Memories Made Easy With HP

Ever since digital photography really took off, I have lamented the fact that I don't have hard copies of my photos any more. Oh sure, I can still get them developed, but I rarely do. And even though I've had color printers and even photo printers at home for at least four years, most of my pictures remain locked away on my desktop.

We started out with a fancy Brother color laser printer several years ago. I had every intention of printing all my photos on it, but the color was too bright, too vivid, almost cartoon like. The cartridges ran out way too quickly for what we paid for them. Not to mention the fact that it was a major pain to have to change four separate colors all at different times. And don't even get me started on the interface between our camera and the printer.

We upgraded our camera this year from a first generation Kodak digital to a Canon Powershot that came with its own printer. We've had it for eight months now and have printed a total of three photos on it. The pictures turned out okay. The color was much better than the last printer, but the interface with our computer is problematic at best and we can't get it to work properly.

Enter the HP Photosmart A626. This little printer does some pretty nifty stuff. It's easy to install and use and the functionality is pretty damn cool.



At 3.4 pounds and less than ten inches wide, this printer does not take up much space on your desk. But what it lacks in size, it makes up for in features. The setup was simple, even for a tech moron like me. There are five steps and it took less than ten minutes to get the printer installed.

I only have a few complaints overall, and with regard to setup, you have to purchase the accessories - USB cable, paper and print cartridges - separately. Because I would want to get started printing photos right away, I'd be happy to pay $25 extra up front for an accessory package, or even better, it should just be included with the initial purchase so consumers would have everything they need in hand.

The coolest thing about the printer is the color flip-top LCD touch screen. I've never seen anything like it on any kind of printer, even the super fancy Xerox machines that corporate offices have. Through the touch screen, you can print and manipulate and even get creative with your photos without ever having to turn on your computer because the printer can interface with any kind of memory card or external hard drive. I tried it with both a flash drive and my camera's memory card. Of course if you want to print from photos on your computer or even from a CD, you have that option as well and it's just as easy to do.

The printer technology allows you to add borders and frames, crop, reduce red-eye, add captions and even write on photos directly from the touch screen. One caveat, the keyboard on the screen is set up alphabetically rather than the QWERTY style so it took me a lot longer to caption my photos, but you can do it from your computer using your regular keyboard if you prefer.

The Photo Fix, or editing capability in terms of cropping, rotating and removing red-eye are simple to use and in my opinion easier and better than using external software since you can do it all right from the printer without ever turning on your computer and the results are the same.

Installing the print software was a snap, although I was surprised by how long it took - almost 15 minutes. Once the software is installed, you can import photos from other sources like folders on your desktop, your camera or a CD fairly easily, or if you would rather keep your photos in their current location, you can also print from there. I tried it from the desktop and from my Kodak Easyshare files and it worked fine but for new photos, I think printing directly from the memory card is the way to go.

The printer can handle just about any basic editing tasks and the Get Creative features allow you to play around with frames, captions and so on to your heart's content. I love the instant gratification factor, but of course if you want to kick it old school, you can save your photos and edit them from your computer too. It's a scrapbooker's dream.

All in all the installation, set-up and use of this print technology is some of the easiest I've ever seen. I didn't have to use the handy troubleshooting guide that came with the printer at all or call for back-up from the online and phone support folks.

The HP Photosmart A626 in and of itself is a revolutionary photo printing tool, but HP has raised the bar even higher with their Photo Books.



Each HP Photo Book, purchased separate from the printers at $14.99 for 5x7 and $24.99 for 8.5x11 includes the software and all the hard components to create a really amazing photo scrapbook. The software automatically lays out the pages and it's fairly easy to use for people who don't have a design background or own Quark or other complicated design software. I put together an awesome 12 page book with captions and 30 photos in an hour.

Printers and Photo Books can be purchased online at the HP Store. HP is offering 20% off Photo Book purchases. You can also purchase online or in person at Best Buy. In fact, Best Buy is offering $30 off photo printers this week, so at $119, it's the best deal I could find. Staples is stocking the printers, but they do not currently have the Photo Books either online or in store,at least in my area.

If you're in the market for a photo printer that really delivers, is easy to use and has some pretty remarkable functionality, check out the HP A626. The price makes it a great Christmas gift as well.

To check out other HP reviews, head on over to the Parent Bloggers Network where they'll be posting this campaign for the next few week or so.