 4 inch binder and an electric three hole punch so that she could easily keep everything in chronological order and organized.

Highly recommend this product and the Presto Service. Rather than giving your G'ma that has everything another knick knack to further clutter her home, give her this gift of love. Good for G'Pas too, of course.

In my opinion, the best gift you can give an oldster that is often lonely and feels out of the loop with technology that has left her behind.

Oh, I almost forgot - how will she answer the Emails? The old fashioned way when she talks to you on the phone. She always comments on the Emails when we call her. The important thing is she be in the loop, not so much that she respond to Emails. All of us have too much Email already anyway.

Jim Alfaro

When considering this product, focus on who will be using it, how often and why. It is perfect for many grandparents. We gave one to a grandparent and one to an aunt. Both quickly became addicted!

In our case, our relatives:
1. Did not have space for a laptop or regular computer. Besides, space or not, they weren't interested in browsing the net. They just wanted to be "in the loop" and be connected to friends and family across the country.

2.Suddenly, they were receiving jokes, emails and photos. They were delighted. We could find something on the internet and send it to them, after a bit of editing and tinkering with it, if desired.

3, Due to memory issues (with our relatives, not the Presto), anything more complicated would have been trouble.

4. If MOST of your time is spent answering emails, why would you need anything more? If you like to share photos, this could do that as well.

BUT DO CONSIDER THESE FACTS:

1. There is a monthly charge - if you pay that long enough, you'll have spent enough to buy a computer (but it'll take awhile to reach that point).

2. This is no substitute for a computer. It is a good way to get information, photos and letters to people quickly. I think of it as a mini mailbox, instant delivery.

My grandparents and I were thrilled with the prospect of their receiving email messages and pictures without a computer. The thrill was short lived when the HP printer quit working, after transmitting one message. We had techs from the cable company and electronics store come take a look, and it was discovered that the HP Presto Printer will not work with common digital cable phone lines. When I called Presto they confirmed that the machine will not, in fact, work with a digital phone line. This REALLY should be stated in the product's description. Disappointing.

A great idea well implemented! Now my Grandmother is 'connected to the net', everyone in the family sends her email and she loves it! I goofed by signing her up for several of the Presto newsletters (recipes, word games etc.) right off the bat. She wasn't interested in them (not to say others won't be) and they ate up 1/4 cartridge of ink in about a day. Otherwise I can't sing enough praise for this thing. Everyone in the family loves it. HIGHLY recommend!

My 77 yr. old mother refuses to use a computer, but she loves her HP Printing Mailbox that I gave her for Christmas. Even though we talk by phone several times a week, she enjoys receiving messages and pictures almost daily from me and my siblings. I set up her Presto account online, and she installed the machine at home all by herself. She said that loading the cartridge and the paper was simple. Maybe by next Christmas I can get her to move up to a computer.

We tried everything to bring my parents into the 21st century. We bought them a computer and set it up where they only had to click on the e-mail icon. But, eventually the computer needed to be restarted or would shut down itself and they were afraid to touch anything on it. They were very intimidated by it.

This is the perfect solution. They LOVE it. It works amazingly well. There are no buttons to push. You can monitor the paper and ink level on the web. We can change the ink cartridge for them but they can handle refilling the paper. There is no spam and they love to hear the gentle chime letting them know they have mail. The photos print surprisingly nicely, but we invested in high quality paper for them. The printer does not take photo paper.

There are only two downsides that I've found so far. One is that the email's cannot be reprinted, although to be honest, they haven't yet had the need for that so I guess it's a non-issue at this point.

The other is that when it tries to dial out and someone is on the phone you can hear the button tones during your conversation and then an error message comes through via email for the connection to be checked. I haven't looked into this issue so there may be a way to fix this. If so, I will come back and update this review and change it to 5 stars. It really is an awesome product and HP has definitely found a niche.

This is an excellent niche product. We bought it for my folks who are in assisted living to communicate with them, send them photos, remind them about appointments, when we'd be there, etc. Each time we go there I find a pile of messages from us and other family members. The monitoring of ink and paper is very good and the quality of print of the photos is quite good. Only other requirement I'd like to see them add is the capability to know when your note was printed to assure me it has been delivered, or a queue to show the administrator what volume and sources of notes have arrived over the recent period of time. Now if we could just get them to remember what they've read...

We bought this product for my grandmother who lives in an assisted living facility. It works perfectly. It worked so well, I recommended it to my friend whose dad lives in an assisted living, also. It ended up having to be returned because the one thing that Presto did not advertise is that it does not function with a number that needs a 9 first to dial out. No matter what we tried, the tech support people could not make it work. It is a shame because it really works so well for my own grandmother.

This is the best present I have ever given my mother. She is 84, has never touched a computer and has no interest in learning and had heard of email but really didn't know what it was. She says that getting her Presto mail is like someone coming to her house for a visit. The pictures we send are clear and the newsletters and crosswork/jumble puzzles available from presto means she gets mail even when we kids and grandchildren haven't sent her anything. When she wanst to respond to everyone on her list, she mails (via US Post Office) a letter to me and I scan and post it for her to everyone on her list. She's the ideal customer.