HP Deskjet F4280 All-in-One Printer, Scanner, Copier (CB656A)

The HP deskjet F4280 printer was purchased for my personal use & so far it is exactly what I need. I wanted a simple printer/scanner without a lot of extras; this describes the HP purchased.

I had a nice little HP C4100-series printer for about 2 or 3 years that I decided to pass on to another family member when I got a new computer. I miss it a lot!
This new one eats up ink at a much faster rate, and the printing is incredibly slow. It takes over two minutes to print a single page -- even in black and white text! This is just impossible for me. As a grad student printing a 25 page paper I can't wait an HOUR for it to print, and all the while eating up the ink like mad.

By the way, HP has really made printing in grayscale (black and white) much more complicated that it needs to be, and more complicated than it was on old models. It IS possible to print in grayscale, but it is hard to find the right path and HP tech support seems often clueless. (Especially if you are on a Mac.) What you have to do is fix the setting on the Print Drop Down page if you search right and then leave it on Last Used Settings if you want to continue to print in grayscale.

Overall, I find it to be simply adequate and not up to the standards previous HP products led me to expect. It even seems a little on the cheapy side in terms of construction and design. I now expect to dump it fairly soon -- and next time check out the print speed in the store before buying one.

To be fair, in terms of functions and programs, it is a good multi-function deal for under $65, but a very similar HP model can be had at other big stores for under $50.

This purchase was a nightmare. When I went to install the software I was prompted to do the Easy Install (recommended) or Advanced. As an IT professional I usually choose the latter because a lot of installation packages will put on a lot of unnecessary junk. But I thought to myself, "this is a printer/scanner, what could it possibly install besides drivers?" BIG MISTAKE. I think it was like 500MB of junk. But besides that, after the install my Picasa program was rendered useless. And as you can imagine, not being able to access personal photos of my family and friends was nerve-wracking to say the least.

I uninstalled both packages and tried the Advanced install, with the plan of installing the drivers only. The minimum install was 250MB! That's ridiculous!!! Anyway, it resulted in the same issue, and a lot more time wasted time uninstalling and reinstalling my software.

My final effort was to Google this issue and sure enough I saw others describing the same imcompatibility. Such a shame, but I'm sorry, Picasa is the best photo management program out there and I'm not sacrificing that for a printer/scanner.

UPDATE

I returned the item and got the equivalent scanner/printer from Canon. The Canon Pixma MP470 Photo All-In-One Inkjet Printer. It's been excellent and exactly what I hoped for in a printer/scanner. No conflicts with my other software and the install was easy.

If you use Picasa, don't buy this HP printer. And if you don't use Picasa, don't buy it anyway.

This printer is quiet easy to setup and all of its functions are very intuitive. I have used its scanning function and also edited my scans using the OCR software provided. My prints are crisp and great looking. Overall the HP Deskjet F4280 is ideal for a SOHO. I plan to buy two more for the my school's IT lab to complement the laser printer (HP) and for the secretary's office.

We picked up the HP F4280 for it's multifunction and compactness. It prints well and doesn't take up much room. We read other reviews about the poor quality in scanning and we would have to agree. It is a decent scanner for documents but not so much for pictures. For the money we are not disappointed, but we are also not impressed.