OK I said it! I admit that I made a mistake. I saw the picture of a USB cable on the HP printer box and thought it was a special type of USB cable that I had never seen before.

But that picture was wrong on the outside of the box. Not opening the box to make sure that I could take the thing back I only had that picture on the box to go by.

I finally decided to open up the box and look at the actually printer usb connection and discovered it was a normal USB 2.0 A To B type connection.

So the new regular USB A to B cable that I purchased with my printer from Walmart worked fine. I was able to hook up the printer OK.

The only problem I had was that since I already had another HP Scanner an HP Scanjet 4850 the software for the new printer was not going to install OK.

After spending all night on the phone with the HP customer service rep ( great guy) I found out that I had to uninstall the Scanjet 4850 software and take that scanner off my computer and then uninstall the new partially loaded software for the Officejet 5610V Multifunction device. Then I had to check the Windows XP Home Registry to make sure that the HP uninstall software worked properly. It didn't as it left some files in my registry which I had to remove manually. I knew how to do this because in the past other software makers had also failed to program their software to uninstall everything that was installed on my computer's hard drive. So I finally got all the old software files of my hard drive and was able to reboot the computer and install the new software. Then my new Officejet 5610V multifunction printer/fax/scanner and copier finally started to work. I then found out that I had misplaced all the paper work for my HP Scanjet 4850 unit. After searching though the house for three days to find the quick install paperwork I decided to try to go ahead and install the HP Scanjet 4850 without the quick install paperwork. I was successful and now I have two HP devices hooked up to my Dell Computer and so far so good. I am putting the new HP Officejet 5610V though it's paces and and enjoying this experience. It's a lot easier to use than my old HP III P laser jet printer that only has 3 MB of memory in it. The old HP III P Laser printer gave out on me for a while. It would no longer turn on. When I turned it on it failed to start for some stupid reason. It was only about 15 years old now. I was told that the power supply may be going out on it. I screwed up by shaking the thing trying to get it to turn on and all I did was shake the toner all over the inside of the unit. When I finally got it to turn on and print the page was all black. I was told how to clean it up and get that problem fixed. I still have a of Laserjet HP paper and HP transparencies to use up so I want my laser Printer back in good repair. I am going to open up the toner cartridge compartment and clean it out really good. Hopefully I can do this myself. If not I know a company that gave me a quote of $20 to clean it for me. But if the power supply is going out for good (right now it works sometimes and not other times) I'll have to order a new power supply and install it. That will cost about $70 if I do it myself and more if I hire that work out.

Crossing my fingers and hoping that I can get the work down as cheaply as possible.

But it's nice to be able to print stuff again. I missed my HP Laserjet III P for the last few months.

Tonight I plugged the HP IIIP into a power supply and turned the on/off switch on. And by golly the thing came on OK. Next time it will probably not work so I still need to get that new power supply installed before I can trust it to work every time.

I spent the entire night of Christmas Eve getting the New HP Officejet 5610 v setup and working. It was a long night but in the end things worked out.