I've read some positive reviews on this printer and I'm just baffled. Text printing for an inkjet, in my opinion, is just average. It's GREAT if you're comparing to inkjets from 15 years ago, but technology has come a long way since then. Anything more than solid color printing is just plain bad. So bad that I'd rather print in black and white - and I'm not talking about photos - I understand that this is not a photo printer and meant as a small office multifunction device. Printing is extremely slow (I'm used to Canon's mid-end printers, which tend to be faster than the competition) and the auto document feeder is useless - the last inch or two always comes out skewed. Even using the flat scan (directly positioning the paper on glass), the color for even back and white documents are completely off. Grayscale is a little better, but not much - black and white barely even registers anything.
Now - on to their drivers and software. If you're on Vista, I believe you're just out of luck. I know I am - after many, many hours of trying to get things to actually work. I finally got the scanning to work, except I can't save it or export it out, as the software won't allow me to click "finish" and move on to the next step. The shortcut options from the printer so that you can scan? Doesn't work at all. Very poor job on the product management and q&a departments that handled the launch of this printer.
It also has a tendency to "turn itself" on and clean/align the printheads pretty frequently, so you know it's eating up precious ink. I have yet to use its fax functionality, but even if the fax works phenomenally well, I'd still have to rate this at one star. Keep in mind that I have this multifunction as the occasional use printer, as I print 90% of everything on my laser.
Even for the person that only prints several pages per month and scans once in a blue moon, I would not recommend this printer. Go for one of the low end multifunctions from Epson or Canon - or upgrade to HP's high end machines. Generally, I'm a fan of HP items, though I feel they run a bit more expensive than other brands. My laser printer is an HP (P2015) and feel it's printing quality is amazing (it's not perfect, but certainly gets the job done).
I'm very regretful of "upgrading" to this printer from my 8 year old Canon multifunction that I bought for $100 when it was new. It beat this out in every function (though it didn't have faxing).
BEWARE AND STAY AWAY FROM THIS MODEL!Get more detail about HP Officejet J4580 All In One Printer.
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