By Rieva Lesonsky
I am not the most patient person. My years living in a more laid-back California haven’t erased my New York upbringing. I hate waiting.
Unfortunately waiting is what I did all too often when I had to print. It seemed to take forever for my inkjet to spit out even one page. A few weeks ago I had to print a 22-page speech and it took forever.
I was so frustrated I started shopping around, looking for a laser printer. But color lasers were pricey and I was clueless about what to look for.
HP sent me an Officejet Pro X to review and it’s unlike any inkjet printer I’ve ever encountered. I was out of town when the printer arrived, so I got the scoop from HP’s Larry Tracy.
Tracy says the machine, designed for small businesses with about five to 15 users, prints up to 70 pages per minute. 70! Tracy says, “It’s the world’s fastest desktop printer.”
And the paper tray holds 500 sheets (there’s an optional tray that can hold 500 more). This feature really appealed to me. My printer resides in my office. But I often prefer to work on the couch in my living room. So all-too-often I would print, wait and then go into my office to find I ran out of paper in the middle of the print job. And then I’d have to wait some more after I reloaded paper into the printer.
With the Officejet Pro X, my waiting days are over, giving me more time to get other things done.
And the speed of the printer is hardly the only good attribute. All that power and the cost of printing per page is up to 50 percent less than printing via a laser printer. And the ink comes in super-large cartridges. The color ink should last through 6,000 pages printed, and the black/monochrome is designed to give you 9,000 printed pages. The printer uses one-fifth to one-tenth the power of a laser printer (good for your utility bills) and only yields one-tenth the waste of a laser.
What that means to me is less interruptions. I don’t have to drop everything to go to the store (or order online) to buy ink.
I was worried about setting the printer up when we took it out of the box. But it was a cinch to set up. It literally took longer to remove the packing tape, than to set it up and connect it to my wireless router and my desktop and laptop computers. I couldn’t believe it was that easy.
The concept of the printer was developed from printing presses designed for large enterprises. HP scaled it down—the printer fits on the same shelf my old inkjet did—yet it delivers so much more.
The printer is designed with an opening, which can be used as a shelf to hold a stapler or some envelopes. The thumb drive (yes, you can print directly to a thumb drive) is in the front. Sounds simple, but I’ve owned some printers in the past that put slots in hard-to-reach places.
The Officejet X copies and scans as well, another added convenience.
So far I’ve fallen a little in love with the Officejet Pro X. And I’ve only just begun to print.
I’ll tell you more after I’ve used it for a bit.
Rieva Lesonsky is CEO of GrowBiz Media, a media and custom content company focusing on small business and entrepreneurship. Email Rieva at rieva@smallbizdaily.com, follow her on Google+ and Twitter.com/Rieva.
