HP OfficeJet 7130 All-in-One Multifunction

Setup was easy, although the steps are in an unusual order compared to other printers/peripherals that I've installed in the past - pay attention to the setup poster.

It prints beautiful photos with vivid color and crisp detail. However, the speed has been the pleasant surprise: I typically print a 4x6 at the highest resolution in about a minute and an 8x10 in under four. Plain paper printing is also very good for everyday documents.

The copier, scanner and fax functionalities all work as they should. An intuitive control panel and LCD display make every function very easy to use. The bundled software also allows control from your PC console and it's one of the nicer ones that I've seen (i.e. you can program your fax numbers from the PC rather than the printer's keypad and can even instantly import information from Outlook).

The gripes that I have are minor compared to the output that this machine produces. First, it is a very big printer - the pictures don't do it justice. Second, it jerks back and forth while printing enough to cause minor vibrations in my desk. I recommend figuring a way to put it on its own dedicated printer cart. Third, for the price, it would have been nice to have the second paper tray thrown into the deal - every now and then I waste a piece or two of photo paper on the grocery list because I forgot to swap out the paper.

To recap,

PROS
* Excellent print quality for both photos and documents
* Print speed
* Ease of use

CONS
* Bulky unit doesn't belong on most desktops
* High price doesn't include some extras that it should

The HP OfficeJet 7130 printer has way more options than one would need! I love the improved photo quality and quietness of the printer, but I did run into the issues below...

As for things folks should watch out for:

1 - The Automatic Paper Feeder (APF) wasn't assembled correctly on my unit and I've been waiting 3 months for HP to send replacement parts (4 calls to TS so far). So for now I can only manually scan ;(

2 - The memory slot reader is nice, but it seems to have problems with large SD/MMC cards (64mb & 128mb). The transfer speed slows to a crawl so I end up using a USB card reader instead.

3 - Printer cartridges ink level can be checked online, but it will keep printing a large spool file even if it should stop. I ran out of color ink and wanted to switch to printing in greyscale mode (black ink only) and it wouldn't let me. You have to have enough of both inks to start new jobs.

4 - Don't stockpile ink cartridges. HP has some kind of expiration date that the printer won't honor after their expiration date. The cartridges that came with the printer are good for slighlty more than 1 year. You can check your expiration dates on the status page. I think they do this to prevent folks from refilling or buying re-manufactured cartridges.

5 - Adobe Acrobat 6's "Scan to PDF" feature doesn't seem to work with this printer. My guess is that since both products are new they weren't tested together. I hope Adobe & HP can work together to get full Acrobat support for the 7130 in a future update from either company.

Haven't used the fax feature so I can't comment.

The unit comes with a duplexer, a part that has to be bought separately in the other HP printer/copier/scanner/faxes. It is easy to use and it reduces paper consumption. This unit has enough memory to store up to one hundred faxes, has speed dial, and a document feeder; each making it quite the capable fax machine as well as a good all around printer. The 48 bit scanner makes it a great machine to capture photographs and documents with amazing detail.

The copy feature has done nothing but improve in these machines over the last few years. The user has the ability to scale up or down the size of the copy that is being made. The copier is faster than it has ever been with clarity not unlike some high-end, "business" machines.

This machine could be used in many practical home and business applications. Real-estate, insurance, and a million other businesses could benefit by having a machine that can easily take the place of four.

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