HP Photosmart C6150 All-in-One (multifunction, fax / copier / printer / scanner, , color)

The C6150 seems like a really nifty unit. Not terribly ugly unlike most printers. Lots of features including sheet feader and built-in wifi.

I was excited to use it to scan documents, among other things, but... their "solution center" software (dumb name) is buggy. First, you can't tell it to keep the entire 8.5x11 scan when scanning documents. It insists on trying to auto-select the portion of each page that has content, giving you an assortment of randomly sized pages. And the auto-selection doesn't even work right. It clips off obviously visible text in a random and inconsistent way from page to page. So, for each and every page you scan, you have to resent the borders back to 8.5x11. Does HP not think that any of their customers would want to scan lots of standard size documents?

Another bug I found when scanning a 26 page document. As I was hand adjusting the borders on each page, the software kept changing the page count from 26 to 15 and then back to 26 again. In the end I was only able to save the first 15 pages, even though it had scanned all 26.

Finally, the scanning software puts up a little notification dialog that steals focus every couple of seconds as it saves each scan, so forget about trying to use your computer while that is going on. Super irritating!

I would note that I made sure to download the latest drivers and software from HP. The software is several years old, so apparently these problems are not a priority to fix at HP.

And then there is the tech support... Bleck. Every email back from them contains profuse prose about how important you are to hp. Totally smarmy. Here is an example:

"I wish to take this opportunity to thank you for being one of our most valued customers."

Little old me? Wow, do I feel special now. This practice gets quite tiresome after the 10th time. They also constantly mention how important good service is to them. The only thing they don't do is actually give good service. They send you lots of "try this and try that" suggestions that don't work, but they never seem to give you a straight answer that "the problem is this and the solution is that".