HP Officejet Pro L7580 Color All-in-One Printer/Fax/Scanner/Copier (C8187A#ABA)

Well, taking someone's advice, I purchased this unit less than a year and a half ago. It has been nothing but a problem from the beginning. The scanner never worked properly. The printer more than not pulls more than one sheet out at the same time and prints part of it on one sheet and part on the next wasting both paper and ink on a regular basis. The fax machine pulls more than one sheet through about half the time and other times does not send all the pages. I spent endless hours in chat sessions, trying all kinds of different troubleshooting suggestions, nothing ever corrected the problems I encountered. The final straw is when I refilled the black cartridge. The machine will not allow me to print anything. They claim that the chip in the cartridge is not replaceable yet, HP sells replacement chips! So after only having this printer a little over a year I have to go purchase another printer, which will NOT be an HP. I just can't handle any more wasted time on this printer.

This printer must have been designed by Rube Goldburg. The software is so ineffecient, it takes much longer than it should to scan.

Don't even try to duplex scan or copy. The thing is sure to jam up.

I could write a lenghty dialog about how I hate this printer, but the best thing to do is don't even buy the thing. You want mine? I'll give it to you.

My fiance purchased this because we wanted a wireless all-in-one on the network at his house. It appeared to be the best buy in terms of features per dollar because it was saving us from having to buy a print server. From day one, it was incredibly aggravating. I'm a young, tech-savvy person who has grown up with computers and printers. I am comfortable with various menus and settings; I can even program. I started out just trying to load the drivers, which took forever and almost a gig of disk space. Once they were all installed, the computer ran incredibly slowly--so slowly as to be unusable. I checked the task pane--there were multiple HP processes running in the background chewing up huge amounts of memory. Even ending them didn't help. I had to uninstall them all and then custom install only the ones I needed for printing. The same was true for my fiance's new Sony Vaio, which has a much faster processor and tons more memory than my computer. To this day, we have to use a back-door internet method to scan something to a file. I know his sister spent several hours the other day trying to receive a fax before she finally had it sent to someone else's house. My printer works just as it is supposed to, and most of its features are completely unusable. Don't buy this. Buy anything else.

had to install brand new print heads to get machine to work whitch cost me 69. the machine was not refurbished but used . i have shop on amazon a few times and this was my first negative purchase .

You've gotta love HP for the printers. I also replaced my old Dell latitude with an HP Pavilion. I've had a few problems with HP printers in the past, like everyone else, they had trouble transitioning manufacturing between the US and china.

With that said, I will say that the L7580 is outstanding. For me, it replaced an old HP all-in-one that surprisingly served me well for 3 years. Let's consider what is positive about the L7580:

* You don't need your computer to use it (by CD or memory stick) ¯ you can copy from, scan to or print from
your CD or memory stick;
* Quality is excellent ¯ pictures, even at low quality settings on plain paper are exceptional;
* The ink capacity is huge and well-designed with a large cartridge for black, the most used ink color; and
* The ink heads, unlike smaller printers HP sells, are independent of the ink cartridges.

I've owned this printer since April, when I got it on sale at Best Buy. I will provide updates as th
is equipment ages.
If this review was helpful, please add your vote.

This printer will give you nothing but trouble. I purchased one and at first, it worked fine. Then, less than a year into it's useage, it started malfunctioning - telling me I needed black ink when the cartridge was full. It stopped printing any black ink. I replaced the ink cartridge, and that did not help, so it wasn't a faulty cartridge. I contacted HP Customer Service and there started the real frustration. They kept sending me the same steps to try, over and over, even when I told them it was not solving the problem. We went round and round for over three weeks - every day I was getting the same "fixes" that were not helping. Finally, when I demanded to speak to a Manager, they agreed to replace my machine as it was still under warranty. A new one arrived (and I had to send back the one that malfunctioned, which I did). The new machine worked well for 8 months, then the scan feature suddenly stopped working, saying I had no scan options. I worked with HP again, again getting fixes that did nothing, and while doing that the black ink stopped printing again. I have now purchased another brand of printer, and will never buy from HP again. The hardware malfunctions, and customer service is of no help whatsoever.

This printer is the worst HP product yet. HP continues to go down hill with the release of this nightmare. I purchased one of these and it was so bad I thought it was defective so I returned it for a replacement only to find out that's its just pretending to be defective with its bizarre behavior. It takes an average of no less than one to 3 minutes to start printing even the smallest of documents - that's when it does print. The software that came along with it is a monster, it took nearly an hour to install printer software??? The software crashes constantly. HP tech supports solution is to uninstall the software and reinstall it - which doesn't help. Worst tech support prize to HP. After this experience I will not be buying any HP product again. The people who are leaving the glowing reviews either work for HP or were hired by HP, it is impossible that someone thinks this piece of junk is a five start product - what a laugh.

Fast, versatile and I love the ink cartridges. However, why this printer has to suck down its toner for 3 minutes (I timed it!) every time you start it up is beyond me. This printer uses a lot of juice when it's on, but turning it on and off every time you need it just takes too much time and too much ink.

For classroom use and home office business, this printer has been a great addition.

The scanner part has been very useful to scan old photographs and for adding artwork to projects. It produces a decent every-day quality scan which can be resized to fit almost any application. The photo scans have also been of pretty high quality, surprisingly so. The fax is also pretty fool proof. You tell it where you want things to go, it sends them, and then tells you what it did. I love that part. (When it's important I still call to make sure the faxes arrived.) I have also been using the fax-ability as a device to ward off telemarketers. It has a caller ID, so whenever I notice a call coming from UNKNOWN caller, I just have the fax answer it. :) It's a fun game. I highly recommend it.

Another great part about this printer are its inks. I buy the XL sizes for black and colors. Two blacks or a set of the three colors are about sixty five dollars but on Amazon, I found the inks even lower: High Yield Genuine HP brand black ink cartridge # 88 XL for each package. That is a great price compared to what I used to spend on inks. There have been times when I noticed it was cheaper to buy a new printer rather than buy new inks so this has been a great surprise.

One of the basics for me was to get a printer I could use with my Macs as well as with PCs and the software to this printer is compatible with both. This software seems to be button pusher proof.

I have seen some of the complaints of others about this machine. Maybe I just got lucky? I do know I've never gotten along so well with a printer before. I have a certain amount of technological ineptness and even I can use this printer to print, fax, scan, and copy. I don't read directions and I don't want to start now. If I push a button, I want it to work. I haven't had to pull the direction book out for this product yet. (Okay, in all truth, I don't know where it is.)

I spent many hours with HP support chat on this. I reloaded software and went through the setup too many times. Finally I got a replacement printer and a month later the same problem occurred, and I simply gave up on it.

Before purchasing, one should search HP support and read the problems others have had with the support procedures and the runarounds one must go through with HP.

What a nightmare! This is by far one of the worst pieces of office equipment I've ever purchased. It acted up immediately, would not print properly and the software created problem on my OS (Windows XP). I wanted to return it but made the mistake of allowing tech support to talk me into receiving a free replacement set of print heads. That solved the problem temporarily but only ended up delaying me long enough to have my warranty expire, then they wouldn't talk to me. When in use, the printer software would slow my computer down to a standstill and caused crashes regularly. The complications only got worse until I finally uninstalled the software. What a piece of junk and a waste of money!

This printer is great on paper, and actually prints just fine.

Scanning and faxing are unbelievably unreliable. 3 out of 4 faxes lock up the entire machine, with paper stuck in the document feeder. Scans frequently lock up the printer and client software. Days after a failed scan, you can try scanning from a different computer and it will still fail even though there is no error on the display and the printer will print. Frequently, the only solution to problems is to pull the power cord, remove any paper jams, start over and cross your fingers.

Very, very frustrating machine - DO NOT buy this for demanding users - and by my experience, I would avoid the entire Office Jet Pro line.

Having been satisfied with a variety of inkjet and laser printers from Epson, Dell, Canon, and Hewlett Packard, I wasn't prepared to be impressed by "just another printer" that I got in a hurry after reading Consumer Reports and finding one on sale nearby. But this model has proven itself to be an unusually good value with high quality scans and photo printing, quick warm-up, almost no paper jams, and longer-than-average ink cartridge life. I've used it for a year and can recommend it highly.

The HP L7580 freezes up all the time. It will not print a document over 10 pages. and forget about printing a presentation that has 15 pages. well you can print it if you want to print the current page one at a time. and that won't last either. Bam it froze up again. story of this printer.

Well i cant say that it does that with all operating systems just vista.
we called both Vista and HP. Both says it is the others fault and the other company is working on this problem to fix it. If both companies are blaming it on each other, than i don't think either one is trying to fix this.

So In the short....DON'T BUY THIS HP L7580 PRINTER... buy one that works!

This is hands-down the WORST printer I have ever owned. The second day I used it, it started whining for ink. The second day! And it has some serious hang-ups about being turned off. Every time I powered it down for the day, the next day I would have to reinsert the installation disc to get it to work, so I just left it on all the time. From Day One, whenever I set the print quality to "Normal" whatever I printed came out with white lines through it. I had to print everything on the much slower "Best" setting. After about a year, the print quality went way downhill, even on the "Best" setting. Everything was blurry, and type was unreadable. I cleaned and realigned the print heads and recalibrated the line feed numerous times. I spent $80.00 on a new print head. Nothing helped. I called tech support, and after an hour, I was told that I needed to uninstall and reinstall the printer. So, I wasted another hour doing that, again to no avail. The only good thing about the whole experience was that I bought the machine from Staples and added the $40 Staples Technical Support & Protection Plan. Unlike HP, Staples has a class act: 24/7 tech support from Americans who are very competent and professional, and they sent me a new machine.

This fax machine/printer/scanner is horrible. Do not buy it! I have a problem every time I try to use it. When faxing or copying, the printer often jams. The machine also tends to eat your original documents, tearing and folding them. Also, this might be because I have a PC and not a Mac, but it is nearly impossible to get this machine to scan a document to your computer. This machine is a piece of crap. Buy something else.

This was an awesome printer when I first purchased it. Got it for a great price and all the functions worked as described. It's been close to 2 years of pressing it to the limits but about a week ago, the fax program crashed. The printer will scan your document but will then kick you out of the fax mode with a note to "re-send" the document from the fax log. Problem there is that you click, click, click on the fax log and it won't let you in. Contacted tech support and they will give you the option of buying another HP printer with fax for a discount price. ARE YOU LAUGHING YOUR HEAD OFF YET? Since the printer ran out of warranty, HP claims responsibility for nothing, whether the malfunction is your fault or not, it's YOUR problem. They do offer the online chat support for free. After 2 sessions I got a 2 page list of instructions to uninstall the software program and reinstall. The instructions are mind boggling and risky as hell, even if you've had formal training on computer configurations. I'd expect they would at least have a corrective configuration for this rather than having the customer trudge through 2 pages of complex programming instructions. My advice: If the fax program is critical for you, DO NOT get this printer. From what I've seen in reviews, Canon gives you a better product...and cheaper too. HP needs to bone up on its responsibility to customers who buy their products. Buying another HP product to fix a problem with a current badly performing HP product is not a good deal. I'm also angry to see they continue selling this product with problems like this lurking about. Fix it or ditch it!

Warning!! Before you buy this dog consider: Today I spent over 3 hours "chatting" with tech support right after the FIRST techie disconnected me. I bought a brand new HP Officejet Pro L7555 just like the one you are now thinking of buying. It is a total waste of time, energy, and money. After a few months of usage the black/yellow ink cartridge ran out and I bought a new one. The replacement SHOULD have loaded quickly like all my past printers, but Nope... Each time I restarted the printer a window popped up prompting me to buy a replacement cartidge online. I went online to HP tech support and after 3 1/2 hours of jerking me around the techie told me there was nothing he could do and he suggested I buy yet ANOTHER replacement and if that didn't work HP would pay me for the second replacement cartridge. That's just great. I ended up buying two cartridges and then have to fight HP to get my replacement money back. I spent another day on the phone for nearly 4 hours speaking with a tech support in India, then a tech support in the Philippines. They bounced me around to SEVEN different people. A totally frustrating experience. HP doesn't care about you after they sucker you into buying their slow, noisy printers. It's all about the money. Hope they go bankrupt soon. My cheesy old Lexmark worked like a dream until it passed away with no bells, no whistles.. just reliable.
News Update: It appears that this printer has 2 (count em' ..two!) areas for ink jet. (1) the first is the inkjet "heads" not to be confused with inkjet replacement "cartridge". Look under the lid of the copier for the two inkjet "heads". The second location is in the very front of the printer on the left side. Hp has made this inkjet cartridge area nearly invisible. When you call tech support the person in India will walk you through a process but never mentions that the inkjet "CARTRIDGE" is in the FRONT of the printer. They will put you on hold for 20 minutes at a time no matter how polite you are and then repeat the process ALL over again. HP is going to outsource labor until enough people quit buying HP products. After two days of struggling for help I was exhausted. I went through every human emotion until dark anger boiled within me. Read my other reviews.. I am generally a positive, outgoing individual. Not so with Hewlett Packard.

I have had the printer for almost a year. I upgraded to this printer because I wanted a faster printer with multiple functions. I immediatley bought a continuous ink supply system from ebay and I have been very happy with my savings on ink. I haven't had to replace the ink heads yet and don't know how long they will last. I use the scanner frequently and do occasionally get only a partial scan - I reposition the document and it works fine. Don't know what causes that problem. I bought a new laptop about 8 months later and had a terrible time downloading the VISTA printer drivers. The software / drivers, etc. are real space hogs and consist of large files. After getting the new laptop, I wanted to check to see if I could do wireless printing and went online for support. The instructions online for the L7580 say you can do wireless and give you the steps but the menu options weren't available. I tried many different things and finally had to go to Amazon website for printer specs to see that it is not wireless capable as a standard feature. Why didn't HP website tell me that? Waste of time. I am not a computer guru but I can usually figure out a lot of things on my own with a little help from documentation. This documentation is not good. The printer is noisy! I do love the print quality and the speed of printing plus the all in one functions. I use the copier often and it is economical with the continuous ink system.

I am not a neophyte in the computer game. I have been in the industry in one dimension or another for over 25 years - and this is one of the worst printers that I have ever seen. I purchased it for networking but it continuously drops off the network. The software doesn't work at all. Ny recommendation to you is not to purchase this printer.

I have had this product since July 2007 and had various results. Bottomline: HP has sent 2 replacements after 16 total manhours on the phone with (English as a second language) tech-support. The scan function works and interacts well with my XP based laptop. The Fax function is good for flatbed but if you need to send multiple pages, not so much; the feeder has caused the printer replacements. The printer is fine for color and b&w, but print quality is not a big issue for my business. Ink usage is on par with other printer I've used and an low/empty cartridge doesn't stop b&w printing.
Recommendation: Pay the extra for quality business machine for a specific purpose and save yourself the time/ effort of maintaining this one!

I've had this machine about a year now, and have been pleased with scanning and print quality. I work at home as a residential designer and also do a good bit of writing, so I need good text and decent b/w graphics. The problems with this printer have been with the software (sometimes baffling screens and instructions, sometimes just can't find the answers I need). Now the display is flashing "Carriage jam," which a quick look-see on the web seems to mean that the print heads are clogged up and spools (cogs) are jamming in there. [...] is cool, but I don't have 2 hours to take my printer apart to try and fix, doubting that even if I get it working it will continue working for long. I also agree with other reviews that this is the NOISIEST printer I've ever owned, and a monster on the desk (size). So, overall, good riddance I think. I'm coming to see printers as disposable after a year or two (my last one lasted about the same amount of time). I'm trying a Canon pixma next.

Thus far, we are really enjoying our new multifunction printer. Consumer Reports 2008 has not let us down with their ratings on this machine. Highly recommended machine.

I have an HP photosmart that I have had for over 8 years and it is still fantastic. I thought I couldn't go wrong buying another HP when I needed a multifunction. Despite many of the negative reviews I went ahead and bought the printer.

When I first installed the software I was notified there was an error installing and to un-install and start over with the install. When I did this the software would no longer install. It would run for 10 to 15 minutes and then say there was an error and exit. I tried every resolution recommendation on HP's website to install the software and after a day of trying and getting nowhere I called tech support. I spent over 8 hours on the phone with tech support. They had me perform all the resolutions listed on the web-site that I had tried the day before. Needless to say none of the suggestions worked and I eventually told the tech support guy I would be returning the printer.

However, I eventually managed to force the install of the software. At this time I still have trouble using any of the other functions besides printing. They work sporadically. The software also manages to unistall itself every so often and then tries to re-install.

As for the printer, it usually prints very quickly and the quality is quite good and I manage to print a lot of pages on each print cartridge. The overall printer is very nice, unfortunately it is very difficult to use it and the software is miserable. I still kick myself everyday for not returning this printer.

SO FAR THE COMBO PRINTER HAS PERFORMED WELL. THE ONLY PROBLEM I HAVE ...THE FAX ANSWERS ALL PHONE CALLS, I HAVE HAD NO SATISFACTION GETING THIS RESOLVED FROM THE FONE COMPANY OR HP. I FOUND HP CUSTOMER SERVICE (SOMEBODY IN INDIA) A WASTE OF NEARLY AN HOUR ON THE FONE!

I received the HP L7580 as a Christmas present to replace an older HP model. I've always purchased HP All in Ones and had good luck with using them for my small home office.

Unfortunately, this one has been a pain since day one.

First, I encountered all of the difficulty setting it up and installing the software that other users mentioned here. Once I got someone in tech support to talk to me, it took 2 hours, most of that on hold, and I figured it out myself. Overall, it took about 8 hours to install the printer.

6 months later, the machine will no longer FAX or COPY or SCAN. I got a paper jam one day using the document feeder up top (yes, it feeds in crooked and takes more than one piece of paper at a time!), and even though I have cleared the paper jam, it is telling me I have an "Original Loaded" and will not let me load any other documents for fax, copy, or scan functions.

I'm fortunate I can at least still print with this machine, but HP hasn't been very helpful- yet.

This is an awful product and HP should be embarassed.

I've been in the computer industry 13 years, so this is not user error.

I've setup about 10 of these in different companies, and several more for individuals, including one for myself. The problem with this printer is that the setup is in fact long, and most people ignore the instructions and fail to set it up correctly. I don't care if you have been setting up printers for decades, and you are a professional, if you do not follow the instructions then you will face tons of problems.

The only problems I have had with this printer is that the software decides to get "iffy" once in a while (rare in my experience), and I think it's more due to Windows updates than HPs drivers. That's the only reason I gave it 4 stars. After that, this machine is awesome. The print and scan quality are amazing and the cartridges last a long time, offering a very low per page cost. For personal printing i lower the quality to draft, it looks just as good, uses less ink, and prints out way faster. The printer also offers many settings for everything (printing, copying, scanning, fax).

Regardless of the reviews, I can tell you right now that this is a great machine. I know a company where they have 7 of these that are pretty much "abused" and they are all working fine. Just pay close attention to the setup instructions and operating environment.

If any of you need any type of assistance setting this up or fixing a current problem then please contact me.

***Note: This review is based on Windows XP.

Joshua Marius
[...]

As so many have noted, this was really tough setting up. Though, in all fairness, some of it was me doing boneheaded things that I only realized were so boneheaded later. Some of it wasn't, though. The software only loaded completely easily on one of my computers. On two others, it loaded but I got a message saying it hadn't loaded successfully. But, anyway, after several hours of messing with setup, I am not completely happy with this thing. It prints (and does all the other stuff) very well and it is so cool to have it hooked up to my network. So, if you can handle a few hours getting everything setup, I'd recommend this printer in a heartbeat - especially at the price I got it with a rebate at a brick and mortar store about $[...] less than the current (6/27/08) price.

I have medium sized client and the majority of their offices are 3-11 person offices all over North America and every office has at least one of these Office Jet 7000 (7300, 7500, 7600 or 7700) series MFD's, some have one for each field associate.

The problems have been extensive and common, FAX's that fail to transmit, or received faxes that seem to slice the page longitudinally as if someone sliced the page long ways.

Scanners that smear the back side when in duplex mode, device lockups requiring resets that are inconsistent and hard to duplicate.

The WiFi issues are the least of our problems and the best way to enable WiFi is create a static IP, if you try to use DHCP it locks up more than 80% of the time with all kinds of access points from Linksys, NetGear, D-Link and even the Cisco Aironet.

We fixed that insidious "Clear Paper Jam" error from the rear duplex loader / read for solution.


This device consistently stretches the text on every duplexed scanned side.
In other words, if you set the scanner to scan both sides of the page, the underside / 2nd part always stretches the text at the top of the 2nd page.

(SEE SUBMITTED PHOTO)

Sometimes, it has just been a single sentence, other times an entire paragraph.

Contacting HP TechSupport is as painful as it is useless. Search their tech support and find out everything else about this thing except what you need to fix.

Searched Google to no avail either.

BUT - the scanning performance speed is superb for an MFD in this price range,,,, too bad it just skews the tops of the even numbered pages.


------ SOLVING THAT "PAPER JAM" ERROR ------
REFER TO THE USER SUBMITTED PHOTO FOR GRAPHICAL NOTES AT THE other HP Officejet Pro L7780 Color All-in-One Printer/Fax/Scanner/Copier (C8192A#ABA)Amazon 7780 Product Page here:


Required Tools:
(2) Medium sized paper clips

Preferable Tools:
(1) Pair of pliers with rubber grips
(1) Edged tool such as wall paper knife, metal pick or toothpick to clean out gear teeth.


This fix applies to paper jams the device believes are in the rear duplexer and often occurs after a real jam that has shredded the paper inside the mechanism.

Despite the fact you've carefully cleaned out all the visible paper from inside with the cover open, paper can jam the gears used to drive the rear rollers and even the tiniest amount of shred prevents operation resulting in the impossible Paper Jam error.

HP Tech Support online and on the phone don't troubleshoot it past "clear the paper from the device than try again please" b.s.

After removing the duplexer, grip any of the four rubber rollers and attempt to rotate in either direction, if they don't move freely with little effort, then continue with these instructions.

Begin:

1. Take the first paper clip and contact the lower two brass rectangles, this fools the device into believing the duplexer is installed, keep the contacts bridged (don't remove your hand or the paper clip until Step 4.) THERE IS NO ELECTROCUTION RISK.
2. Press the "OK" button on the control panel to pretend the paper jam is cleared.
3. CAREFULLY OBSERVE THE pair of white gears on the left, if they seem to clutch, stall, skip or freeze then you have paper shards which are causing the jam.
4. Using a firmer grip or pliers, grip the furthest left rubber roller and rotate in either direction , the gears should rotate with your efforts and look for shards of paper in the gear teeth.
5. Use the paper clip, toothpick or any appropriate edged tool to clear the shards.

Bridge the lower contacts again and observe if the gears rotate freely, if so then you've cleared the insidious jam should be able to print until the next error from this piece of chiitt printer.

When it actually prints the way it is supposed to - it creates a very good quality copy. And, it's very handy to have the scanner built in. I rarely use the fax option, since we have another fax machine, and we also scan and fax through our computer more often.

BIG PROBLEM - our printer is now printing mirror images of what we want to print all the time!! We didn't do anything to the settings to create this problem, so I'm not sure what is happening. We can't figure out how to fix the problem.....

Very frustrating!!!!!

I have owned two HP officejets prior to this one and never had near as many problems. The first one I got kept giving printer cartridge error and I even bought new cartridges and tried again before returning it. The second one I got (which I still have) has had pretty much every problem printers can have: regularly jammed paper, lines printed across page and freezing up my computer when printing certain documents with a background image (which previous officejets printed fine.) And I've always put up with the very poor HP software that accompanies the usually good hardware (that often could run fine without the software) but this the HP software goes over the edge in slow response and really is required. When it works it is fine and fast, but that is becoming an increasingly rare occurrence. In fact, I just pressed the power off button while writing this and, after 5 minutes, it is still displaying "Shutting Down...", so I will have to pull the plug on it AGAIN after which time it takes several minutes to "please wait while starting up" and then chastise me for starting without being properly turned off using the power button...

So I am about to leave it curbside after only a couple months; the problem is what to replace it with as no other makes have office features I want and I'm not sure whether to abandon HP entirely or if this particular model is the only evolutionary lemon.

The fax will not feed paper properly without constant monitoring. It takes multiple pages at once and jams frequently. The machine may be ok for home use but is unsuitable for even a small office.HP Officejet Pro L7580 Color All-in-One Printer/Fax/Scanner/Copier (C8187A#ABA)

Been using it for months...great printer. No real issues during install (following the directions helps) on any of the multiple systems using this printer. Wireless printing is outstanding, print quality is great.

Recently printed out 900 full color pages for a presentation hand out. Speed was exceptional, performance was great. Realtime ink level monitoring (via Printer to Web interface) meant that we could have the right ink ready to load as the print job continued.

Scanning documents is a snap (web scanning is great - scan the document - automatically loads onto your PC).

Not using fax...

As a demanding business user I found this printer to be an exceptional value. GET THE EXTRA PAPER TRAY!!!!

I had a great printer for many years...it was the HP Laserjet II Plus. Then I bought a Lexmark X4270 to get a color printer. It worked..some of the time.. Drank Ink so that the Ink exceeded my printer cost by 3X in only 10 months. Lots of problems. I spent 4 hours chatting with tech reps. They finally sent me a replacement Lexmark. That did not work either. Those two are now in my garage.

SO....I bought an HP OfficeJet pro Color All-in-One L7580. No problem installing software, setting it up and running all the functions. It worked when the Lexmark would not. Noisy on start up...but not bad. The color is superior to the Lexmark. The cost for the ink looks like it will be very reasonable...Don't know the answer to that yet. Very satisfied customer for the HP L7580. Anyone want two Lexmarks for the price of the Ink?

Although I really wanted another LaserJet and I did see the negative reviews here, I bought this because it was on sale at Best Buy for $149. It installed easily and I've had it running for a few days now without issue. The only criticism I have is the noticeable rockin' and rollin' it does while printing (at least compared to a laser printer). I had to isolate it from my desktop so it didn't vibrate anything else but itself while printing. On a minor note, I do like the way it looks, nicer than the standard HP beige I've seen so often.

after 3 weeks i have the following observations: (1) easy to set up (at least using Windows XP and a USB link to the computer), (2) noisy (much noisier than previous HP K80 multi-function, (3) fast, (4) much better document feeder than HP K80 multi-function, (5) I like it.

I like this machine except for one nuisance issue: since it does not have a duplex feed, I expected it to provide a manual technique for this purpose. My previous HP Deskjet had that feature. When I try to print duplex it tells me that it cannot do it. This means they did not include the capability in the software and I feel cheated!

PRINTER WORKS FINE; I HAVE A COMPUTER WITH WINDOWS VISTA; THE PRINTER DID NOT HAVE THE SOFTWARE NEEDED TO WORK WITH VISTA. IT REQUIRED ME TO DOWNLOAD A LARGE FILE FROM HP'S WEBSITE TO GET THE PRINTER OPERATIONAL.
I WAS DISSAPOINTED THAT HP DID NOT SHIP THIS WITH THE PRODUCT.

This HP L7580 printer-fax-scanner-photocopier is a professional class machine. Is fast, accurate and above all reliable. Perfectly suited for office intense use. I have 3 of them. One in my house and two in my drug store where we print around 200-250 prescriptions a day. Bought the 2 pharmacy L7580s precisely because the experience that I have with one in my home. Forget about a few people complaining about them. The unpacking and installation instructions have to be carefully followed in order to avoid damaging the machine o lost of time.

HP Officejet Pro L7580 Color All-in-One Printer/Fax/Scanner/Copier (C8187A#ABA)
Print quality: excellent - including photos
Fax: Function works fine
Copy: OK
Scanning: OK
Software: Lousy
Printing multiple copies: Deplorable, gives erroneous paper jam message after printing 3 or 4 copies in multicopy request
Problems in 9 Months: Print head replaced under warranty/now will not print multicopies without false paper jam message/Service rep helpful but informes me I must provide proof of purchase because HP records say it is out of warranty- working on that. What frightens me - they promise an even exchange - I don't think I want another one given this and other reviews at this site.

I have wasted hours on this thing. It is not recognized on the network, it caused my computer to hang on boot and it won't feed more than three pages at a time. I have reinstalled the software 10 times at least.
The engineers at HP should be spanked over this total and complete failure.

This all in one printer is excellent. It is fast and the picture quality is suberb.

I've had many printers for my home transcription business and this is by far the worse one. It makes my computer screen black out intermittently every few seconds which makes me lose my typing. It doesn't always print upon command and you have to manually uncheck the "print offline". It took over an hour to install. You get no support from HP whatsoever. They try to make you feel like you're a complete idiot. I was told that I didn't have it plugged in properly. It james frequently. It has my computer messed up and errors are appearing all the time. Once you uninstall the printer, everything is back to normal. I've had HP All-in-one printers before but this one is absolutely the worse hands down. I don't think I will ever buy another HP printer in the future. DO NOT BUY THIS MODEL. Save your money!!!

Network attached devices should generally be considered Plug-and-Pray, and they always require extra time, patience, and procedure. The L7580 is not like your average plug and play USB printer. I had a very smooth installation, but not fast by most standards. My installation is network-only... not directly connected to any PC.

If you are still interested, my major steps were as follows:

Before connecting the L7580 to phone, lan, or pc, I performed the physical setup and allowed the L7580 to complete all of its calibration, alignment, etc. (30+ minutes)

Then I made a couple of copies, plugged in the phone line and sent and received a fax. All good. (60+ minutes because I had to go buy a lan cable. And while I was out, I drove to my office to send back a test fax.)

Then I connected the L7580 to my network switch, made sure I had lights, printed off the IP settings from the L7580's networking menu, and went to the L7580's IP address from my PC to be sure I could access the L7580's controls from its internal web server. All good. At this point, if you can't see the L7580 by going to it's IP address, then the setup program isn't likely to find it either. (30 minutes to connect and browse all the web server controls)

Then I used the disk (custom option) to install the unit on my XP machine, with only the required software plus the OCR software. I believe the first three items were required. But I skipped the photo handling software. Again it took a little while to load, but it had no trouble finding and installing the logical printer, scanner and fax. (30 minutes to install and verify functions)

Then I repeated the install with my Vista machine. I was much more worried about that, but the install went just fine. (20 minutes to install and verify functions).

So it took about 3 hours to be fully operational, with no problems. It probably could have been closer to 2 hours if I didn't have to go buy a lan cable... come on, HP.

I just happened to be visiting my favorite computer store (Microcenter) and ran into a visiting HP rep near the printers. I mentioned I wanted to replace my printer and he suggested the HP L7580. It was the same price I paid for my previous printer (about $250) and he showed me a typical printout. I was amazed at the picture it reproduced! It was printed in normal mode on regular paper and it blew away my previous printer! He informed me about the new ink saving technology HP has now which recycles previously wasted ink. I was impressed enough to purchase the unit.
Since then I have thoroughly enjoyed this printer. Using typical paper this produces an amazing reproduction every time. HP Officejet Pro L7580 Color All-in-One Printer/Fax/Scanner/Copier (C8187A#ABA) The only major problem is this model was not wireless so I put the HP L7580 on my network. You needed to purchase the model two hundred dollars more to get wireless capability. My previous printer had wireless capability at this price range but the print quality could not compare.

I purchased this all-in-one printer as a replacement for three separate HP devices (dying fax, working color printer, & dead laser printer) for my church office. I actually went to the office supply store to purchase a different HP, but the salesman steered me to this one. It looked nice and certainly had all the functionality that we would need. I have an HP that works great and the three other HP devices at the church worked fine (until laser printer died) so I decided to go for it.

I set it up just fine and it initialized without any glitches. Then I tried installing the software. I'm not a newbie at this, but I kept getting an error. I even got my "computer guy" from church on the phone and web conference to make sure I wasn't overlooking something. We tried all the fixes that we could find to no avail. That was 5 hours. We tried in vain again for another hour the next day. We even tried for four hours with tech support the next day and it never would install. Tech support succeeded in screwing up other things on the computer, but they couldn't get their software to install. They blamed it on Windows.

I should have paid attention to my gut feeling and gone with the original printer. For you see a different salesman was steering a different customer towards the same suite of HP printers that my salesman pushed on me. There must have been extra commission for unloading them. Needless to say, I took it all back today for a refund.

I read Consumer Reports, and they rated this the #1 all-in-one. It was on sale at Office Depot, so I bought it. Unfortunately, there is no way to test it with the software before hand, or I would not have bought it. The machine was easy to set up, although there is tape all inside the thing, and you have to install the front panel, which makes no sense to me. The software was a little finicky, and took FOREVER to install. I took a nap, and I think a dialog box popped up and eventually timed out, making the software install incompletely. I had to install it on my iMac a second time before I could see the machine. The machine had mechanical problems, and would not pull pages through the ADF correctly, which I would have gladly fixed by exchanging it for a new machine, if I hadn't found the software to be so unintuitive and inflexible. The purpose of an ADF is to put a document or set of documents in the hopper, and start scanning, right? So what good does that do you if the software will only allow the resultant file to be saved as one document? My machine would start and stop scanning on the same page multiple times, creating numerous 1-inch long scans of blank paper. I could not edit those pages out! I had a 2-page scan that I had to save as a 9 page document! I tried to use PageMaker, but the HP software will not allow it's TWAIN interface to be suppressed, so it acted as a middleman, slowing things down. The only good part of the software was the ReadIris OCR software, which, in my limited use, is the most accurate OCR software I've ever seen! Oh, by the way, I sent emails to HP (their chat function does not work on Macs!) describing my software problems. They promise a 24-hour turnaround, but 3 days later, I still have not heard from them. The best part of this whole experience is that Office Depot took my return and credited my account - NO QUESTIONS ASKED. Literally, not a single question, like was it defective? I actually thought that was kind of strange. I would have gladly told them it was defective, and the software stinks!

I like the printer/copier and the print quality is good. My only problem has been the software. The device seemed to install properly, but after I rebooted--and ever since--the software fails to initialize (on Windows XP). As a result, while I can print via the Windows print driver, I cannot scan. I have passed many hours with HP support trying to resolve this, and frankly, their support team has been pretty clueless. They've misread my emails, recommended elaborate steps that had nothing to do with my problem, and referred me to download patches that did not work. Arghh.

The paper feed takes the paper in crooked. I finally decided to try to fix this myself. I cut strips of cardboard and put them at the left edge of the intake tray between the edge and the slider bar. This keeps the back edge from moving around as it takes in the paper. It takes some trial and error to get the thickness right so that the margins are equal down the page, but so far seems to be much better.

As other reviewers mentioned, my feeder tray on the top also takes more than 1 sheet at a time, so I always have to hand feed faxes and scans. What a pain!

My fax machine won't accept faxes from one of the companies I deal with regularly because they are auto-generated and come as "Out of Area" with no phone number. Also a pain!

Although the price is reasonable, I expected a lot better product from HP. I would suggest buying a different brand of all-in-one or at least a different model. This one stinks!

Pros:
Great text and graphic printing, OK for photo
Fastest Speed on the market except laser copier!
Cheap ($200 today)
Cheap ink (relative)
USB, Network ready

Cons:
Awful software, install procedure, terrible support
Very NOISY
Huge

For those who hate the software and love the printer, here is a solution for window XP only. (Disclaimer: I am just a home `mechanic' who spent 6 hours searching the web and, finally, figured out a workaround so you don't have to.) It's working great for me now.

How to install HP L7580 printer without pain on a XP-PRO system.

Printer software hog resource if you install everything including Ethernet on main computer therefore:
1. Install HP recommended (huge) programs on main computer using USB
2. Install drivers only on remote computers using wired Ethernet
3. Network printing is really optional; skip it if you can't do it.

Procedure on main computer (USB)

1. Download current full program(300meg plus) from HP for your XP (or vista, should be similar)
2. Run program on main computer BUT do not hook up USB or Ethernet cable to the printer. DO not turn power on!!
3. Install only programs needed.
4. when prompted, select USB hookup as choice, leave wired network unchecked
5. Connect USB cable only when instructed, turn printer ON
6. It will take 10-20 minutes to get the whole thing done, including HP Digital image monitor.
7. after everything is complete, print a test page
8. Check TaskMon to see if svhhost.exe doesn't take 100% resource all the time. It shouldn't be. Get help on the web or uninstall the whole thing.

Procedure on remote computer(s) (networked)
1. Hook up printer to Ethernet hub
2. Check and copy printer name/ IP address of printer on the your Hub software;
(or get printer network setting from the printer (read instruction: setup/network setup/print network setting))
3. on remote computer, go to control panel, add new printer
4. select local printer connect to this computer, uncheck plug and play
5. next
6. click to create a new port
7. select standard tcp/ip port
8. next
9. paste or type IP address of printer obtained from 2
10. once computer acknowledge new port (HP printer port),
11. install printer driver by inserting install CD from HP and select L75xx printer driver
12. DONE in 5 minutes
13. Check printer and fax from control panel to see if printer is `ready'.
14. Print test page

Good Luck