Founded in 1939 in a garage by Bill Hewlett and David Packard, HP has come a long way in 61 years. In 1999 HP's Net Revenue worldwide was $42.4 billion, of which Europe accounted for $15.5 billion, with a Research & Development expenditure of $2.4 billion. Why the history lesson? It does no harm to know who you are dealing with, and in HP case we expect great things, were we going to be disappointed? Lets find out.

The DeskJet 930c packaging was excellent with all the items neatly laid out and within reach. The 930c is not supplied with any extra software, except the necessary drivers to get you up and running. The DeskJet 930c shares the same quality engine as it's older siblings the 950 and 970, along with HP's PhotoREt III colour layering technology claims a maximum resolution of 2400 x 1200 dpi - on photo paper. HP also claims it's ColourSmart III option provides perfect colour automatically, so what you see on the screen is what you get.

The image quality from the 930c was excellent on photo paper as well as plain paper, with no banding and colour registration was near perfect. The inkdrop size, at five picolitres, is fractionally larger than the Epson, but smaller than the Lexmark's seven even so; the 930c produced marginally better results.

In may instances quality comes at the expense of price and performance, no compromises here though, the 930c is not only the cheapest of the bunch, but also excels on the performance platform. The 930c produced the highest scores in all our test categories (see figure 2), except in the text document section handing over its performance crown to the Lexmark. In the Manual and Photographic tests the HP was untouchable, almost twice as fast as it's competitors.

Ergonomically the 930c benefits from having a robust front-loading 100-sheet paper tray that hardly takes up any space, which folds up when the printer is not in use, giving the printer a very small footprint. There is also a handy low-ink indicator, and a 'print cancel' button on the printer itself. Supplied as standard are USB and Parallel ports, with a USB cable. We would recommend using the USB port at all times, unless of course you don't have USB ports.

If you want a nonsense colour ink-jet giving value for money, with excellent performance and quality, then the HP 930c is a natural choice for both home and business users. The HP 930c walks away deservedly with our Excellence award.

Figure 2 - Test Results

The test results are shown in minutes and seconds

	Hewlett Packard 930c	Epson Stylus Photo 860	Lexmark Z51
Text Document	0:52	1:00	0:28
Manual	4:15	7:36	11:26
Photograph	3:03	7:37	9:50

Congratulations to Hewlett Packard on winning our One2surf Excellence Award!!

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