EXCLUSIVES

By Scott Dewbre

It seems that printer manufacturers these days are trying to make the printer version of the Swiss army knife ­ "an all-in-one" device that prints, scans, makes copies, sends faxes, and often has a few extra features to boot. That aptly describes the PSC 2210 ($399, HP), Hewlett-Packard's latest attempt device, which combines an inkjet printer with a flatbed color scanner, a fax machine and an assortment of memory card readers. With any all-in-one device, you know you're not getting the best of everything. Jack-of-all trades, master of none, as the old saying goes. But the 2210 delivers the high quality inkjet printing that HP has built a reputation on, combined with fast and accurate scanning and optical character recognition (OCR) in one impressive package.

Printer: capable but noisy

The 2210 has so many functions it's hard to know where to begin, but because it's first and foremost a printer, that seems like the logical place to start. HP put a photo quality print engine under the 2210's hood, offering print resolutions as high as 4800 x 1200-optimized dots per inch (dpi). While print speeds are respectable, the 2210 is not going to win many races. HP claims print speeds of up to 12 pages per minute (ppm) printing in color and up to 17 ppm printing with black ink only. Naturally, those numbers assume that you're using the printer's fastest, (in other words, lowest) quality, print mode. In our testing, we could only get about 8 ppm color and 10 ppm black-and-white out of the 2210 while printing Word and PowerPoint documents in the printer's fastest mode. During testing, we couldn't help but notice the racket that the printer made. Inkjet printers are known for their whisper-quiet operation, which made the 2210's constant series of clicks, snaps and ratcheting sounds all the more surprising. While not deafening by any stretch of the imagination, the sounds were enough to be distracting.

Scanner: unmatched convenience

What sets the 2210 apart from other all-in-one devices is the way it handles scanning. The scanning engine itself is quite capable, sporting a maximum resolution of 1200 x 2400 dpi and 48-bit color capability. But what really rocks is the HP Scan mini-app that handles scanning chores. With HP Scan, you can scan and OCR a document directly into Word, AppleWorks or TextEdit. Going from paper to electronic text formatted in the word processing application of your choice just plain rocks, as far as I'm concerned. On the graphics side of scanning, HP Scan lets you create a TIFF file and open it with AppleWorks or Preview. The mini-app also has an instant email feature, which scans an image, opens a new Apple Mail or Entourage message and pastes a JPEG of the image into the message. The scan bed can handle standard 8.5" x 11" paper and the slightly larger A4 paper sizes. In a nice design touch, the scanner cover is removable, making it easier to scan those very large or awkward originals. In our testing, the accuracy of the OCR utility is fairly poor when scanning at the 2210's default setting of 300 x 300 dpi for text. At that resolution, the OCR utility had trouble distinguishing between multiple columns on a single page. When the scan resolution was increased to around 1200 x 1200 dpi, the OCR accuracy increased exponentially, and the utility had no problem deciphering a multi-column text layout. Incidentally, none of the scan functions worked when we used the drivers that came in the box. Once we downloaded 46MB worth of updated software from the HP website, all the scanning functions worked as promised. If you're getting delivery on a 2210 in the near future, our advice is to make sure you have the latest version of HP Print and Imaging Director. Our unit came with version 5.1.1, which we updated to version 5.5.6.

Single or double prints, please?

HP really wants you to think of the 2210 as a digital photo studio, which is why they've included a set of memory card readers to accommodate Compact Flash, Secure Digital, and SmartMedia cards as well as Sony Memory Sticks. While this will save you a USB port and eliminate the need for standalone card readers, HP gives you a more compelling reason to use their card readers. Are you ready for an in-home Photomat? That's right, the 2210 works just like your local one-hour photo processing store, right down to the option of ordering single or double prints from your "roll" of digital photos. Once you plug a memory card into the 2210, you can print out a full color proof sheet of your photos. To order prints, you simply mark up the proof sheet and run it through the scanner. The 2210 reads your order and prints your photos directly from the memory card. At first blush, the notion of getting prints by coloring in circles on a proof sheet seems pretty goofy.

Bottom line

The 2210 is a high quality USB printer and scanner that packs a desktop full of functionality into an 18" x 14" package and is well worth the $399 estimated price. Its OCR and other scanning functions make the 2210 a perfect researcher's tool, and the small cabinet size makes it ideal or the home office, dorm room or anyplace else where space is at a premium.

Item: PSC 2210 Manufacturer: HP Price: $399 MSRP www.products.hp-at home.com/products/mac_compatible.php Pros: Lots of value for the money; very good OCR capabilities > Cons: Printer noise can be distracting; scan functions may not work with original drivers