The Photosmart C7280 can connect to your network via Ethernet or Wi-Fi, so all your Macs can take advantage of its versatility.

The capable Photosmart C7280 All-in-One gives you a color inkjet printer, scanner, copier, and fax machine in one tidy, versatile unit. And it easily attaches to a wired or wireless network, making it an ideal choice for a home office or small business.

At press time, HP was still working on a full software driver installer for Mac OS 10.5 Leopard. The C7280 printer drivers are actually part of Leopard’s built-in printer driver collection, but Leopard users need to install additional software to use the C7280’s scanner. If you’re still using Mac OS 10.4 Tiger, you simply install the drivers on the supplied CD, and you’ll be up and running quickly.

The connectivity options are straightforward: You can connect directly to a Mac via USB, or use the printer’s Ethernet or built-in 802.11b/g Wi-Fi (including WPA2 encryption) for attaching to a network. In addition to configuration via HP’s Mac software, the C7280 offers a built-in Web server that lets you access some options that aren’t available through the control panel, such as Webscan (scanning over a network via a Web browser). The Web server is laudable, but it doesn’t support encryption, a security feature you’d want for maintaining your privacy while doing network tasks.

The C7280 uses a six-ink set (black, yellow, light and dark cyan, and light and dark magenta). HP’s drivers give you exemplary printing control, but the defaults usually work just fine. And while the first page of a job can take a little bit to come out after the unit’s been idle for a while, both black-and-white and color pages print swiftly, cleanly, and accurately. Given its name, we also expected photos printed on photo paper to come out looking good, and our expectations were certainly met. The printer’s built-in duplexer lets you print on both sides of a sheet of paper, but there’s no duplex scanning for two-sided documents.

When it comes to scanning, the C7280 can save files directly to a storage device inserted into its front USB port. We had no trouble scanning straight to a USB drive. You can also send scans over the network to a machine that has HP’s scanner drivers installed. The C7280’s fax support also works well, and the unit has both single-line and dual-line phone jacks, the latter being popular in home office situations.

The bottom line. If you need an all-in-one for your Mac, this jack of all trades won’t disappoint.

COMPANY: HP

CONTACT: www.hp.com

PRICE: $299.99

REQUIREMENTS: Mac OS 10.3.9 or later; USB, Ethernet, Wi-Fi, or Bluetooth

It just works. Solid Mac driver support for both Tiger and Leopard.

No duplex scanning. Minimal security for the built-in Web server.