Those A-type road warriors who need to print a professional-looking report or handout on a plane or in their hotel room need look no further than the HP Deskjet 450 mobile color printer. It's easy to carry, easy to connect to most any printing source and produces professional quality text (1,200 x 1,200 dpi) and simply gorgeous full color prints (4,800 optimized dpi).
Setting up the printer was ridiculously simple. HP offers almost as many ways to connect the printer as Ben and Jerry's does ice cream flavors. Let's count the ways; there are USB or parallel ports; for wireless connectivity there's an infrared port, and a CompactFlash Type I or II card slot lets you print images saved from a digital camera and enables Bluetooth wireless connection (with an optional accessory card). In addition to a laptop, the 450 can be connected to a mobile phone, PDA and a digital camera.
For the graphically inclined, who prefer pictures to reading a manual, HP supplies an easy-to-follow chart that shows how to connect the printer, load the paper, and presto, start printing. Printer drivers, an obligatory "Quick Tour," and some software to enable advanced features come on a CD.
Of course, the nifty little 450 was not designed to be a speed demon, but if it's not printing in full-color, highest quality 4,800 dpi mode (which can take up to 8 minutes per page), it's no slow poke either. The little engine that could churns out 9 black and white text pages per minute and 8 pages per minute in color, albeit in fast mode.
The 450 prints on a wide variety of media, including transparencies, general office paper (from 4 x 6 to legal sizes) and photo paper (matte and glossy) and there's even a gift card size. Use inexpensive office copy paper and you'll get ink smudges and dull text, guaranteed. HP says the unit is rated at 500 pages a month. Memory size is adequate though not huge: 4 MB ROM/16 MB RAM. The 450 comes with a helpful utility that tells how much ink is left in the two print cartridges, which are rated to print up to 450 pages black and 400 pages color.
The bottom line? You can't go wrong with the HP 450. If you need a mobile color printer that produces high quality color at a reasonable number of pages per minute and at a competitive price, the HP 450 will satisfy your needs and budget.
