Digital Trends

HP OfficeJet 7410 July 5th, 2006 | by Brandon King

Faxing

Faxing is a relatively old technology, so it is no surprise that there were no issues with this function. We used our VoIP phone line, through Vonage, to send several multi-page faxes without major incidents. In one case, we did find that the receiver's machine could not negotiate the correct speed, and we had to manually change the transmission speed down one notch. This option is easily accessible under the menu options on the unit. Documents can be faxed directly from a PC by choosing the 7410 fax printer at the print dialogue. This brings up the recipient application, which can store contact info and set up cover sheets. We were disappointed that the application does not access Outlook or other contact management programs. Note that in order to use the fax function, you do need to have a phone line going to the 7410. Even though the unit can communicate wirelessly with a computer, there will still need to be power and phone cables close by.

Copying

Copying was straightforward and required almost no explanation. All options can be set using the built-in controls and LCD screen. These options include paper size, source tray, collate, reduce/enlarge, resolution, single/double sided, color intensity, and lighter/darker.

For scanning, faxing, and copying, placing documents in the sheet feeder sets the 7410 to use the feeder over the glass top. Both faxing and copying have separate hard buttons for color and monochrome input.

Reliability

Aside from issues we encountered with scanning, the 7410 has been a significantly better experience than the old 7100 AiO. We have had to pull the plug to power down the 7410 three times over the last four months due to a mysterious lockup, but each time we were back up and running in 30 seconds. The installed applications include an automatic update checking utility, which is comforting, since we saw only one update to the critically flawed 7100. Over the past four months, we've noticed four updates to the installed software. Hopefully this signals a change in support away from the “fire and forget” mentality of launching a product with poor support for advertised functions, only to replace it with a new model and no future software updates.