Before I start, I'll mention that I don't use Windows at all. I use a completely free operating system called Ubuntu Linux on all my computers. This means that sometimes - not often - things don't work, or are tricky to make working. Today I was pleasantly surprised that this wasn't the case.
I urgently needed a new printer/scanner/copier/fax thingy. After browsing the various websites I found a list of HP devices that fit my needs. I googled the first one and the name of the operating system I use, and found a forum posting where someone said "If you have the latest version of the driver it should all just work."
Once I got the 6310 home and unpacked it - which took about 5 mins to rip off the tape, insert the cartridges and some paper, and attach the paper trays. There is an LCD panel with a simple setup menu which took no time to run through.
I dug out a USB cable (not supplied) and plugged the printer into my laptop. Within about 30 seconds and with zero interaction on my part a dialog box popped up to tell me the HP 6310 was installed and available for printing. Then a second dialog quickly followed to say the 6310 was available for fax printing.
Before printing, I actually wanted to do some scanning, so with some trepidation I fired up the image scanning program "XSane" (which was already installed) and it found the scanner in the 6310. I placed 15 pages in the hopper on the top, chose "multiscan" in xsane, created a project (one click of the mouse), nudged the page count up to 15 and hit the big scan button. A few minutes later I had 15 images which xsane duly spat out as one big (1.3MB) PDF file.
I have _never_ been up and running with a printer, scanner or computer-connected fax machine on _any_ platform this quickly. Massive props to HP for making data and drivers available, and of course to all the developers in the free software community who got all the right bits talking to eachother.
I would highly recommend this device to anyone looking for an all-in-one solution on a budget. Of course, I'd also recommend you run Ubuntu Linux instead of Windows too, but one step at a time .
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