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Manual/Quick Start Guide (7.00)
The HP A440’s Quick Start guide comes as one 15-page booklet in three languages—English, Spanish, and French. Eight steps guide the user through setting up the printer, installing the camera, and printing the first photo. Additional instructions describe the control panel and the process of installing software to enable the printer to work from the computer.
The printed manual is called the Basics Guide, which does indeed describe the basics of printing, improving print quality, and troubleshooting. The 19-page guide is very plain, with a few pictures and mostly text, but not very dense. It serves to give the user the basics beyond the Quick Start guide.
Out of the box (8.00)
The HP Photosmart A440 printer dock is a small and lightweight device, so the package is small enough to carry out of the store. HP packed in a few perks with this tiny printer. First off, the dock can be purchased with the HP Photosmart M437 digital camera, which takes 5-megapixel images with a 3x optical zoom viewable on a 2-inch LCD screen, or the M537, which has the same zoom capabilities but the image size is 6 megapixels and LCD size is 2.5 inches. The kit also includes HP Photosmart software on CD-ROM; quick start and advanced user guides; one installation CD for Mac and Windows and one CD including the User’s Guide; a USB cable (big points for this one!); a power supply; and an HP 110 tri-color inkjet print cartridge with 2.5 ml of ink. However, users won’t be able to print pictures straight out of the box. A necessary item is missing: paper. HP Advanced photo paper is recommended, but not included in the box with the printer dock.
Setup (4.50)
Setting up the A440 printer to print directly from the camera takes a very quick six minutes. The process involves unpacking and installing 2 AA batteries into the camera; opening the input and output trays; loading paper; installing the single, tricolor ink cartridge; taking a picture; docking the camera; and printing the alignment page, which occurs automatically. The ink cartridge installation is easy--just open the cartridge door and slide it in the correct position.
Software installation for establishing communication between the printer and computer took considerably longer—more than 20 minutes. HP really loads the software on—283 Mb of it—even for such a small printer. The CD provides the option to do the Recommended or the Custom installation; we always choose the recommended option for our tests.
Drivers (8.00)
The A440’s driver utility uses the same software interface, the HP Solution Center, as other HP printers. The Settings button in this window sends users to either the Printer Properties dialog, otherwise known as the driver controls, or to a Status window, which indicates the status of the A440. There are two options in the Status window. The shopping cart icon button gives the user the part number for the ink cartridge and provides a link to buy more online. Below this, the user can click on the View Ink Status link to open a window that displays a beaker-shaped graphic indicating ink levels. The level seemed roughly accurate based on the number of prints we’d run by then and the projected volume of the cartridge. But if it’s low, HP provides yet another link to their website to buy more ink. Another tab in this window provides access to the tools for performing maintenance, including aligning and cleaning the print head and printing a test page. This same window is accessed via the Settings Toolbox options within the Settings button.
The four main tabs of the Printer Properties dialog window are Advanced, Printing Shortcuts, Features, and Color. The Advanced tab provides the user with a few settings that most people don’t change relating to ink distribution and enabling advanced printer settings. The Printing Shortcuts tab provides several setting profiles based on common usage, such as Photo Printing-Borderless, Photo Printing-with white borders, Postcard Printing, Hagaki Printing, and Factory Defaults. The settings for these are preset, but drop-down menus allow users to change basic settings, like page size, print type, print quality, and orientation. If the user makes any changes to these settings, the "Save As" button becomes active, allowing users to save and name these settings, which adds them to the list of shortcuts. This is a handy function if users like to use the same settings that are not defaults.
The Features tab provides many of these same settings for users who don’t want to mess with shortcuts, but would like to change the settings as they print. Aside from the standard options, HP offers their Real Life Technologies settings, which adjusts for red-eye and enhances sharpness, contrast and brightness automatically. This tool can be set to Basic, Off, or Full. The Resolution button simply displays the numerical resolution the printer is set to; resolution is adjusted via the print quality drop-down box, with Fast Normal, Normal, Best, and Maximum dpi as settings. I assume they provided the Resolution button for those inclined to know more about their printing. This printer can print at a maximum resolution of 1200 dpi.
Even though this is a much simpler printer than others in the Photosmart series it has the same color options, which are in the Color tab. Basic printing options on the main window are limited to color, black and white, or sepia. The More Color Options button gives the user more control, with settings for brightness, saturation, tone, and the cyan, magenta, yellow, and black colors. The Help option in the driver consists of the user right-clicking on an item to display a small window with a short description of the item.
Software (7.50)
The HP Solution Center houses all the HP Photosmart A440's functions and software programs. With more than one HP printer, camera, or other device installed, the main window becomes tabbed, with an icon for each device shown. The two main boxes/buttons on the left are Transfer Images and Settings. Transfer Images allows users to copy pictures from their M437 or M537 digital camera, docked on the A440, to their computer’s hard drive. The program saves it by default to the My Pictures folder on the Windows system, then opens HP Photosmart Essential, an image file browsing program that also provides some editing options and allows users to print images. This is a basic, but useful program if users don’t have other image programs on their system. It features bright clear graphics and a design similar to other printer manufacturer’s software programs, such as Canon and Sony.
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