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"Sofware and hardware make this unusable" on by crazystic
Pros: Printing worked
Cons: Scanning didn't
Summary: I bought this printer for home for very low volume printing and scanning of basic office documents. As such, I didn't have any concerns about speed or how much ink this printer would use. My only concern was that I could accomplish these two basic tasks.
The problems started right away -- took me several hours to get the software installed, and I'm a systems consultant for a software company, and I'm used to installing far more complicated software than this.
Once the software was installed, and I was finally able to get the thing to work over the wireless connection, I was very pleased to see the option for scanning to pdf, which suited me perfectly.
However, the scanning function has both software and hardware issues. Firstly, pretty much every time my laptop goes to sleep, the connection to the printer drops, and i have to reboot both printer and laptop to get them to see each other again. The scanning options are set up from the computer, and these also disappear pretty much every day and have to be put back.
As if this wasn't bad enough, the basic scanning functions are completely unreliable. The HP software allows you to turn over the page and scan the other side, but this only works about 1 out of every 10 attempts -- mostly the software pops up an error saying that the printer is no longer connected as soon as you start to scan page 2. If by some miracle you manage to scan more than one page, there seems to be about a 50% chance that the device reports a paper jam, or simply fails to feed in the page, resulting in the scan job being cancelled.
The result of all of this is that having spent about 6 hours trying to scan a 6 page document (yes, thats colour scanning speed of 1 page per hour!!) and failing, this printer is going back to the shop.
If you care about anything other than basic printing, don't buy this printer. -
"Very good for students" on by ClaraG68
Pros: It does everything you need for student life. Good value for money, with replacement ink reasonably cheap, compared to some. Wireless network easy to set up and works like a dream. Printing quality is superb in black and white text documents.
Cons: Slow printing speed - don't print out lecture notes just before you are due for class, because you'll be marked absent! Diagrams and charts look great in black and white, but text on a colour background looks a bit less sharp.
Summary: I would recommend this product purely for its multi functional capabilities AND its wireless function. It does everything but make tea, without having to be in the same room - a major plus if you are flat sharing. Its a very recent purchase for me so have yet to explore it deeply, for example, fiddling about with the settings and sizing. Its also only the second printer I have bought - my last one was a Canon and lasted 3 years, so perhaps I'm a bit of a newbie with multi functionals! Very easy to set up so long as you follow the instructions and go slowly - trying to install quickly makes it crash! A great all rounder.
Actually, having used it a few times, its quite rubbish. The paper jams constantly, and you have to stand by it while it prints to ensure that nothing bad happens! As I said before, printing is incredibly slow - even more so when you have to stand an watch and wait. Removing the paper jam is very fiddly, and today I somehow came away with not only torn paper, but a couple of screws as well! I'm taking mine back and going with another product.
Updated on Mar 9, 2009 -
"Very Good Printer, Great Wireless Feature" on by thundertracks
Pros: Wireless Printing from our laptops without having to power on Desktop computer. Ease of setup.
Cons: Don't really have any issues with it.
Summary: Printer works great, wireless feature is really convenient, speed is good, Setup was extremely easy, time from out of the box and wirelessly printing was under an hour. Purchase price at CircuitCity was great. Purchased the HP 4680 and an extra black cartridge for only $108.00. Printer on sale for $99.99, and I had a $15.00 off coupon.
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"Decent older wireless-G all-in-1, but no mem card slots" on by esternot
Pros: - All-in-one
- 901XL Black cartridge lets you output ~900 pages
- Lets you scan in PDF or JPEG to PC if PC is on (requires full-feature driver)
- Can choose either full-featured or stripped-down driver
- Support site has links to Linux driversCons: - No color XL cartridge
- 1 3-color cartridge (not separated into additive colors)
- No USB, memory card or Ethernet ports
- Wireless-G, not N
- Doesn't automatically duplex pages to save paper
- Software hard to install
- Can't scan >1 page @ a timeSummary: I think my Pros and Cons summarize this printer nicely. It's not the worst printer I've ever owned. The one thing that really bothers me is that it's so difficult to get the thing running. The software/driver takes forever to install and sometimes times out on you, forcing you to uninstall and then reinstall the driver/software to get the thing to work.
*I meant "Wired Equivalent Privacy," not "Wireless Equivalent Privacy."
It's also impossible to scan more than one page at a time without closing down the application after the first scan and reopening it. I also don't like how the printer saves to a different place (C:\Users\[username]\Pictures\My Scans\[YYYY-MM (Mon)]) when printing to your PC or notebook from the printer, itself, than where Windows Fax & Scan automatically saves your scans (C:\Users\[username]\Documents\Scanned Documents\Documents).
Other than those things, you could do a lot worse on a printer. This one was free, so I really couldn't beat it.
Updated on Apr 26, 2012
Updated on May 5, 2012Be sure to install the included Readiris I.R.I.S. 12 OCR image-to-text software. It's pretty neat. You can access it from the HP Solution Center icon that the installer places on your desktop. You can turn a scanned document into searchable PDF, a non-searchable PDF, a .txt or .rtf file, a Word 2003 XML file, or an HTML file. I used to think that the HP Solution Center was useless until I finally played around with the free Readiris software. Now, I wish I had found this years ago.
There's supposedly a lot more capability if you upgrade to Readiris 12 Pro or Corporate ($79 and $299, respectively, if you go through the link that the free version places on your desktop after you've registered); however, that seems pretty steep to me, especially when free alternatives do exist in the form of GOCR and Tesseract. -
"Can you spell J-U-N-K?" on by Lynne-e-kins
Pros: VERY low price.
Cons: doesn't work!
Summary: First, I have to say that I've an HP printer enthusiast since the old HP 500 ink-series in the early 1990's. In fact, I have had an Officejet 7410 in my office for 8 years and it's still going strong.
I bought 3 of these for home; one for my home office, one for each of two daughters. All 3 are JUNK. They print when they want, not when I want. It can take 5 pieces of paper just to get one decent page of print. Junk! Junk! Junk! I only paid $70.00 each, which proves, you get what you pay for. By anything else but this. And if someone tries to give it to you, run as fast as you can in the opposite direction. It's not worth the pain and suffering!
a 'former' HP printer enthusiast.
HP Officejet J4680 user reviews
