HP LaserJet 3380 All-in-One

Rating:
Summary: Words can not describe the disappointment.
Review: Almost every printing device that I own is HP. Deskjets, OfficeJets, LaserJets. It was only natural when looking for an all-in-one that would be able to handle both volume and type of tasks that I had grown into, that I decided on an HP. It seemed to have it all. Crisp high speed laser printing. Copying. Scanning high resolution in color or black and white. Faxing with good input tray. If only they allowed me to run the machine for a few days, I would have discovered the deep dark truth - that it had not been beta tested by humanoid carbon life forms. It couldn't have been.

The primary issues surround the software. It's Internet Explorer based and although it is not tied to your internet connection, it can be extremely slow firing up. How slow? Try 10 to 20 seconds. And it ain't my CPU. Next, you can not import your phone book from a previous HP All-In-One product. Heeelllllooooohhh! If I'm upgrading to your higher priced product, don't penalize me by making me re-enter all my information. It's called backward compatibility, but I digress. Next, once your database is entered, it takes approximately 10 seconds for the address book to come up when you want it to appear when you fax. 10 seconds is not a long time unless, of course, you're dangling from a rope or having to get the address book multiple times a day. This an normal instant-on activity that takes so much time, you could start another hobby while it's coming up on screen.

BTW, the address book only has spots for name and fax number. You can enter a company when it goes to fax to that person, but will not store it so you don't have to enter it again.

Oh, and the box. While you're faxing using the software (by the way, it's much faster if you enter the number on the machine itself and fax it from there.), there is a box that appears on screen that tells you that it's faxing. Only problem is, you can't get rid of it. No way to minimize it. No way to delete it. You can move it, but it stays on top the entire time. If you do multiple faxes, it's there for the entire time.

I don't know who wrote the software, and I don't know who beta tested them. What I do know is that if I was Carly CEO of HP and found this, there would be a few people put to sleep in the software department before the next pay envelope.

Rating:
Summary: MultiFrustrating, not MultiFunction
Review: I had high expectations for this newly-released unit, but I was ultimately disappointed. I unplugged my old but reliable (HP) laser printer, fax machine and scanner and started to assemble what I thought would be my one-stop office solution. The 3380 has a somewhat cheap feel, as though a lighter gauge plastic is used than in their sturdy laser printers. The paper tray does not snap in place cleanly and it wobbles around, and the side and front doors pop open too easily.

I installed the software and then tried to use the scanner, but only received error messages. I called HP tech support and was assisted by an extremely knowledgeable, polite and helpful technician. When our fixes failed, she had a newer software disk sent to me overnight (at no charge) and we began our efforts again the next day, to no avail. After a total of about 3 hours on the phone, we did get the scanner to work in an unintended manner, but with poor quality results. I am returning the unit for a refund.

Rating:
Summary: Faxing works, scanning is tedious, printing is unreliable
Review: I have been very happy with printing, faxing, and copying. Scanning, unfortunately, did not turn out well. It is not even covered in the printed manual (which is all about faxing), and pressing the "Start Scan" button simply results in the error "The ordinal 139 could not be located in the dynamic link library MAPI32.dll". Half an afternoon with "instant HP support chat" via my web browser did not clear this up. I thought the instant support system was rather slick, however, since one can work on other fronts while waiting for a chat response. I did learn from the knowledgeable support rep how to scan one page at a time from within MS Word, which was something, but the scanning is so slow that I cannot afford to use it if there is no way to scan all pages in the document feeder to a disk file unattended. At the moment, this seems to be the case. My other problem is that scanning preferences don't seem to be register anywhere that get used in the future. In other words, I have to laboriously set my preferences (resolution, paper size, black-and-white, etc.) before each scan, which doesn't seem right. The paper format defaults to legal letter size, which I found surprising.

UPDATE 10/13/04: Since my original review, I have encountered printing problems. A large percentage of PDF files will not print under Windows XP-SP2 ("printing error"). Copying the PDF file to my Linux machine and printing to a LaserJet 1220 from acroread has worked fine every time so far for the files that fail to print on my LaserJet 3380. I also could not print my taxes from Turbo Tax on the 3380 from Windows XP. This is very surprising since I am running nothing but up-to-date software.

My rating is now three stars, but I can't seem to change that.

Rating:
Summary: A great machine...once you get it working!
Review: I'm a home office user who needs a machine that can handle a moderate amount of printing, faxing, and copying along with the occasional scanning job, and this machine has been working extremely well for me. The quality produced by all of the functions is excellent, and the space savings of having one machine that does everything is incredible.

I would have given the machine 5 stars if it hadn't been for the software. Yes, I have to agree that the software provided is poorly written. The software will also not allow you to utilize the functions of the machine over a network, which is the biggest issue for me. Also, it took me a weekend of trial and error and then several hours on the phone with technical support to get the scan function working. But now that it works...wow!

If you are a home office user who needs a solid multi-function machine that can handle a moderate volume of work, I highly recommend this model. My only suggestion: If you run into a problem setting up the scan function, don't waste your time trying to fix the issue yourself. Call technical support - they are surprisingly helpful and knowledgeable and should be able to solve the problem for you. I was nervous about the company's technical support after reading reviews of other HP products but was pleasantly surprised when I actually made contact.