An all-round good performer impaired by the same unrefined OCR package found on the PSC 1210.

HP's Officejet 7130 is a good office multifunction device (MFD) because it doesn't come to terms with being just average. Targeted for the office environment, the unit has been optimised for speed and productivity.

The AU$999 Officejet 7130 has a rather large footprint that's typical of most office-oriented units. The curved corners as well as the two-tone grey finish that the device possesses work well to keep the machine looking sleek and professional. On the top of the scanner resides the automatic document feeder (ADF) which also doubles as the scanner cover. One caveat: Only two small tabs support the feeder tray found on the 7130. Hence, if the scanner cover is let down too hard (a rather common occurrence in a busy office) the tray may break, rendering the ADF virtually useless.

For such a well-featured MFD, the sub-AU$1,000 price tag does contribute to some tradeoffs. For instance, the flash memory readers gracing the front of the unit can only read from but not write to the flash memory cards--severely reducing the printer's flexibility. The other compromise appears in the form of HP's Photo Resolution Enhancement Technology (PhotoREt). The 7130 comes with the older PhotoREt 3 variant.

Setting up the 7130 proved very elementary. There're two handy quickstart posters (Mac and Windows) detailing each step clearly with instructions and diagrams. The printer supports Windows 98 and up; and Macintosh OS 9 or later. Most users will also be happy to know that HP has bundled a USB cable with the printer.

Due to the larger footprint, the interior is rather roomy and installation of ink cartridges should not pose a problem to most. Like the PSC 1210, calibration is done through the scanner unit. The problem, however, lies in the 8 minutes required for the calibration sheet to be printed. This was the most time-consuming task for installation.

Upon executing the bundled CD, the installation program assumes control and installs all the necessary software and drivers. The control program (HP Director), while comprehensive, is rather heavy on resources. A quick check showed that it takes up about 33MB to 34MB of memory usage. With the push-button options in the control application, you can easily select a range of scan, copy, fax, as well as print options.

The 7130 comes with the same OCR (Optical Character Recognition) package found on the lower-end PSC 1210. As mentioned before, this program (Readiris 7.5) cannot handle heavily formatted columns as well as OmniPage. In fact, Readiris has trouble with any text that has a dark background, regardless of text colour. Admittedly, Readiris is probably the fastest OCR package we've come across and most tasks which include reading and transcribing scanned words into readable text are accomplished accurately.

In terms of print performance, the 7130 completed our 10-page test in 72 seconds or 8.3 pages per minute. This puts it ahead of our former speed champ, Canon's imageCLASS MPC600F, by a fair margin. For A4-sized photo prints, the 7130 managed an average of about 5 minutes.

As for print quality, text output was excellent, staying clean and legible down to a 2.5-point font size. Colours in photo outputs looked correct and the details were well maintained. However, the printed section was not centered on the paper--this resulted in an uneven border surrounding the picture. Sadly, the unit was also not able to produce "borderless" prints.

Additionally, due to the face-down loading mechanism of the input tray, surfaces of glossy paper tended to be scratched unless a smooth cardboard was used.

The 7130's scanner captured colour shading and didn't distort shapes. The scanned colour images remained sharp and lost only a little of their fidelity and contrast. Expectedly, monochrome scans were good.

With the ADF, copy speeds were significantly faster than most MFDs and therefore more suited for heavy usage. Together with a two-sided printing mechanism, HP has equipped the 7130 with enough functions and speed to run ably as a copier and fax replacement.

The HP Officejet 7130 is a well-featured MFD that produces good print quality and speedy performance. At a recommended price of AU$999, the 7130 doesn't come cheap. But if speed and productivity are what you're looking for, this MFD comes highly recommended.

HP OfficeJet 7130 all-in-one
Company: Hewlett-Packard
Price: AU$999
Distributor: Selected resellers
Phone: 1300 30 9955

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