the brilliant all-in-one printer from HP (2001)

Hewlett-Packard hp psc 950 All-in one printer, scanner, copier, fax and photo-card reader. (TES December 2001) £299 Contact: www.hp.com. Reviewed by Roger Frost

Need a photo printer, flatbed scanner and fax? We’ve been through many all-in-one devices, but this one really impressed.

Take a printer, a scanner and a fax machine, put them together and be surprised how tidy things can be. You’ll find all of them in the Hewlett-Packard ‘hp psc 950’ which is just the device for a desk at home or a resource area in school. It exudes the thoughtful design that brings ease of use, good looks and a compact size.

credit: hp.com

Its crowning glory is that it turns handling digital camera photographs into the simple process it should always have been. It takes the Compact Flash, Smart Card and Sony Memory Sticks which most digital cameras use instead of film. You pull the card from the camera, place it into a slot and press a button to send the pictures up to the PC. Not only does it do this without fuss or fury, its display will also offer to print a ‘contact’ sheet of all the photos on the card. What’s more, you can mark your favourite pictures on the contact sheet like an exam paper, scan the sheet and it will print them out in the size and paper quality you ticked. When you get your pictures this fast, maybe faster than a wedding photographer, digital photography proves its worth.

The scanner here is the more useful flatbed type where you can copy, reduce or enlarge – even onto to multiple sheets. A button press scans the page to the PC, faxes it or copies it in black or colour.

The supplied software is particularly capable. You can dial fax numbers from an address book, trim the edge of a scanned image and turn a printed worksheet say, back into the text of a Word document. Tested with the grubbiest newsprint, the results were another sweet surprise.

With quality printing and friendly controls, the hp psc 950 will be an asset to anyone too busy to read a manual.

Other neat features:
Can look up fax numbers in your Outlook / Windows Address book

Can copy those fax numbers to its Speed Dial list – handy

Great for faxing from the PC; PC cover pages; fax from scanner or file

Fax log with resend feature

Intelligent photo upload – finds pictures and doesn’t upload them again

Suitable 5*

Ease 5*

Design 5*

Features 5*

Value 5*

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