I bought this little fax/copy/scanner about a month ago for light-to-medium home/office use. I've been pretty happy with it, overall, with some reservations.
Pros:
1. Very good copy and print quality. (Haven't used the scanner)
2. Moderately fast print/copy speed.
3. Variety of print settings to allow you to print fast/draft, fast/normal, normal, best, and maximum dpi. You can also choose greyscale and "black cartridge only." Given the price of color cartridges, I use the latter setting most often.
4. Easy to learn. The manual is good, and use is pretty intuitive (mostly).
5. The size is great -it fits on top of a small bookshelf, with all the features of much bigger units.
Cons:
1. While mostly intuitive, use is not COMPLETELY intuitive. To print some custom-size invitations, for example, I learned by trial and error that you need to change the settings in TWO places: in the document's printer properties settings (through Word, in my case) and through the printer's own settings, through the print manager. Very strange way to do it, I thought.
2. The in/out paper slot on the printer is the same. That is, it takes paper up, prints on it, and spits it out on top of the "in" tray. It doesn't re-use printed pages, but this isn't the most convenient arrangement for monitoring paper level or even grabbing finished documents.
3. The paper ejection is often too powerful, especially in Fast/Draft. This results in the finished document's being scattered all over the floor -very annoying.
4. Cancelling print jobs often requires restarting the computer to clear the memory -although this could be a Windows bug. I mean, an "undocumented feature."
5. Cartridges are pricey. The HP site (only place I looked) listed black cartridges for over $20 and color for more than $30.
Overall, it's a decent machine that could use some retooling to improve functionality. If you're just going for quality and price (and size!), and you have low to moderate volume print/copy requirements, you'll probably be very pleased. I'll probably live with the annoyances of this unit, given my light print/copy needs. If I printed/copied more often, I'd return this machine for something better engineered.
One special note: I purchased this printer through Amazon's partner program from Circuit City. When I went to pick it up, the store had lost the order, even though I had an order number. The staff was incredibly rude and unhelpful. I finally bought it off the floor and had to call to cancel the original order (for which I'd already been charged!). Given Amazon's own excellent customer service, free shipping, and fair return policy, I wish I'd just waited the week it would have taken for Amazon to ship it to me directly. I won't make that mistake again.
Update October 2008: This machine is still working fine, and I remain pleased with it (with the above caveats). I still haven't figured out how to stop it from spitting paper all over the floor, and I'd prefer a double-sided option -but I'm happy it's still going five years later!
0 comments:
Post a Comment