Customer Reviews

HP OfficeJet D135 Multifunction Printer, Fax, Scan, Copy

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(25)

 

 

I was hoping for the best, but I guess there's no such thing as an all-in-one product that does everything perfectly....

Overall the D135 is a great multifunction. All the functions work very well and in many cases rival the quality of individual components. Uses HPs new print engine with separated ink cartridges and print heads. The print heads are user replacable and are rated at 3 years or 50000 pages (not bad!!). This should be an economical machine to use.

The scanner has been upgraded from the G85 and is better in every way. The document feeder is much better than the G series and the scans are now optically 600 x 1200 48 bit color (unless you have a Mac which is limited to 36 bit I believe).

The fax is also 33.6 color (assuming you find someone else with a color fax)....Plenty of memory for preprogrammed numbers and 10 one touch keys.

Overall The D135 is quite easy to use with good ergonomics and tons of usable features. Also watch for the forthcoming D145 and D155 which add CF, SM and Sony Memory stick slots for digital camera users, a duplexer to allow two sided printing and copying and, in the case of the d155, a second paper tray for power users.

Pitfalls, and there's always a few....

1) Typical for HP printers, prints are often skewed just a little bit on the page. About 1mm off when comparing left to right. This seems to be an HP trait. I tried 4 different D135 machines, all with a similar problem.... Many users won't notice the slight skewing, but I found it quite easily when printing borderless photos.

2) The WinXP software isn't ready yet so the functionality is limited a bit right now. PC faxing yet not enabled yet and sone scanning functions don't work yet (including OCR unless you buy an off the shelf Twain compliant OCR program).

3) The scanner head is a bit noisy. No biggie, just thought I'd bring it up. Don't expect to use it in the bedroom while the wife is sleeping!!!

Despite the quirks, overall HP has a winner!!

I have burned through THREE black and 2.5 color cartridges in 6 weeks and only 1,100 pages total. I'm going to spend more on ink than I did on the printer by the end of the year. HP's response to this, "that's normal ink life". Seriously, I've been using HP printers for years and the ink life for this product is the worst I've ever seen...Unless you're very low usage, you should consider a differnt product. And for any small business, you're probably going through 1,000 a month easily between print, fax, and copy. HP really [messed] this one up.

The Hewlitt Packard Officejet D135 multifunction printer is advertised as a two-sided printing/copying and scanning with Optical Character Recognition (OCR). However, this is NOT the case.

1. Two-sided printing/copying requires a (C6437A) duplexer, which I have been unable to obtain. I Emailed HP about this and received the following replies:

"I understand that you are disappointed with the inability to use OCR and make two-sided prints and copies from the Officejet D135 installed on Windows XP. The duplexer required for making two-sided prints and copies is not currently available."

And, in another Email from HP: "Unfortunately, I [HP] am unable to provide a date on which the duplex module (C6437A) will be in stock. I apologize for the inconvenience."

2. If you have the Windows XP operating system, full functionality is NOT available. In yet another Email to me, HP states:

"The software solution provides basic printing and scanning functionality with Microsoft (R) Windows XP. Scanning is supported through the Scanner and Camera Wizard in Windows XP. Use the HP Officejet front panel to copy, fax, and use proof sheets.

The future HP Officejet D series software release for Windows XP, will provide the following functionality:

* Network capability
* Photo upload from the HP Officejet to the PC
* Access to copy and fax features from the PC
* Use of the Fax Setup Wizard
* Ability to set scan to destinations
* ReadIRIS optical character recognition (OCR) software.
* HP Director software, HP Photo View Center, onscreen Users Guide, and Product Tour."

Later on, in the SAME Email, HP states:

"Third-party software

The optical character recognition (OCR)program that is currently available on the HP product software CD-ROM cannot be loaded in Windows XP. The OCR software is provided by another company [IRIS] and will not be available in the download versions of the HP software release for Windows XP. HP does not hold the rights to this software and cannot include it with the HP product software available for download."

Thus, it appears that HP has no idea when the duplexer hardware will be available, so I paid hundreds of dollars for a printer that I have no idea when, if ever, I will be able to perform two-sided print/copy.

Also, I have a scanner with no OCR included (though it is with other Windows operating systems).

I find it hard to believe that HP could so brazenly claim this as a two-sided printer/copier and so stretch the meaning of XP compatibility.

I you want to have only basic print/scan/copy capabilities, buy the Lexmark X83 for only a few hundred dollars.

The concept/design of this machine is absolutely brilliant. However, I believe HP released it before it was quite ready for prime time. Many of the issues have been documented in other reviews, so I won't repeat them here, but thought you might be interested in a conversation I had with local BestBuy tech person the other day. I noticed that they didn't have a D135 on display and casually inquired about their experience with it. He said that overall it was good but they were getting a lot of returns because the print heads are wearing out a LOT sooner than they should according to spec. He said it looks like a manufacturing problem that they will hopefully have fixed soon.

After reading some of the negative reviews on this product, I had serious second thoughts about purchasing one. However, as a long-time fan of HP printers and the fact that the D135 met all of my requirements in such a nice small package, I decided to take a chance.

I have been using the D135 for a few days now and have arrived at one important conclusion. It's exactly what I was looking for, period. It is not the best printer, copier, fax machine or scanner on the market but to do all of this in one machine as well as this product does is really quite remarkable. It's obviously not built as sturdy or robust as it's predecessor, the G85, but it is much more ergonomic in design and is definitely faster.

The paper handling is only fair and the printing margins will skew a bit if not placed squarely and tightly in the feed tray. As far as the complaints concerning Windows XP, this has not been an issue for me as I use Windows 2000 professional. The software works flawlessly and is quite well thought out. I will say that it's a bit noisy but that's not really an important issue to me. I really like the fact that all functions of this unit are programmable through the computer and setup was an absolute breeze. I can't believe they did not include a USB cable with the D135, so be sure to have one on hand when you bring this baby home.

Another very nice feature is the ability to scan to just about any program you like, including Outlook, from the front panel of the machine. This is nice for emailing a quick scan of a document or picture.

As far as the unavailability of the Duplexer for two-sided printing, I have not researched this and cannot comment upon it. If it is indeed unavailable, then HP has some serious questions to answer.

All in all, the D135 is everything it's advertised to be and I would not hesitate to recommend it.

Win 98 users beware that the hp product software will not install on some Win 98 machines. I've spent several hours on line with HP Tech support to no avail. They have bumped me up to a higher level of support, and told me that someone would get back to me within 3 days with a fix. I thought I was buying a great unit at a reasonable price. But after figuring in my time, and the fact that the machine is still not up and going with my Win 98 Machine, this purchase appears to be a big blunder.

...The d135 looks good and has some very attractive functionality for a small office. However, a few users may want to watch out with the document feeder which is really only barely designed to handle anything other than standard sheets. I produce my own business stationary on the fly and need to feed through a big variety of envelopes, labels, forms, etc. The Feeder is hard to change, difficult to access, and chews up some stuff at random. For instance, the envelope slot creates folds and wrinkles about 30% of the time...

One other "buyer beware". For those of you who do not have a USB port, the d135 does NOT come with a serial port connection. You have to order the plug separately - it is an option, assuming it is available which it wasn't when I bought 3/02.

My Brother laser printer that is a little more than 1 year old died on me. That was the first and last non-HP printer I will ever buy. My Epson scanner had buggy software and I rarely used to as I intended to. The HP OfficeJet d135 works right out of the box exactly as it promises! It scans, faxes, and prints with ease. It is also very quick. Inkjets have come a long way since the DeskJet 500 that was my first printer. This printer's output is suitable for business correspondence. The color output is phenomenal. I would highly encourage anyone looking to replace a printer and a scanner with this device. No hassles whatsoever. I'm running Windows ME on a P3 1Ghz, 256mb ram.

This thing is full of bugs. From paper jams to it simply shutting down mid-print with no explanation, it does it all. I use it with both Mac and PC and it's problematic with both. Mac in particular is a disaster. On a hundred page document it will mysteriously stop printing on page 29 or 56 or whatever and simply refuse to print those "problem" pages. Faxing is no better. It will take 15 minutes to get a page and then freeze up and disconnect without printing. Good luck with tech support. They will guide you through the impossible menu system and try to get the settings right, but it will take an hour and it's all on your dime. When it does work, it's very slow to warm up and then works in fits and starts. Nothing like being in a hurry and watching your printer twitch like an epileptic. I bought this to replace the older r80 model that I thought was awesome. This one had USB connections which I now need. I wish I could hook up the old one and use the d135 as a boat anchor. STAY AWAY FROM THIS PRODUCT!

I have purchased this multifunction HP product at CompUSA and fortunally I got the warranty and I had to return it. The reason was problems with the printheads. It worked fine for a while but now I get scanner errors everyday even when I am not using the scanner and I have to shut it off and back to clear the error but later on the same error occurs. One of the reasons I like this product is because of the legal size capability that not all multifunction devices offer. I may have to return this one again (if I find my warranty).