Color printing has traditionally been the providence of graphics companies and Fortune 500 companies because of the hefty price tag attached to the equipment. The Hewlett-Packard HP 2500CM is one of the next generation inkjet printers for Workgroups that makes it possible for small business to afford quality color printing. The HP 2500CM supports all major operating systems, network environments and protocols. It is designed for a work group of five to 10 users. It has three paper trays and can handle paper sizes up to 13 x 19 inches. The printer ships with 20MB or RAM but is expandable to 76MB. It also shipped with Adobe PostScript 3 printer drivers. Both the quality and speed of the printer is excellent. The usual rule still applies: The higher the print quality, the slower the printing. The network software seemed intuitive and robust. This is a physically large printer. It is impossible to confuse this with a personal printer that would be attached to a single computer. The footprint is comparable in size to a 30-inch television, so it needs its own table. This printer takes a while to set up and we were waist-deep in packaging by the time the first test print rolled out of the printer. There are four ink cartridges and four print heads that have to be unpacked, installed, aligned and tested prior to hooking it up to the network. The HP 2500CM also became temperamental on occasion. While processing a color print job, the printer decided that one of the print heads was faulty and flashed an error message that insisted the print head be replaced. After removing several panels to get to the print head in question, then removing and reinstalling the print head and replacing all the panels, it also rejected the next print head. This process was repeated four times (once for each print head) before everything was fine. It was really annoying: this happened four times during a three-week trial and it was time-consuming to get the printer back on line each time. The HP 2500CM isn't cheap. The recommended retail price is $1,499 US ($2100 Canadian). The price seems quite reasonable for a fully network-ready color printer of this quality, however, and it comes with a one-year on-site warranty.   
Copyright © Cyberwalker Media Inc. 2002
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Adding RAM is easy, 