Home Office success with HP 6180 All in one device

There are not many of us who have home offices that are so spacious that we can afford to have all the devices that we need to keep up with today's technology. In transitioning to smaller home office at the coast, I made a number of decisions. One of them was to get rid of my bias against AIO devices or all in one machines. The biggest problem was finding someone who knew anything about the machines. As I wrote in the post "Attack of the all in one machines & customer service," the big box stores have decided that this will be the technology gift of the year since they are unlikely to be able to sell you another computer until Vista ships. We finally found someone in the Morehead City Staples who could actually demonstrate the product.

The product is impressive with Wireless and wired ethernet networking, scanning, faxing both sending and receiving, and finally color printing with both standard size paper and a special 4X6 photo tray.

Even more impressive as I wrote in "HP AIO Photosmart C6180 and Mac OSX," I managed to get it going on the Mac without too many problems. More importantly for most people, as detailed in "The not so reluctant home system engineer," I also was able to get all the features working under Windows XP SP2. Finally I did manage to get basic USB printing and photo printing going in Ubuntu Linux. The post on that is "Some Linux redemption with the HP C6180."

There are not many products that work well with both Mac and Windows platforms, the HP Photosmart C6180 seems to be one that does. I will be reporting on the reliability of the machine and its appetite for printing cartridges after I have had the machine for a while.

Right now I am very pleased with the HP C6180 and with the Staples Store where I purchased it in Morehead City, NC. I have also visited the Staples in Wilmington, NC. They have an amazing selection of computer and ink papers.