10 out of 10 people found this review helpful.
Don't Buy If You Will Use This For Scanning
Date of Review: Jul 13, 2008
The Bottom Line: Do not buy this all-in-one if you will be using the scanner often, particularly if you are scanning documents. The software is buggy, hangs up often and features are limited.
I bought the printer in February because of the lure of cheap ink since I was sick of paying through the nose for ink cartridges. I was also miffed at HP for forcing me to purchase a new scanner when I bought a Vista computer. Even though the scanner was less than seven years old, they didn't support it on Vista.
The printer itself works great. Once it gets over a long delay, it shoots the paper out. The quality of the print is also very good.
The fax machine works great too, but the only flaw I see is that it doesn't accept faxes from my computer. I would have to print the document before faxing. I'm not sure if this is any different from the other all-in-ones.
The scanner is simply awful. Here is a list of problems I have experienced:
1. The software is buggy and it freezes often. It is so bad, it is virtually unusable. It is not so bad when you are scanning pictures, but if you are scanning documents, that is where the problems really start. The scanner hangs up often in the middle of the scan, requiring you to disconnect the usb, shut down the unit (by pulling the power cord) and rebooting the computer.
2. Scanning documents with the sheet feeder. If you use the sheet feeder, the scans only turn out if you sheet feed one page at a time and click "Scan more". If you don't, and you let the software sheet feed all pages at once, then only the last turns out ok, and the previous pages are so faded, they are almost blank. Kodak is aware of this problem but are not fixing it.
3. You cannot set the exposure settings ahead of time when scanning documents. The only way to do that is to edit each page. This makes it a very time consuming task if you want to make each page darker for example. (when faxing, you can change the brightness, so why can't we do that when scanning?)
