The printer is exceptionally easy to set up. It is completely self-contained and portable, so it isn't necessary to attach to a computer, although doing so enables printing from projects or photographs stored on your computer.

The setup guide is a single sheet of paper that clearly explains what to do, although it is pretty intuitive. The screen of the printer prompts with directions as well. After installing the introductory print-cartridge and a quick test of the alignment, it was easy to just stick some paper in the back tray and a memory card in the front.

The printer comes with an introductory print cartridge and some paper. Additional paper, a full-size print cartridge, and a USB cable to attach to your computer, if desired, must be purchased separately.

Pictures can be printed as-is straight off the memory card, or can be edited in a myriad of ways: red-eye reduction, brightness control, cropping, addition of decorative frames, captioning, or freehand drawing. Of course I tried everything.

Navigation through the photographs is achieved through a touch-screen using a stylus. The icons available on the screen are straightforward, so I found it easy to figure out how to do the various processes without needing an instruction manual.

Red-Eye: I was shocked that the red-eye function worked simply by pressing a button: no "outline the eye as best you can" as in many other photo-editing programs. (The left is Spliggle with red-eye; the right is the quick red-eye fix. Note that the other aspects of red in the photograph are not altered!)

Captioning: Using the stylus, I typed out my message (lower case, upper case, numbers, punctuation, and special characters are all available.) I chose a font, a color, and then used the stylus to drag the caption around the photograph and resize as desired. Easy!

Cropping and Brightness Control were simple: do it and watch the result in the preview screen, stop when ready!

Freehand Drawing is a blast for a non-artist such as myself. There are three different line thicknesses, plus several colors. I used the stylus to draw graffiti on my photos. An eraser function works just as the drawing does, so mistakes are easy to undo. This function can be useful for filling in the midriff (or plumber-behind) of your teenaged niece or erasing out a house number on a photo you will post on the internet.

Decorative Frames are pretty fun. I can see how these would be fun to add for scrapbooking purposes, or for favors at a birthday party, baby shower, and so forth. In fact, using the baby-themed frames and the captioning feature together could create a fairly simple, stunning do-it-yourself baby announcement.

I love taking photos of party guests while they play at my sons' birthday parties. With a portable printer such as the HP Photosmart A626 I could print the pictures out on-the-go. This would be useful for family reunions, elementary-school projects, or... imagine: I could set up my own "Photos with Santa" stand!

The printer has a little "countdown" screen that says how many seconds are left in the print job. The various controls are very easy to understand: most are easy-to-interpret icons. In fact, Spliggle (age 3) printed out several photographs when I had my back turned. If a three year old can figure it out, so can you! (He was overzealous in the number of copies he wanted printed; I therefore learned how quick and easy it is to halt printing.)

Using a (separately obtained) USB cable, it was simple to print photographs from my computer using the HP Photosmart A626 printer. It was the first time I had been able to print out photographs smaller than standard paper size without having to get out my trusty paper-cutter. Secretly I wish that the HP Photosmart A626 printer could accommodate up to a full-sized sheet, but I realize this would cut down on its portability factor.

Installing the printer software on my computer was a snap, although I have noticed I have received many prompts to sign up for other HP services. These additional advertisements aren't appreciated. I did have one little configuration glitch when I printed a 5 X 7 photograph from a non-HP photo-editing program and it instead printed out shrunken on the page, but I believe this was more a settings issue for the program, not for the printer. I figured out how to get it to work properly and the results were fabulous.

This is important, because I frequently do lots of editing on my computer. As fun as the on-the-printer editing features are, I do enjoy looking carefully at my enlarged photographs to tweak them. Also, as the editing on the printer isn't saved, anything I hope to post online (or share through email) will be edited first on my computer.

I was wowed just by the HP Photosmart A626 printer itself even before I looked at the Photo Books and their accompanying software.

The HP Photo Books are incredibly easy to use. They are essentially a little "pincher" that will hold the sheets together: simply bend back the spine and insert the pages in the desired order and viola! Once the cover and back are in the proper position, the pages do not slide out: they are secure. For those such as myself who have fooled around with those annoying photo-album pegs (and their screw-together expansion pegs) only to discover - horror! - that there is a page that needs to be inserted, this "bend-back and go" approach on the HP Photo Books is a huge welcome!

When I installed the software that accompanies the HP Photo Books, I had a little confusing glitch. Although the installation went through as expected, it did not autorun after install nor did it show up in my "programs" portion of the Windows StartMenu. I realized that a shortcut had been produced on my desktop instead. Once I noticed that, I was able to proceed. Everything else about the software was pretty straightforward.

The software includes photo gifts, calendars, prints, CD labels, greeting cards, and other projects in addition to the layouts for the HP Photo Books. I could definitely spend a lot of time making fun things for my family out of pictures of my boys. Everyone, watch out!

The projects are essentially autosaved, so there is no "save" feature. The upside is that you won't lose your work after making an important change; the downside is that reverting back to something you did earlier is more difficult.

I chose the most basic layout, the one without clip-art, although there are many different "themes" from which to choose. Note that although resizing photographs and cropping is possible, other photo-editing like red-eye reduction is not part of the Photo Book layout process. Thus, photos should be cleaned up prior to loading into the layout. (I made the mistake of trying to edit photos already in a book and failed to find a way to delete the red-eyed ones to insert in the corrected ones. I called up the corrected ones, but they reverted back to red-eye once placed in the book.)

Another aspect of the Photo Book that I found a bit puzzling was that there is no added left margin to the page to accommodate for the binding. For full-size photographs, this means part of the photo is cut off. Similarly, a centered picture isn't really centered anymore once the binding is taken into consideration.

The HP Photosmart A626 and HP Photo Books (and their accompanying software) have given me a lot to play with. I have many ideas for how to archive and use my photographs in a meaningful way, particularly for relatives who want hard-copies of pictures. I look forward to trying out some of the specialty projects like stickers and panoramic photographs.

One aspect of my test of the HP Photosmart A626 that really made me smile was that when I switched my introductory cartridge to the full cartridge, I noticed that the new print cartridge came with a postage-paid envelope in which to return the used cartridge - instant recycling. I love it!

I didn't have any major problems with either the printer or photo books; as such, I didn't require any of the "help" or "troubleshooting" sections of the printed or online guide.

The HP Photosmart A626 Compact Printer is on sale at various venues for the holidays. Please check your local circulars. The HP Photo Books are currently 20% off - buy 'em now to stock up for the year ahead. I know I'll be getting several!