Ages ago, Mrs Warde got a new printer. I, however, got a bad case of printer envy. She had just gotten a new machine that would print black and white, quickly, as well as printing double sided. Double-sided printing! And we use Math Mammoth, and I buy a lot of ebooks for our curricula, so many books to print out and use. Double-sided printing, using half the paper! Not only the environmentally friendly option, but the less expensive one as well! Oh, the opportunities for my office supply loving self! How exciting! Then, I looked at my local store. The price tag on that printer? $400+. Ouch. That's a tax return purchase after all. Now, to wait a year. But then, not long ago, our local Staples had a sale.
Naturally, included in that sale was my so coveted HP Officejet Pro 8610
. We rearranged several things, pooled some vacation and holiday pay, and out I went. We were planning on having the tax return to spend a large amount of money on this printer, but then it was on sale - and for under $90. Can you really pass up spending the money on an item you were planning to get - at 75% off! Totally worth it.Even if it hadn't been on sale, this would have been a totally WORTH IT purchase. The scanner is nice, sure, and the fax machine is useless for a house with no landline phone, but what really makes it is the duplexing. There are so many things this printer does (including having a giant printer tray that holds multiple hundred pages, rather than my old printer tray that held about 25) better than my old DeskJet that it was worth every cent. It's quick, it's quiet, it doesn't jam frequently, it takes a lot of real estate on the school table to house it, but the amount of paper I'm not using more than makes up for that - I can store the printer, or I can store the paper.
Since I got the printer, I've printed out probably 500 pages worth of material, the vast bulk of it double-sided. Obviously, it prints single pages just fine. Quickly, easily, no muss, no fuss. Duplexing, however, is where the potential for problems is largest. In the first 100 pages, it jammed several times on the duplex - which is a giant pain. In order to unjam the printer, you have to take the duplexing attachment off the back of the printer, and since I had the printer tucked in a corner, this was... challenging. I cleared the jams, put the whole thing back together, and went back to printing. Once it got rolling, though, I haven't had any more difficulty with jamming. It's been nothing but smooth sailing.
Now, what's really been wonderful is that this printer uses wireless. I connected it to my home network, and now all of us can print from anywhere in the house. This includes my main PC in the living room, Skeeve's laptop, and Omero's Giant Gaming PC of DOOM in his bedroom as well. Oddly, despite all three of us having very different uses for a printer, we are all very happy with this one. It's made my homeschool printing SO MUCH EASIER. I used to need a binder each for Math Mammoth A and B, and now I can fit them into one. I was able to print out the Mooselandia standards for education, and fit grades one through eight in one binder. I am over the moon happy with this printer, and it is so incredibly weird to say I'm giddy over what amounts to a glorified toaster, but oh, I am. I love this printer. More than any other homeschool "accessory," I love this printer.
This post is a resource review! There are many more resources being reviewed on the Gifted Homeschoolers Forum's Resource Review page!
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