HP Photosmart C6280 All-in-One (Multifunction Device review)

Purchase

Hewlett-Packard is a well established brand for many electronic devices, and it is one of the leading brands of the printer manufacturers. I have used HP printers and multifunction devices for some years now and I have very positive experience with them. My main concern before purchase of any printer was that the device must work with my Amiga, whatever the price. It also shall be usable from the Amiga, so I don't have to rely on PC or Mac hardware to do simple tasks as printing, checking ink levels or usage of duplex feature. While browsing the shop I noticed the HP C6280 All-in-One Multifunction device and compared it with the other offers. Even if being more expensive it offered quite a lot more than the cheaper models. While the regular offers of similar multifunction devices cost between 100 and 200 BGN, this printer costs a whole 379 BGN, which was almost twice as more than the most expensive variants from the class of ink-jet multifunction devices. Closer look at the features revealed to me why it is more expensive. It has color, 6.1 cm LCD screen on the left, with eleven buttons under it, slots for XD, MS/DUO, CF and SD/MMC cards on the right, three trays for paper on the bottom (one for normal paper, one for photo paper and one for already printed media). The most important feature was market with Ethernet, which means that the printer have ability for network connection, meaning I don't have to buy separate expensive print server. I bought the device, along with 2.5 m USB printer cable and 2.5 m LAN cable for 386.50 BGN total (379.00 BGN for the device, 5.00 BGN for the USB cable and 2.50 BGN for the LAN cable) from the Technomarket shop, which is nearby to my place, paid it with cash and drove it home.

The printer comes in 51.50 cm high, 50 cm wide and 24 cm thick white paper box with pictures of the printer, some faces and short description of the model, functions and features. Inside the box is the printer itself put inside Styrofoam, the power adaptor along with power cord, CD put in paper bag with HP Photosmart C6200 series, C7200 series and C8100 series drivers for Windows 2000, XP, Vista and Mac OS X v10.3.9, v10.4.x, two smaller black and white instruction books - first with instructions on Bulgarian and Harvatian, second with instructions in Romanian and Slovenian and one bigger A4 sized color book with Startup guide in BG, HR, RO and SL languages, all on one, consisting of 16 pages short install guide. Inside the box is also a Registration Card of the I.R.I.S. OCR Software for HP products, three small sheets of photo paper, four front panels in the four languages - BG, HR, RO and SL and the six ink cartridges used for the printer, put together in one package. The colors of the cartridges are Black - which is bigger than the others, Yellow, Magenta, Cyan, Light Magenta and Light Cyan. These cartridges are only for start-up of the printer and are not fully filled. They are however recommended for usage after the first instalment of the printer. The following text is written on the cartridges pack: For technical reasons use cartridges shipped with printer first. Keep ink product sealed in the original packaging until ready to use.. On the back of the cartridges package is attached a small color leaflet with guide for installation of the cartridges in the printer and short caution text and HP customer's care web address. The manual is made from ordinary paper printed in black and white. It contains description of the parts of the machine, the buttons and lights. Mentioned is that the device consumes power even if it is off, when the adaptor is plugged on. So for best energy efficiency, it is better to be unplugged from the power when it will be not used, especially for longer periods. Next are the instructions for installation - software installation for Windows and LAN configuration instructions and how to obtain the network parameters. In the manual are also instructions for the ordinary usage of the device - paper feed, originals fed, functions of the pictures review, supported memory cards, scan of pictures to computer or memory card, change of ink cartridges, copying and cleaning. The manual is very nicely translated without foreign words or spelling mistakes and easy to understand from everyone. Next are instructions of problem solving and support for the device, software installation, network fix and paper jam removal. Then is the technical information of the devices. Final in the manual is the warranty. The text of the manual is 36 pages total. At the end are some blank pages and on the back cover is information about Print Cartridge Selection Numbers, where the 363 is given for all the cartridges.

Installation

After reading the manual, then the short color A4 book, I removed the device from the box, along with the print cartridges and unpacked them. I placed the front panel with the Bulgarian language, which is my preferred language, among the others I had. There was sadly no English language panel, like the other HP devices I had touch with, where they had more language options for the panels. With careful handling I removed the protection sticks and opened the printer to install the print cartridges. Opening was done by pulling the top with only small force applied on the handle above the printed paper tray. Under the top were uncovered the print cartridges nests, where the six different inks are put. They are located next to each other starting with the black cartridge, which is also the biggest, on the left, then the yellow, light cyan, cyan, light magenta and magenta cartridges. The cartridges are easy to distinguish where to put each other, following the colors or the figures placed over the cartridge nest and on the cartridge itself. Cartridges are placed after open of their nest and then closing its cover until it ticks strongly the cartridge in its place. Considering the black and white printing is what is done mostly and it is the most used ink, making the black ink cartridge bigger than the others is very smart move by HP, considering that some people use only black and white printing and do not care about color printing. For me it is also more important but also I want to be able to make color prints. Considering that the cartridges coming with the brand new printers are only half or even one third full, compared to new cartridge I wanted to buy spare cartridges. After browsing the Technomarket shop while buying the printer, I was able only to find some of the colors available of HP 363 model print cartridges, but not all the six colors. They are also not very cheap, which means that full spare cartridges stock is expensive, so I will be with the use and buy when it is over crowd. Supplies for ink printers are very expensive and buying original supplies is expensive. The printer is sold with very small margin by HP. What makes them the better profit is the sale of supplies. The inks are expensive and most of the time the shops do not recycle them. The previous color HP ink device which I used, needed change of cartridge every two to three months. When I asked only for refill and not buying brand new cartridge, the salesman at the Office1 store told me that they do not offer recycling options and to throw away the old cartridge, even if I offered to give it to him only for recycling purposes, free of charge. When I was a poor student I used to refill the printer cartridge of the daisy wheel printer only with some ink and syringe, but have not done this for years, so I am not sure if I will be able to do this again. I may try in the future, if the supplies come too expensive for me. The worst what can happen is messing all my clothes with ink, while trying to refill/recycle the HP cartridge by myself. For some cartridges it is hard to do, considering the chips which are included in the supply, testing if it is genuine or it is refilled or empty.

After seating the ink cartridges, I closed the cover and placed the device on stable, smooth, even surface and started to examine its exterior. The device is 17 cm high, 44 cm wide and 30 cm thick, but there are two projects making it thicker - one is the paper trays and another project at the end. Along with these two projects, the device is 43 cm thick. It has nice white color with grey parts, making it look cool and futuristics, contrasting with my black LG Flatron monitor. Under the top cover is the scan window with mark on the right bottom for the original documents orientation and placement, before being set for scanning. On the back are the USB port and the ethernet port, which was tapped with yellow protective cap on the adaptor port. I connected the cable from the adaptor and then the adaptor's power cable to the adaptor itself and then connected it to the electricity. Powering was done by pressing the rightmost button on the front panel. Being powered for first time ever, the printer started to calibrate itself which took around two minutes. The power button lighted green and the screen showed message to wait for calibration - Printer preparation occurring - do not interrupt, with colorful animation under the message showing cycling rainbow colors. After the calibration was finished, a blue screen with message at the center appeared: Welcome to Photosmart Express and on the bottom of the screen the message Please insert a memory card.... According to the manual, the device supports the wide range of memory cards: CompactFlash (CF) type I and II, Secure Digital (SD), Secure Digital Mini (Adaptor is required), Secure Digital High Capacity (SDHC), MultiMediaCard (MMC), MMC Plus, MMC Mobile (RS-MMC, adaptor is required), TransFlash MicroSD Card or Secure MultiMedia Card, Memory Stick, Memory Stick Pro, Memory Stick Select, Memory Stick Magic Gate, Memory Stick Duo or Duo Pro (adapter if wished) or Memory Stick Micro (Adaptor is required), xD-Picture card. As I don't have all of these types of cards, I was only able to test with my 2 GB Hama SecureDigital Card, which I bought almost two years ago. For easier finding of the proper place to put the card, the slots are marked with texts CF, SD MMC, XD and MS/DUO. After inserting the memory card in the proper slot, the green light close to the slots started blinking. Only after three seconds it was recognized, then on the screen message appeared: Now reading... Found: 132 photos, 3 videos, with the colorful rainbow effect under it. The memory card slots light lighted still, and everything appear to be okay. The screen is able to move from 0 to 90 degrees, I set it to proper for me position, so I do not have to curve my neck and started exploring the memory card and picture functions of the device.

The screen display shows really good picture on blue circle gradient background. The pictures menu have the Photosmart Express text on the top with small icon on the left with a man holding a picture in front of his face, representing exactly his face, as a symbol that the printer does really good photo realistic images. From this menu by navigating with the cursor keys can be selected several options - View, Print, Create, Share and Save. While selecting the icons, small arrows are shown, giving a small tip, where the selection can be moved from this icon. The View menu, which is at the center is the most important, from where the pictures on the Memory Card can be previewed with the Print Preview option, selected and even done some simple image processing on them from the Edit Photo option. The image processing capabilities offered by the device are: Rotate - which rotates the image by 90 degrees; Crop where only part of the image can be taken for a picture with the usage of the cursor keys and the magnifier buttons; Red Eye Removal - which gives the option to remove the red eyes effect with On and Off options. When selected On, the Red Eye Removal button on the front panel lights with green light, showing that the function is active. The Photo Fix option of the image processing menu is turned Automatic, which does some photo fixation, but can be turned off for more authenticity of the photos. The Add Frame effect offers selection of eleven different frames for adding to the picture. The Brightness menu gives the option to change the brightness of the picture. The last image processing option is the Color Effect where only Black & White, Sepia and Antique effects are available. The image processing effects are only basic, which are available even on cheap phones and my Toshibo V9+i have more effects. For basic processing the offer is enough, for more options, better use image processing software on computer anyway. The last option of the Photo Options menu is the Print All Preview, where the photos can be printed. Before printout there is a Settings option, where the Layout, Paper Type and Date Stamp (Date and Time or Date only) can be set, and if the settings are changed, they can be Set As New Defaults. Possible layouts are 10x15, 13x18, A4, 10x15 on A4, 13x18 on A4, 9x13 on A4, 20x25 on A4 and Index on A4. Eight possible layouts in total. The layout can be also selected directly, if from the main printing menu is selected the Print option.

Printing

The Create menu option from the main print menu have four suboptions: Album Pages - Select, place and print photos for your album; Panorama Prints - Select and print panoramic photos; Wallet Photos - Carry your prints everywhere; Passport Photos - Print any portrait to use in your passport. Selecting any of the options goes through several intuitive and easy to understand selections menus for the paper layout, pictures size and other. When selected the photos can be edited with the image processing capabilities as well. Selecting the Share or Save gave me error message with blinking red exclamation mark left on the panel with text on the display: Not Set Up - You need to install device software, which I was not. I wanted to see how the device prints photos, so I put one of the free sample photo papers, face down in the photo paper tray and selected random picture done with my FujiFilm FinePix F50fd digital camera. For some reason the pictures made with my Casio Exilim EX-Z1050 digital camera were not recognized and shown. Also, if the picture is recognized, but damaged, or not the whole, it is represented, but only with icon with three colors. The result of the print was more that astonishing. The printed picture looks professionally made, with no blurs or color defects, with shiny look. The Date stamp with time which I set on the settings, was printed on the bottom left of the picture, on semitransparent background, which made it very contrast, but collided with parts of the picture. The data for the shooting time was taken not from the file date stamp, but from the internal information stored in the JPEG file. Sadly parts of the image edges were cut and not printed on the picture, even if I selected the correct paper layout and size. I printed two other pictures with the same settings, because there was no small photo paper layout option, but the results were always the same - on the printed picture part of the photo edges were cut, even after I loaded the paper in the photo paper tray differently every time. This small obstacle I must take care in the future, if I want my pictures properly and nice done, or else I take the risk of receiving the blame of someone saying - "Where is my head, where are my legs?", when showing him a picture of himself. Paper detection and printout shall be done by the printer and cutting the edges, means lose of data, which must have not occur with a device from a reputable company, giving it amateurish, unprofessional impression.

After doing my first printouts, I loaded the paper tray with some sheets and browsed the other functions of the device. Pressing the Setup button on the panel brings the Setup Menu. The first selection is very interesting - Printable School Papers, which allows the user to choose print of different school templates. Available are Notebook Paper - Narrow Rule, Notebook Paper - Wide Rule, Notebook Paper - Child Rule, Graph Paper - English, Graph Paper - Metric, Task Checklist, Music Paper and Maze. I choose to print maze for curiosity and a complex maze in blue color was printed which can be used for spending some time finding the path. Printing it for second time later, gave me totally different maze in magenta color, meaning that the device uses random numbers for the maze generator, taking the seed most probably from the built-in timer or the printed pages counter. The maze is moderately hard, placed on grid with resolution 30x42. The HP invent logo is printed at the bottom of the page next to the exit of the maze. The Task Checklist prints a simple sheet consisting of sixteen rows with check boxes, on the left of the rows. On the top is the Invent logo and a line for the name. Printing these paper sheets can be useful for students or parents who purchase only A4 paper sheets, and even may come someday useful to me, only if the HP invent logo was not shown, which may give the look of the user that he or she cheated. I understand that HP loves to advertise on every possible place, but presenting their advert in my school papers will definitely suck.

Connecting to the network

After finishing with the simple print tests, I connected the device to my home network, by plugging the cable connected to the router in the ethernet port at the back, after removing the yellow tap. Only shortly after, the Ethernet logo, the same as the logo on the box, appeared on the bottom left of the welcome screen, meaning that the device is connected properly to the network. Second option from the Setup Menu is the Network Menu, which have three suboptions - View Network Settings, Restore Networks Defaults and Advanced Setup. The View Network Settings have two options - Print Network Configuration Page and Display Wired Summary. Printing the Network Configuration Page gives very detailed information named HP Network Configuration Page with General Information about Network Status, Active Connection Type, URL, Firmware Revision, Hostname, Serial Number and Admin Password. Provided are also 802.3 Wired information with Hardware Address (MAC), Link Configuration, IPv4, IP Address, Subnet Mask, Default Gateway, Configuration Source, Primary DNS Server, Secondary DNS Server, Total Packets Transmitted, Total Packets Received, mDNS - Status; Service Name and SLP Status. This detailed information is very useful for network configurations and accessing the device. For using the device over the network, vital information can be obtained from the Display Wired Summary submenu, which displays the device Hostname, IP Address and MAC, so the printout is not really necessary. Restore Network Defaults submenu of the Network Menu makes restoration of the messed settings, which can be changed with the Advanced Setup submenu. From this submenu can be changed the Link Speed to Automatic, 10-Full, 10-Half, 100-Full and 100-Half. I left it to Automatic, but the other options will be useful if the administrator wants less speed to be given to the device, or it has autoconfiguration problems. Next to the Link Speed submenu is the IP Settings Menu, where the device network presence can be configured even more. Selecting the menu brings small warning screen with the message IP Settings - Changing the IP address will remove the device from the network. Press OK to continue. Press Cancel to exit. Pressing OK brings the next screen with the IP Settings choice - Automatic and Manual. Selecting Automatic, returns to the previous screen, while pressing Manual gives the possibility to change the IP Address, Subnet Mask and Default Gateway numbers. Giving these options makes the device really configurable even if there is no DHCP option present in the LAN. Even if I did it nice with DHCP, it is still good to know that I can experiment with the device. Knowing its MAC address is useful for protection and firewall allowance of the device, even if the hardware address can be easily cloned with router.

Using the device over the Network

Having the Network Configuration properly done I went in front of my Amiga and entered its URL address in IBrowse. To my surprise a web page with detailed descriptions was shown. To me the layout did not look very good, so I opened the same address in OWB (Origyn Web Browser). Now the layout looked fine and I was provided with Device Information - Estimated Ink Levels shown with graphics bar represented with colors for each different ink, Items Needing Attention, Details about the Device and Ink Cartridge. Placing the pointer over the Ink Levels Bar Graphic gives bubble help with the name of the color, which is useful when ordering. On the top of the page are tab links for Information, Settings and Networking, from where the device can be configured much more possibilities than the given from the device itself, and faster with the help of keyboard and mouse. Under the three tabs, on the left are links for more functions. Under the Overview there are links for Device Information and Network Information, then is the Status with Usage Report and Log links. Under the Applications only one link is provided for the Webscan Application and the last are the EWS Settings (Embedded Web Server Settings), where the Language and Refresh Rate can be set. Changing the language did not work from OWB and AWeb, but worked fine from IBrowse which came little strange to me, taking into account that the OWB is the newer browser, but it still have to be polished. The setting of the Control Panel Language, under the Settings - International menu worked fine though. The advert of the printer says any browser, but this most probably means any widespread Windows and MacOS browsers. OWB even if very decent, failed with this small configuration option. AWeb is not updated for years now, so I hardly take it into account, but launched it just to see if it will open anything at all. Later I tested the device web address from a PC laptop with Windows XP on Internet Explorer, through wireless connection and it was opened and shown fine there, but it was for sure tested if it will behave good on MSIE. The Refresh Rate is valid only for the current EWS session. Also, this setting affects only pages that display status and device information, not pages that are used for configuring device or EWS settings. I found that the OWB is best for the device, IBrowse comes second and then AWeb have to be used only if no other browser is available. I was unable to test with other browsers on the Amiga, like Lynx or Voyager, because I do not have installation of them anymore.

Printing with HP Photosmart C6280 from Amiga

When I finished the browsing and testing, I have stepped into the most unsure part - using the device for printing from Amiga applications. After some years of absence, I finally had to add PRINTERS: assign to the DEVS:Printers drawer of my AmigaOS 4.1 install. I have removed this assign since 1997 when I last used a Daisy wheel printer on Amiga 500. Aiming to take the most of the hardware I had owned before and now, I used to remove unused parts, assigns and modules from the OS. The PRINTERS: assign was one of these unused assigns and its removal saved me lots of bootup time during the years, especially with my old machines, but now it had to be returned in order to be able to use device from the AmigaOS. Knowing that the HP printers are well supported on the Amiga, I was enthusiastic about its installation, unlike with the Lexmark printer purchase, 8 years ago, when I bought the printer very cheaply, but was unable to use it from my Amiga A1200 back then, neither way, because of the proprietary software drivers needed. I choose to make the HP Device available on the network for several reasons, one of them being that I wanted it to be separate from my Amiga, so it can be used from other computers as well. Also over the network I was able to access its EWS pages and look at the configuration, ink levels and status, something which needs proprietary software, which I do not have on my Amiga. Because the AmigaOS is not widely used in the Business anymore, it printing abilities are very obsolete, compared to the mainstream OSes. Nevertheless it still can be used for printing and the setting of the multifunction device was easy, with a short research over the Internet. First I downloaded the AmigaOS 4 native version of the network printing utility lpr dev, from OS4Depot.net and carefully read its manual. Then I went to the real installation part. For a start, I edited the Devs/NSDPatch.cfg file with commenting out the

DEVICE parallel.device UNIT 0 MAPTODEVICE a1parallel.device MAPTOUNIT 0 MACHINE=AMIGAONE

then added the following two lines after the commented out line:

DEVICE parallel.device UNIT 0 MAPTODEVICE lpr.device MAPTOUNIT 0 MACHINE=AmigaOne
DEVICE a1parallel.device UNIT 0 MAPTODEVICE lpr.device MAPTOUNIT 0 MACHINE=AmigaOne

Next step was creating the lpr.device configuration file with the following command from the AmigaShell:

SetEnv SAVE lpr.device HOST=192.168.2.101 RAW

Finally I went to the SYS:Prefs and clicked on the Printer icon. For Printer device unit, I choose Unit 0, on the Printer type I selected Printer driver - Generic, then Port device: I selected lpr.device. Clicking on Test did not make the printer to print a test page, but I clicked on Save nevertheless. After the configuration of the printer from AmigaOS, I opened a small text file with Multiview and then selected Print. I made the first printout since twelve years on my Amiga. The printout was announced on the device screen with Now Printing... message and the colorful animation under it. After the printout was finished, a very good looking slide show with the device capabilities and description of the features was shown on the HP C6280 screen, which was nice to see. Another simple test from the AmigaShell with the command:

9.AmigaOS41:> echo >PRT: "HP C6280 printing test..."
also worked fine, printing the test sentence and ejecting the page. Whenever the text is short or long, the device automatically does line feed until the end of the page, which omits the need to eject the pages, after printing only a single line. I have tried to print graphics too, but the Generic printer driver did not allow me to print graphics with error message: Printer Cannot Output Graphics. To solve this issue, I copied a random HP printer driver from the SYS:Storage/Printers/ drawer in my case HP_Deskjet_660C to my SYS:DEVS/Printers/ drawer and then selected this printer from the Printer preferences. Choosing Print from Multiview with opened picture, now printed the image. First it was only Black and White, which meant that I forgot to configure it properly. I opened once again the Printer preferences clicked on the Settings tab and changed the Shade from Black & White to Color. The next printout was in color, but still did not look very good. The image was very odd with big pixels, only several dots per inch (DPI) looking not nice especially on the gradients.

I opened the Printer preferences once again, this time went to the Page size & margins tab and changed the Density from 1 (the minimal - Resolution: 75 DPI x 75 DPI), to 7 (the maximal - Resolution: 300 DPI x 300 DPI), even if the printer have 4800 DPI x 4800 DPI capability. I changed the Paper type from Continuous to Single for just in case something goes wrong again. Now the printed image looked much nicer but still the gradients were seen. I tested the other printers available in the Storage, but the best which I found was the HP Deskjet 1120C driver, which allowed me Resolution of 600 DPI x 600 DPI, which was still not perfect, but at least I believed that I can print images in color. Sadly with this driver, only the top of the image was printed and then some garbage. I tried other drivers. After a long trial and error routine I found that the HP Deskjet 895C driver seems to work okay and print the whole image with the best resolution I saw - 600 DPI X 600 DPI. Other drivers printed only part of the image, then some garbage characters, or froze the printer driver (probably waiting for feedback from the printer). The made pictures looked dark at first, so I changed the Threshold in the Settings of the Printer Preferences. Changing it to 1 outputted even darker image. Changing it to 15 gave me very light picture, very closely representing the original, so I left it at this value. Finally, part of the functions of the device were usable from the Amiga, even if not with all the capabilities, provided by the complex software available on the CD bundled with the device. But I was able to see the ink levels, the statistics, to print text documents and images and even experiment with it, by sending data to the PRT: device and all this done over the network, so the device can be used from every other machine connected to my home network. If the device needs only the data to be feed, without any init sequence or string at the beginning, that means it can be used as a printer even from C64, Atari800, Apple II, Mobile Phone or Sam Coupe - all the devices which have ethernet port or WiFi ability to connect to my homeLAN. Sending data to its IP address shall be enough. With Multiview and the datatypes installed on my AmigaOS 4.1, I can print different formats, without taking the hassle of converting them to better format. Simply selecting Print from Multiview will print what is in the window. As I do not have printing or scanning software for Amiga, since I have not used complex printing or scanning devices on Amiga before, I was unable to test the device with TurboPrint for example, which have more decent printer drivers, or ScanQuix for scanning. I do not know if TurboPrint is possible to buy anymore. ScanQuix USB is available for 19.90 Euro from Vesalia, but it supports limited number of models and scanners only, not multifunction devices. To use the scan capability of the HP C6280 device, I had to take different route.

Scanning and saving the result

Second most important feature of the HP Photosmart C6280, which made me buy it, is the possibility to scan images. I have lots of old magazines and books, whose condition get worse and worse with every year passed - the paper colors from white to yellow, the covers get damaged by dust, wet and light, the used inks blur. Converting them to digital format by scanning all the data is one way of saving them for the future. There is provided web application from the EWS server for scanning called Webscan. First I tried it with OWB. The preview and scan function worked fine. The image was with very good quality, but the resulted image was unable to save with the version of OWB for Amiga I had in use - v3.6. I tried by displaying the webpage source and then saving it to file by copying the text and pasting it to CygnusEd, then saving it to file. The resulted file looked like JPEG image with the header and information, but I was not able to open it with Multiview and Directory Opus. Sadly the current version of OWB (v 3.6) have only upload feature, which was not useful to me in this case. When pressing the middle mouse button in OWB over an image, a menu opens with the options: Open Image in New Window, which works fine, Save Image As, which will be very useful, but does not work and Copy Image, which also seems to not work. I did relative testing with MSIE and I was able to save the image, after allowing the Pop-Ups, or copy it and paste it in Word or Excel. So it is possible, but only if OWB was able.

Fighting with OWB with futile result forced me to turn to the good old IBrowse 2.4 OEM-Version, which saved the day again. Even if the Preview did not work with IBrowse, the Scan was working fine. The scanned image was shown on separate pop-up window. But when trying to save it, I was again with unsuccessful result - only red lamp was shown on the left of the row of the file in the Download Manager window of IBrowse. Again unsuccessful result, but there have to be a way I said to myself. After some philosophical and programming thinking, tests, copy and paste of URLs of the scanned image, which sadly contains the time value, when the request was sent and is very unique, I found the way - it was simpler than I thought. What I did is to choose the Preferences/Settings menu of IBrowse. On the Preferences window I clicked on General then on MIME Types. For the MIME Type image/jpeg I changed the Action from Internal viewer to Save to disk and the next time when I clicked on Scan - Hurray!, I was able to save the scanned image to disk with ASL requester asking me where to save it. I had scanner on my Amiga, without the need of other computers. Happy again, I saved my first scan - the cover of Greek Pixel Magazine - Issue September 1993, which have big coverage of the Amiga. The Webscan application have four options for scanned Image Type - Color Picture which gives image in lower quality with resolution of 1656x2338 pixels for A4 size, Color Drawing - giving higher quality image in resolution of 2485x3507 pixels for A4 size, B/W Picture giving Black and White image with resolution of 1656x2338 and Text, which outputs black and white PDF file of the scanned image. The possible options for Document Size are: Letter, Executive, A4(8.27x11.69“), 10.16x15.24 cm (4x6“), 12.7x17.78 cm. (5x7“), 7.6x12.7 cm (3x5“) and 7.6x7.6 cm (3x3“). Scanning is also possible with the use only of the device and a memory card. After plug of memory card to the device slot, I press the Scan Menu button on the front panel. On the Scan Menu there are three possibilities: Scan and Reprint, which is useful for copying images, Scan to Memory Card and Scan to Computer, which gives an error message saying No Scan Options - Refer to the device documentation to troubleshoot. If no Memory Card is inserted in the device, the Scan to Memory Card menu is not possible to select, but inserting a memory card again, makes it available again, as soon as the Memory Card is read by the device. Removing the Memory Card, ghosts the menu option immediately. When the image is scanned to the Memory Card, it is saved in separate folder which was called 102HPAIO for my Memory Card, in the DCIM folder. The resulted file was the same size and quality as the one created from the Amiga with Color Drawing and A4 Document Size. When I used the device with my Memory Card, and transferring the images from the memory card to the Amiga, I noticed that automatically is created .HPIMAGE.VFS file, which is virtual file system, where cache files, thumbnails and other temporary data is saved. I did not try to mount the VFS file on my Amiga, but at the header with HEX viewer was seen MSWIN4.1, NO NAME, FAT32. At least with the Virtual File System, the memory card was not full with files, and the Multifunction device files were kept at one place. Positive of the usage of Memory Card for scanning is the automatic Document Size recognition and the exclusion of the need of computer for scanning an image. Negative is that the image can not be previewed, the resolution can not be selected and the need of memory card slot to the device it needs to be transferred after. I have a Chronos 80 in 1 Card Reader CR-561, which reads great many memory card types, but for people who have no memory card reader, this may come as an obstacle. The need to plug and unplug the memory card after scanning is also a stopper for serious scanning usage. From the computer, while one image is processed, the other can be scanned simultaneously, while on the C6280 device this is not possible. Or if an image is not scanned properly, it can be seen immediately on the computer and scanned again, which will be done with delay when using only the device for scanning. Later I found the way to take the image with OWB too, thanks to the help from AmigaWorld.net. The Copy Image function worked fine, but I did not know that the copied image is saved into the RAM:Clipboards/ drawer. Once selecting to copy the image with OWB, I can open the resulted file from the Clipboards drawer with Multiview, copy it or rename it and place it somewhere else. That means that the IBrowse is not the only option anymore. Thanks to another post I also have set the lpr.device configuration file properly and had no warning messages anymore.

Copier part of the device

The final and most unused by me function of the device is the possibility to make copy of documents and images, which is synthesis of the two functions which I have already tested before - the print and the scan capabilities. As I do not copy much, this part was the least tested be me. The menu and buttons offer the standard copier functions - Black Copy and Color Copy. In the Copy Menu are several options available. Number of Copies allows the user to select from 1 to 50 copies, Size gives the possibility to choose: Actual Size, Fit to Page and Custom, which is set in percentages. The Quality can be set to Maximum resolution, Best, Normal and Fast. The Lighter/Darker allows change of the copy brightness to lighter or darker. The Preview option can be used to see the put image on the screen and can be used for previewing the images for later scan as well. The next option is Crop, where only part of the image can be selected for copy and then previewed with the Preview option. Paper Size can be set to Automatic, A4, 10x15 cm, 13x18 cm and 20x25 cm. Paper Type can be set to Automatic, Plain Paper, Premium Inkjet, Premium Photo, Advanced Photo, Photo Paper, Everyday Matte, Everyday Photo, Transparency, Brochure Glossy and Brochure Matte. With the Margin Shift option the feature can be turned On or Off. The default for Margin Shift is Off. There is also Enhancement option, where different options are available - Text, Photo, Mixed and None. All the changes made can be Set As New Defaults from the last option of the menu. Copying is very routine task, so saving all the defaults and then forget about configuring is the best way to do, if the device is going to be used as a copier machine. Once set, you just need to load the original and press on the Black or Color copy buttons and receive the needed copy.

Other features of the device

The device have really useful help information for every menu item, which can be invoked anytime by pressing the help button on the panel. It is available in all the supported languages and is short, simple and right on the topic. I have read it in English, Russian and Bulgarian and it says exactly the same in the different languages, without lost in translation phrases or spelling mistakes. HP have put lots of effort in supporting the devices, which is a big plus for the users. The many supported languages makes it accessible for people all over the world. There are animations for basic tasks like Insert Ink Cartridges, Load Paper in Photo Tray, Load Paper in Main Tray and Load Original on Scanner. The animations are very detailed and nice to watch on the device screen. Another nice feature I found was that, if some function is sent to the device by mistake, it can always be cancelled by pressing the red Cancel button on the panel. The abortion of the job is done immediately and this saved me lots of time, paper, ink and headaches, when for example I sent a picture as text to the printer, during the tests. Or when I started to print a picture on the expensive photo paper, which I did not wanted to print. For easier access of the photo paper tray, the printed paper tray can be pulled up, freeing space for easier placement of the delicate photo paper. There is also a window on the printed paper tray, through which can be seen if photo paper is loaded in the tray, which saves the pull of the tray, just to check if paper is placed in it. The device have two magnifier buttons, which even if not used in most of the options, are really handy in the image processing menu. The color screen saves time for the preview of the images. I had experience with earlier multifunction device from HP, where the screen was only Black And White LCD and even if it had Memory card slot, the preview of the pictures was done on paper with index, from where the required printouts can be selected by numbers, which was a big waste of ink and time to choose, select and follow. Now with the nice screen, all this is in the past. Small obstacle is that the cropped parts of images in the copy menus were not shown resized - using the whole screen, or smaller than A4 images were not scaled, but shown only on part of the screen, but this is a small obstacle, which I can even forget in the future, if I am not using the device from its own menus much. The device also have duplex capability - to print pages on both sides of same sheet, but the Amiga printer driver does not support this, so if I want duplex I have to do it manually, like with earlier devices, where I feed only one page and then manually turn it over for duplex printing. If not used for a long period the device have power saving functions. The printer heads are parked. Then the screen light is turned off and after a longer period of idle, the LCD screen turns off, which saves energy and prolonges the device life.

Conclusions

At first I was not happy with the device at all and especially with the price, knowing that other similar devices cost much less. But after some days working with it, I am more happy that I gave little extra money for the extra features it offers. I can use it directly from my Amiga, so I saved once again money for purchase of PC hardware, which I would not use much for anything else. In 2009 I am still able to stay Amiga only and continue to enjoy the latest consumer electronic devices, with their full potential. I can scan all my magazines and important images, print documents, source code, images or even photos and all this without the need to purchase any extra software or hardware. I purchases only the HP Photosmart C6280 with two cables, of which only one was really necessary and I can enjoy all the modern printing and scanning, and this with the Amiga. Very good job, Hewlett-Packard.

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