Well, there is a Santa, and sometimes Christmas comes in July, at least at my house. I had been waiting a few weeks for Hewlett Packard to finally release their latest line of All-In-Ones (AIO). They were three to four weeks behind according to my calculations, but that may be just because I was anxious to get my hands on it.

A couple of months back I was visiting our local computer superstore on a day that the Hewlett Packard (HP) representative was showing his wares. I was real impressed with the Model R 60, which was HP’s current all-in-one on the market at that time. I have always been a little leery of AIO’s in the past because I was concerned that if they put all of those features together on one machine quality would suffer. Well, not from what I saw with my hands-on testing. After that I was hooked! My only regret was that there were no faxing capabilities in either the R 40 or R 60 models. The HP representative then proceeded to give me the brochure on the new Model R 80 due out in July. Well, as he promised it hit the streets in July, but to my chagrin it was the end of July, not the beginning. So you see, having to wait those extra weeks was just like having to wait for Christmas. Okay, so what is it and what does it do? Here goes…

Just as the title implies it’s a color copier, printer and scanner with a built-in, stand-alone fax machine, and it’s fast! The integrated copying, printing, and scanning functions work together with no apparent compromises in quality and/or performance. There is excellent photo-quality color printing on any paper. HP uses PhotoREt II color-layering, a technology that mixes colors to create millions of other colors. The flatbed design gives you a full page of optimized scanning with a cover that adjusts upwards to allow for easy scanning of books and magazines, as well as a single sheet of paper.

The printed result is very professional looking for reports and other documents because of the 600 x 600 dpi for black text and color printing. As I said earlier, it is very fast for its inkjet design with speeds up to 11 ppm for black text and 8.5 ppm for color print-outs. It also prints on a wide range of paper types and sizes including letter, legal and A4 sizes: plain, transparency, photo, envelopes, labels, cards, and iron-on T-shirt transfers.

It has a very easy-to-use control panel with walk-up, one-step scanning at the push of a button. In fact, your computer does not have to be on for color copying or faxing. HP’s state-of-the-art technology with PrecisionScan simultaneously scans and optimizes photos, text and line art within a single document. There is built-in Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software that automatically converts scanned-in text into editable text. Scanned images are brought in at 600 x 2400 dpi optical, up to 9600 dpi enhanced with 30-bit color and 8-bit grayscale (256 levels of gray). You can insert images directly into most Windows applications and the scanning and copying can be hands-free because of a 30-page automatic document feeder.

Excellent copies can be made in color or black and white (grayscale) at the same speed as the print-outs: 11 cpm black and 8.5 cpm color. Along with the 30-page automatic document feeder for unattended copying, HP’s advanced CopySmart II includes features such as clone, poster, mirror, auto-enlarge, super zoom, and 2 on 1 copy modes, reduction and enlargements from 25%-400% and multiple copies up to 50 or 99. It also copies legal size documents in black-and-white only.

It has an easy to use plain paper fax with the quality results you’d expect from an inkjet printer. There are 12 one-touch dial-keys and 100 speed dials for quick dialing. The 30-page document feeder also works while faxing for unattended multi-page faxes. You can send and receive letter and legal size faxes and there is a 100-page memory with automatic redial.

It comes with black and color ink cartridges, a bi-directional cable (IEEE 1284C), HP OfficeJet R Series software on CD-ROM, HP PrecisionScan software, OCR software (built into the HP PrecisionScan software), Adobe PhotoDeluxe Business Edition software, and KMT Office in Color templates for use with Microsoft Office 95, Office 97 and Office 2000.

System requirements are: Windows 95, 98, or NT 4.0, Pentium 166 or higher recommended, 32 MB RAM (64 MB of RAM recommended for Windows NT 4.0), 50 MB free hard disk space for HP printing and scanning software (210 MB for all in-box software), 256-color SVGA monitor, CD-ROM drive, bi-directional parallel port dedicated to HP OfficeJet (included).

It lists for $799 but you can get it for less if you shop around, especially on the Internet, and it should be in the discount warehouse clubs by the time Christmas really comes around, but I couldn’t wait that long!

Although I purchased this for personal use in my home, it would make a perfect All-In-One utility for any small office or home office (SOHO) and I understand it networks well. I couldn’t pass this one up.

Warning: On my system anyway, Norton AntiVirus Auto-Protect had to be disabled on the Taskbar to be able to scan. HP’s tech support knew nothing of this problem. u