Watch what happens when two busy real estate agents bring the convenience of the HP Officejet Pro 8500 Wireless All-in-One to their home offices.
Meet two realtors; infinite tasks: A case study
Realtor, Marcia Austin-Zacharias
Realtor, Linda Burns
Realtors tend to be the ultimate multi-taskers. In addition to client communications, preparing for open houses, and sending and receiving paperwork, they also have to find time to market themselves to prospective buyers and sellers.
On a typical day, realtor Marcia Austin-Zacharias communicates via e-mail and fax, plus she scans paperwork such as contracts and correspondence. She also has been known to fax documents to herself to create electronic records of their receipt.
For marketing purposes, Marcia creates her own postcards to mail to her clients, and has a copy shop do the printing. But she said, “I would like to be able to use one printer to do everything.”
Linda Burns told us what she wanted in her office set-up: “Not having to go anywhere like the copy shop to print my own flyers would be great—and I’d like to be able to fax from home, too.”
We tested the HP Officejet Pro 8500 Wireless All-in-One with these busy real estate agents to see if having one of these feature-rich printers in their home offices would change the way they got work done.
The 3.4"
interactive touchscreen on the HP Officejet Pro 8500 Wireless All-in-One makes the printer as easy to set up as it is to use. It also offers features to help you customize photo printing, faxing, scanning, and copying.
Neither Marcia nor Linda considers herself to be technically savvy, but they were both pleased to find that setting up the
HP Officejet Pro 8500 Wireless All-in-One was easier than they’d expected.
Linda said, “It was pretty self-explanatory. It was really easy, and I’ve never set one up before. Usually, I have my daughter do them.”
Marcia had a similar experience. “It was very user-friendly which is so important because I’m here by myself... Now I‘m ready to do the basics, and I’m ready to learn how to do the marketing stuff.”
With color print resolution, up to 4800 x 1200 optimized dpi color1, the HP Officejet Pro 8500 Wireless All-in-One actually prints at a higher resolution than most laser printers, offering lab quality photos and sharp, black text.
Marcia, who can go through up to 100 two-sided color flyers per week, said, “The thing I’m happiest with is the quality.” She added, “It doesn’t print like an inkjet—it prints as finely as a laser.”
Linda noticed, “It shoots copies out really fast.” She’s right. The HP Officejet Pro 8500 Wireless All-in-One prints color copies at up to 34 per minute, and up to 35 per minute for black and white2!
The automatic duplexing feature was one of Marcia’s favorites. “The double-sided printing is critical!” She explained that now when she makes flyers for all of her listings, “I will not have to send it to the copy shop and pay for the postage to have them delivered to the office,” which saves her both time and money.
And because of the built-in wireless networking capabilities, there are fewer cables to contend with, which Marcia appreciates. “This is a really small space, so I have to keep it neat.”
Business cards, letterhead, shipping labels, and more are easy to create using free templates, available in a wide variety of styles, at the
HP Creative Studio.
By using high-capacity 940XL ink cartridges available for the HP Officejet Pro 8500 Wireless All-in-One, you can keep the per-page cost of color printing down even further.
Linda shared an anecdote from shortly before she tried out the HP Officejet Pro 8500 Wireless. “The other day, I went to the copy shop, and I faxed 12 pages, and it was $20!” An HP All-in-One offers her the simple option to fax directly from home without a trip to the office or copy shop, saving her time and money.
Marcia added, “It used to be that I’d have to go to [the copy shop] at 10:00 PM. It has happened! As a home office person, it’s valuable to be able to do my work from home at any hour.”
In addition to her day-to-day tasks, Linda has been busy creating new marketing materials. “So far, I‘ve made letterhead, business cards, and some calendars using the
HP Creative Studio. They look really good. I also plan to make some postcards and invitations for future open houses,” she reported.
Marcia ran the numbers on printing out these materials at the copy shop: “Our flyers were 49¢ a sheet if we printed on the laser color printer. For two-sided, that’s $1.00 per print for a two-sided flyer like a floor plan.” She concluded, “The people who use that [copy shop] must have a huge budget. A machine like this pays for itself pretty quickly!”
This particular HP All-in-One comes with an ADF (Automatic Document Feeder) that allows you to leave up to 50 sheets at a time to get copied, scanned, or faxed unattended.
Scan to e-mail enables a user to create an “Outgoing e-mail profile” (the address your scanned e-mails will come from). Simply type in the recipient’s e-mail address when prompted.
Both realtors agreed that the feature that would save them the most time, steps, and hassle, was the easy, one-touch
Scan to e-mail feature, which enables items to be scanned and e-mailed directly from the printer—no PC required!
Linda explained what she used to do to get a sales agreement to fellow realtors, mortgage brokers, and others. “Normally, I’d have to scan the documents, then attach the document to an e-mail and send it from my computer.” Now she can do it in seconds from one machine.
As an even more complex process, to give items a time stamp, Marcia used to fax documents to herself between her home and office for legal proof that they were sent and received.
Upon trying Scan to e-mail, she exclaimed, “I love this! It saves a step because I don’t have to dial it and I couldn’t remember my fax number and scrambled for my card. This is so much easier!”
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1Using HP Advanced Photo Paper from 1200 x 1200 input dpi 2After first page; see www.hp.com/go/inkjetprinter for details 3 Marjority of laser AiOs <$750, printers <$300, using Officejet Pro products with XL cartridges; for details,
www.hp.com/go/officejet
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