You may be used to flimsy, lightweight and rather cheap inkjet printers, but some are a little more robust - namely those designed for office use. The Hewlett Packard 2280 is one such machine. It's bigger, more solidly constructed and with far fewer style compromises than the sort of printer that ends up on a home user's desktop. HP's intention is to expand the role of inkjet printers in the office, where there's currently a compromise between fragile, high cost per page standard inkjets and initially expensive, lower cost per page and generally more reliable colour lasers.

The plastic used in the construction of this printer is noticeably thicker than on consumer inkjets and there's far less flex in the cover and paper trays. As for connectivity options, the printer, rather surprisingly, has just the one in standard trim - a conventional parallel port. There's no USB connector. Arguably most users will opt for the Jetdirect network adapter kit which adds stand-alone 10/100Mbps connectivity, but the cost of a USB port wouldn't have added a great deal to the price and might have been useful for some users.

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Print resolution is a respectable 1200 x 600 dpi, which is relatively low when compared to consumer inkjets but par for the course as far as business printers are concerned. A variety of print quality settings is available, with the lowest - which still produces acceptable draft output - being capable of churning out a claimed 15 pages per minute mono and 14 pages per minute mixed text and business graphics. In the 'normal' print mode these speeds drop to 11 and 7.5ppm respectively. As usual, such numbers must be taken with a pinch of salt, but the 2280 certainly feels fast enough for general purpose office printing.

The 2280 has both PCL5c (with legacy support for PCL3) and PostScript Level 3 emulation languages as standard, the latter supplied on a plug-in card in the printer's second expansion slot. This card also has an empty SODIMM slot into which can be inserted SDRAM memory modules to allow the printer to cope with more complex print jobs; mostly relevant for PostScript printing.

HP's use of separate ink tanks for the four colours (with space for an extra-large black cartridge) should help to reduce wastage, but it's worth checking the cost of cartridges from your preferred supplier beforehand. As a guide, HP claims each cartridge is good for around 1,750 pages. A 250 sheet input tray is fitted to the unit as standard, with the option of a second tray that sits underneath the printer, doubling the capacity and reducing routine maintenance costs.

Paper type sensors and automated print head alignment also help to keep maintenance costs to a minimum. In addition, the printer has a built-in Web server, so it's possible to access configuration and status information via a browser.

Printers such as this are slowly making inroads into the market share of colour lasers. Given its robust construction and apparently reliable design, the HP 2280 should help that advance. As long as the cost of ink can be kept to an acceptable level, this printer has significant benefits to offer when used in a small workgroup.