# HP Officejet 8500 wireless printer



## rmcintir (Apr 24, 2009)

Well this may be a bit off topic but I do print a few railroad things which can get wet outside. I have disliked inkjet printers because their prints are not waterfast and fade in the sun. Pigment inks have improved resistance to water and colorfastness in the sun. More importantly, HP is now using pigment inks in their HP 940 and 940XL cartridges. The ink will have problems if really abused in water but I have been very impressed with how well they work. I sprayed the first page printed without any drying time in the sink. It dried with NO RUNS OR FUZZINESS! If you're printing color bill boards for signs on your RR this is an inexpensive way to do it. They also are great for labels but should still be laminated if heavily used.

If you are doing two sided copying/scanning this all-in-one printer can handle 50 pages in the feeder and I haven't had any problems yet. Also, if connect as a network printer (wireless or wired) you can select the computer to scan to or even directly email as a PDF or other attachment from the printer.

OK, the bad news, it isn't easy to set up on the network. In fact it can be downright ugly. If you set it up wireless or wired it may not retrieve a gateway address and fail the install diagnostics (which you can bypass) if using DHCP to get its network address information. In the setup, just hit next when it complains, their diags will end the install otherwise. I recommend setting it up with a static address. After a basic install I highly recommend you upgrade the PC software followed by the firmware for the printer. This improved the printer's wireless reliability quite a bit. All the instructions are on the HP website.

Lastly, for general print use I have found that draft print mode is quite good on regular paper. In fact the difference for combined text/image quality is negligible in all but prints that should have been printed on higher quality paper. As to paper, the pigment inks require a little different paper than the dye based photo paper typically used. The typical photopaper will smudge. Do a little reading on HP's website to understand photo printing with pigment inks. I don't do many photos, mostly mixed text/graphics (i.e. business) It's perfect for me. Oh did I mention its speed is really fast in draft mode and not bad in normal mode either. If it didn't have mandatory drying time for prints in normal mode it would be about as fast as draft. I print almost everything in draft as the quality is good. Hope this helps,


russ


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## Semper Vaporo (Jan 2, 2008)

Interesting.

I bought an ink jet printer but found that, because I didn't print very often, the cartridge would clog-up in a couple of months and I had to buy a new print cartridge every time I decided to print something. The cartridges were $12.50 at the time and that got way too expensive if I was printing just one page every 2 or 3 months... i.e.: $12.50 per page is mighty expensive printing! I bought a refill kit, but never was able to use it because the cartridges would clog-up long before they ran out of ink. I was never able to get a solvent to unclog them.

So, I switched to a cheap (dry ink) Laser printer to cure that problem, but the Laser cartridges are $80 for Black and $90 EACH for the 3 colors ($350 for a set)... Which is actually more expensive than what I paid for the whole thing (on sale, with both store and Mfg rebates, for $275 when I got it). (I have heard rumors that repalcement cartridges hold more ink than the ones that come with the printer... hope, hope, hope!).

I am doing a lot more printing now and I have printed about 1000 pages total and about 400 color in the last 3 years and just a couple of weeks ago the Black cartridge began to indicate I should replace it, the color ones are only about 50% used, so I think I am getting lots cheaper per page costs! (I estimate about $0.15 per page).

Anyway, my question to you (which you may not be able to answer yet if you have not had the printer very long) is, how long can you go between uses of the printer before the cartridge(s) clog-up?

Also, how much are the replacement cartridges?

If they do not clog-up, but run out of ink, do you intend to buy replacements or refill them (yourself or have some company do it for you)?


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## jgallaway81 (Jan 5, 2009)

If this is a heavy duty printer, it may have seperate print heads form the ink tanks.


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## rmcintir (Apr 24, 2009)

I've had the printer a little while now and so far so good. I don't know if it will have problems if sitting without use. The ink system has 4 separate pigment (solvent, not water) based ink cartridges. The print heads are separate and periodically refill from the cartridges. There are refillable systems available that claim to be good. I may get one at some point. If refilling ink make sure it is pigment ink. Refilling with dye ink will really screw up the print heads. 

There are two print heads, each printing two of the colors (yellow/black and magenta/cyan). The print heads have a life expectancy of ~17,000 pages (from what I have read). They are fairly expensive to replace but user reports show they frequently last longer. I have not run out of ink on the regular capacity cartridges yet. They are supposedly good for around 900 pages. 

I have set the printer to print draft quality by default. For what I print draft is quite satisfactory. The printer is unbelievably fast, it printed a full page photo (in draft mode) in about 3 seconds. It really surprised me! I printed the same photo on bright (98) 24 lb paper in normal mode and it looked very good, also very fast at around 6 seconds. I need to get the special photo paper for pigment ink to try. Can't use the dye photo paper, the pigment ink will smear.


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## markoles (Jan 2, 2008)

Russ,

I have one of these printers, too. Mine is the all in one printer, with the LCD touchscreen. I had problems with the wireless part and gave the printer a static address early on. It has been a good machine for scanning, printing, faxing and copying.


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