Be forwarned however, that it is a noisey printer, on draft print it’s noisey from the paper being fed through the machine and then from the paper being ejected onto the tray, it’s done with such force that the paper will fly off the paper tray if you have not lifted the trailing edge of the output paper tray lip up, which you are supposed to do. But it’s also noisey after every document (document can be 1 page or 100 pages) is printed in that it seems to re-align the print heads and so the print basket goes moving back and forth along the print line, popping up and down here and there and just generally makes some noise while doing it.

Now, if you need a printer that is actually going to be very productive in that you’ve got an office staff that is printing all day, and prints document after document (like we do here) then this is probably not the printer for you. You see after each document it does that print head aligning thing and during this time the printer is unusable, it can’t print the next document until it’s done doing whatever it is doing with the print head moving back and forth on the print line.

This is a shame for us as when we are working, we are printing 1 and 2 page documents continuously, one after the other, I will print a document, submit the document electronically, then fill out another document and send it to the printer where it has to wait for the printer to get ready again, then print it. On and on we go on a daily basis, and the printer eventually falls behind and we have to end up corolating the printed documents with the submission informaiton page that we have to put them together instead of being able to just stack them on the output paper tray.

So while I realize that not everybody needs the printer to the extreme that we do here at the office, is why it’s still rated a 4 in my opinion, because for a home printer, this is really a great printer if you don’t mind the noise and is only made better by it’s big brother printer that has the wireless option. For the price that we paid for this offices room of printers (18 of them) at $119 each, it’s still a solid buy even if the workers do have to corolate the pages at the end of the day.

Price of Ink:

The Ink is high, for a XL cartridge of black it’s about $35.00 to $40.00 at the local big box office stores. We use to run all brother printers where the ink cartridges could be easily filled with just a hole being drilled into the cartridge, a syringe and the ink bought at local big box office supply stores for a fraction of the cost of a new cartridge. We could refill the brother cartridges hundreds of times without problems. The HP from what I’ve been reading can be filled between 2 times and 16 times before some mechanism in it signals to the printer that it’s empty even when it’s full, so this is a big cost concern when each ink is $15.00 for the regular size and the printer uses so much of it even in draft mode.

As far as setup goes, the first time I ran the setup off the included CD, the setup did fail. It took aproximately 20 minutes to get to the failure point. The program suggested that I reboot the computer and try again as a fix for this. I did as instructed and rebooted the computer when informed to do so, and when the computer came back online I re ran the setup from the included cd and it went through in about 10 minutes or so and fully installed the software with no further hitches. We don’t generally reboot this particular computer as it also runs our phone lines as well as being one of the offices main workhorses, but a reboot did allow the included software to be installed without further incident.

There is one last thing that I should mention. If you have a digital camera that uses CF memory cards (like our Nikon cameras do), then consider that this printer does NOT have a CF memory card slot. They have chosen to include MS, sd, xd etc but not CF cards for some reason which is just a shame, now we’re back to getting the images to the printer the long about way of doing it through the computer since this printer has no CF memory card slot to use.

Actually, there is one more thing that I should mention, when printing documents in draft mode it *might* cut off part of the text at the bottom of the page. When this has happened to me, I switch to the general every day printing option and it prints all of the text as it should. My only guess on this is that the printer ejects the paper so fast in draft mode that the printer can’t print the bottom portion of the document. It doesn’t happen every time, but it does happen once in a while.

If anybody knows of instructions on how to refill the OfficeJet 6500’s cartridges please comment and let me know as I’d really like to go back to saving money by refilling the ink cartridges again, instead of printing our own documents at almost the same cost as taking them to the local printmart store when we have to buy new cartridges for this 6500 each time they run dry.

Update: We’ve now found out that these printers use a whole lot more ink than we had planned on. On one particular printer (assume the rest of them are the same here in the office) we’ve found that it uses up the initial black ink cartridge in less than 300 pages. Those pages are not even a 5% coverage and have always used the draft printing mode. I see now why they sell the XL cartridges, the smaller cartridges just don’t have enough ink in them to make this printer an “office” (like OfficeJet) printer. It’s better suited for a home printer and we are thinking about returning the whole lot of them and going back to brother printers. Even with all the faults of a brother printer at least we can keep our ink prices to a reasonable level for our daily black only text only print jobs.
Rating: 4 / 5

I finally got around to using the supplied video cables tonight and learned I could hook the camera up to the hdtv. This past Sunday morning was sunny and inviting so I went into the yard and took pictures of flowers and assorted closeups mostly, in the fish pond, butterflies, even a hummingbird, using the different settings and priorities, the flash, and so forth. Tonight I watched a slide show of all the pictures on my hdtv, complete with music (it’s programmed into the camera in several different styles). The picture quality on the tv was incredibly good; several photos were extreme closeups of a butterfly on the ground and the particles of dirt below the butterfy’s wings were clearly visible on my 37″ screen.

Picture quality and features aside, this camera is easy to use for the beginner who can gradually improve their skills by using the shutter speed/aperture priorities or manual mode, or automatic, or choose one of the many scene modes depending upon the situation. The camera boots up quickly and the delay between shots is acceptable, if not blazingly fast. (There is a setting for taking several shots in quick sequence, if needed.) The flash is strong and recycles fairly quickly. the camera won’t fit in your pocket unless you’re Captain Kangaroo, but with its accessories it’ll fit into a small camera bag. I purchased the wide angle and exta zoom lenses because they came on sale, but really, you don’t need them given the range of the supplied Leica lens. The controls are fairly easy to use and intuitive; I really like the design of one convenient button to toggle directly back and forth between the lens finder and the lcd screen on the back of the camera; all digital cameras don’t feature that.

Sure, not much is perfect in life, but this camera is close enough for me.

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Rating: 5 / 5

As it seems that the problem with this item is more widespread than we originally thought, we are not able to send another replacement…”

Original 2/18/09:

The drive is a big disappointment. The first one was defective. After cloning my old hard drive, it worked for a few hours. Then the Windows became very slow and unresponsive. Windows failed to reboot, it reported bad boot sector records.

Contacted Western Digital customer support. Downloaded and ran Data Lifeguard Diagnostic per instruction. The tool reported the drive had too many bad sectors, also the write zeros was failed. Returned it to Amazon for an exchange.

Just in case my older power supply unit was the culprit, it needed a Molex to SATA adapter to work with the drive, I ordered a brand new 430W Themaltake PSU. After receiving the replacement drive, I first ran Data Lifeguard Diagnostic on it. Sure enough, it again detected the unused drive has too many bad sectors. When tried clone my drive again, it failed half way. Only one of the two partitions was copied over. I used Acronis True Image Home 2009 15 days trial version for the disk clone. Now, my trial period is about up, and I still don’t have a working drive. What a joke! Also, the price of the drive just dropped by $5 since I ordered it.

It seems these OEM drive have very poor quality control. What is going on???

Rating: 1 / 5

After everything was all set up and I started watching a couple of movies, it became apparent extremely quickly that I was going to need a remote for the Blu-Ray features. Using the controller was just overly complex to make it a real option.

When I finally grabbed a remote, there were a few things I noticed immediately. Namely, the simple fact that it was a Bluetooth device meant that there was no chance that I was going to be able to use this with any of my other devices like my TV or my surround-sound receiver. Some people don’t really care, but I hate having a thousand remotes lying around. I’d rather just have one and forget about it.

Considering that the PS3 is the only device that the remote is able to control, I fail to see why it’s covered with buttons. Outside the obvious ‘Play/ Pause/ Stop’ buttons, I don’t understand the decision to make this look so much more complex then it has to be. I would have tried to make the button layout as simple as possible. If it’s not going to be able to be used for another device, it (at least) could be easy to use. I would say that two-thirds of the remote’s face, you’ll never use.

Another reviewer mentioned it, but it bears repeating. If you touch any button on the device, it’ll automatically cue-up your system. The PS3 is a wonderful piece of equiptment and I like it a lot, but man that sucker kicks out a TON of heat. Having said that, I do try to make a deliberate effort not to keep it on longer then I have to. When I’m sitting and watching TV, however, I tend to have both my remotes next to me. I can’t even tell you the number of times I’ve accidentally leaned a little too much to one side and booted-up the system. This is complicated by the fact that there’s not just a ‘power’ button anywhere. I actually have to toss my receiver over to the PS3 device and manually shut the system off. It sounds like a small deal, but it’s REALLY annoying after you do it a few times.

I’m sure this was mentioned several times before, but I sincerely wish that the device was back-lit. I, like many others, usually watch TV in low-light. Between the (unnecessarily) complex button configuration and the simple fact that you can’t read the thing, it makes simply watching a movie more of a chore then it needs to be.

Not an outright “bad” piece and certainly a better option then the controller. It’s also better then any of the third-party devices that I was able to find. All that having been said, however, I’d still say that Sony’s remote wasn’t very well thought out either. There’s a lot of issues that the smallest amount of consideration should have been able to change.

Rating: 3 / 5

Just a couple of words of caution: this hard drive is packaged in a bare-bones package, and comes with no instructions or other information. If you have never installed an internal hard drive, you may want to get some information online about what is the best way of doing it for your compute.
Rating: 5 / 5

So my conclusions are this: Kaspersky support is the next best thing to nothing!!!! Kaspersky must be hard up for money and hopes that we will all purchase new activation keys from their website for full pop. Beware of the new world order at Kaspersky, do yourself a favor and look to someone else for security would be my advice.

Sure times are tough, but they are tough for most all of us!!!!

Rating: 2 / 5

Overall, I am pleased with the printer. The print quality, and speed are very good and the scanning couldn’t be easier. The only small complaints I have about it are 1 – it’s a bit noisy when it prints (and subsequently aligns the print after after each printing). In fact, when my wife sent something to the printer across the network from another room, my 2 year old was near the printer and it scared the dickens out of him!

The other drawback was (and I’ll readily admit I’m no IT expert) I was unable to get the printer to install without using the HP CD that installs all kinds of extra crap I did not want on my machine.

Anyway, despite some things I do not like, I am very happy with this printer.
Rating: 5 / 5

PC the drive went into: Stock Intel Q6600, Gigabyte GA-EP45-D3SL, 8GB DDR2, and a ATI HD4870.

The Windows install wasn’t that old and I didn’t really want to mess with getting her all her stuff back so I used a Clonezilla Live CD to clone the old drive to the new one. I then booted straight into Windows 7 off the new drive. Windows asked me to restart so I did and the system was up and running without incident. I then went into the Windows 7 disk manager and extended the partition to fill the whole drive.

Knowing this was an Advanced Format drive but unsure if the alignment would be correct due to the cloning, I downloaded the bootable image for the align utility from the Western Digital site and burned it to a CD. I ran the utility and it indicated that the partition was aligned correctly and there was nothing that needed to be done.

The old drive showed as a 5.4 and the new one as a 5.9 on the Windows Experience Index. I didn’t think that was too bad coming from an older 7200 RPM drive to this. I was a little worried it would be slower but that isn’t the case. I haven’t personally used the PC enough myself to know but my wife says she notices it is a bit faster and things are quicker to load.

This drive for me was a worthwhile upgrade and money well spent to this point. Only time will tell about the reliability as with any drive.
Rating: 5 / 5

This is an initial review after one day of ownership, which I’ll revise. My previous experience of digital cameras is limited to a Nikon Coolpix compact, now about 7 years old, and this camera is intended to replace the Nikon film SLR and three lenses which I’ve lugged around on holidays for 10-15 years. So some things that are amazing me will be just what you expect if you’re used to similar cameras.

From that standpoint, the first thing to amaze me is the weight. Complete with battery, SDHC card, lens cap, lens hood and shoulder strap, it’s 1lb 1oz on the kitchen scales. And there’s very little to add in the accessory line – a clear and polarising filter (unlike some ‘bridge’ cameras, this one has a filter screw thread), spare battery, blower brush and mini-tripod from old stock and a new bag, and we’re done. This probably means the full kit weighing less than the SLR with mid-range zoom.

One reason for persevering with the SLR was being able to use an 18-35 mm lens for wide-angle shots. As the wide end of this camera is only equivalent to 27mm, I was pleased to see the panorama assist facility, and will be testing out the “stitching” software supplied with it to see whether I can still get a picture of a cathedral from the square in front of it. (An initial experiment suggests that given a level tripod, some good results should be available). At the narrow end, you don’t get the same power as the 24x or 26x alternatives, but with my previous range of 18-300mm, I used the 300 end less often than the 18, so probably not a big issue unless you’re snapping birds or cricketers. (You can have 32x if you reduce image size to 3Gb, but a very quick comparison suggests that unless stuck for memory space you may as well use 18x/12Mb and crop the picture later.)

The next big surprise was the quality of the results from “Intelligent Auto” mode. As soon as the battery was charged, I went outside and snapped away without worrying about where the sun was, or anything else I’d have pondered with the SLR. Results were very good, so you can do some very lazy photography, and if one or all users of the camera have never cared about shutter speeds and exposure compensation, it barely matters – Intelligent Auto and some other top-wheel choices like the scene mode will do most of the work.

I haven’t yet tried the movie-making side, though that’s not of great interest to me.

Various minor points:

The supplied Photofun Studio 4 software says that it doesn’t support 64-bit Windows Vista, but does install and seems to work OK.

You do NOT get a printed copy of the full manual, just a short ‘Getting started’ guide. The full manual in PDF is supplied on CD and you can find it and read it on the Panasonic website before buying, but I would have liked to have to whole thing – spare time on holidays is an ideal time for reading it. As and when we have a netbook PC for keeping and editing pictures, this issue will disappear!

The lens hood is easy enough to fit but its guide mark is unhelpfully placed on the bottom of the camera and common-sense fitting by eye without inverting the camera works just as well. The lens cap fits on the screw-in ring to which you attach the hood, though I’ve not yet checked whether you can stick this whole lot in front of a lens-protecting filter without vignetting or other trouble.

The square “+/-” symbol on the display may cause mild panic if you’re used to an old SLR’s top-panel display, where the symbol itself indicates under/overexposure. On the FZ38, it doesn’t unless there is a number next to it. The display options are worth exploring – the guidelines option is a boon for lining up, and when displaying pictures, you can optionally show a lot of information like shutter speed and aperture. Another user interface issue is that some selections are made without the equivalent of an “OK” button and some with, so at first you may find yourself pressing the “Menu/Set” button too often, despite the camera’s efforts to guide you.

One problem with the user interface is more significant – some lists of option choices use graphical symbols whose meaning may not be obvious. In some cases (like the ones shown when you select portrait with the mode wheel) these have explanatory captions (my favourite is “Smooth skin – shoot potrait’s skin more smoothly” – misspelled and a bit repetitious, but they tried). In others, there’s no help – try Setup – LCD mode, where your choices are “Off”, “A*” and “*” with no help about what LCD mode is or what these settings mean. You have to go to the full manual in PDF to find out. Depending on your experience, other symbols may be obvious, and explanation might be irritating, so there’s probably scope for some kind of “expert/beginner” setting which determines how much is explained. This is the one that stops me upping the rating to five stars.

The electronic viewfinder works well as an alternative to the screen, once adjusted with the diopter wheel. The display is exactly the same – you can even look at your stored pics with the viewfinder.

The battery is good for 470 shots based on the CIPA standard, but the manual warns you that this is based on a particular usage pattern – “e.g. when recording once every 2 minutes, the number [...] decreases to about 117. So a spare battery is probably worth buying. The charger is good for voltages 110-240, so for foreign trips you only need the kind of adaptor that makes the plug fit.
Rating: 4 / 5