Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(11)
1 star:		(38)

 

 

Recently upgraded to MS Vista and almost at the same time, ran out of ink on my two HP printers, one for pictures and an older All in One. The L7580 had just been released and I was particularly interested in its ability to print using less ink at a resultant cost savings over my two existing printers. When I got it and printed out the test page, I jumped because of the speed at which the page kicked out. I had to use this with a temporary HP print driver on my Vista machine, but the full Vista driver is now available. Installed the new driver (all 360 Mbytes) without any problems. I am happy with all its features. Have not had any problems with this since I took it out of the package. The front display shows the status of your ink cartridges which is helpful. Also, the ink cartridges now all use the same number on the package so you can easily find replacement cartridges without having to remember multiple numbers. Picture and scanner quality is excellent for my standards and needs. It comes with a slot to insert memory cards, but since I use Photoshop to prepare my pictures, I have never used this feature on this system. If this is important, then the larger display of the next model up would be desirable. Four stars means I am very happy with this printer. I would consider five stars if I was more of an aficianado of the various printers out there and could speak more knowledgeably about other models.

After spending a day and a half with technical support, I returned the printer and purchased a Canon MP530. Here are some of my suggestions:
1. If you end up buying one and need to call tech support, try to get the Canadian call center - they are helpful and my multiple hours on the phone was as pleasant as could be
2. Not all the features in the manual are available on all models. the digital file cabinet for example is only available on the very high end one. note to HP: spend a couple of extra dollars and either print separate manuals or at least spell out which features are available on which models. And it's not like they chopped down trees to print the manual. it's a digital file yet they didn't take the couple of hours that it might have taken to customize the manual.
3. the software is the worse i've seen. It never installed correctly and HP took me through a full hour of manually uninstalling the many different parts to re-install. waste of time as I never could get the printer to be recognized the second time
4. I set up the canon mp530 in 30 minutes earlier today and I've been smiling ever since.
5. And before the hp people discount this review as someone not technically astute, my primary business for ten years was digital printing and pre-press. I've been part of the industry for many many years.

Bought the 7530 in all its overpackaged glory today. Brought it home and began the arduous process of setting it up (30 mins of labor just installing ink/paper/print heads). After bringing it online, it began its self-test and installation routine. During the install, the printer gave me 3 paper jam errors (there were no paper jams) and failed to initialize.

I then called HP support where I was routed to an Indian call center and put on hold for 33.5 minutes without talking to anyone knowledgeable. Three further calls to support resulted in misrouted queue requests ("Your product appears to be out of warranty"), until I finally reached Chris. Chris had absolutely zero insight or valuable assistance to offer me in setting up this printer.

Let me be clear - I'm a very experienced technology CEO - and am really comfortable setting up devices like printers. But companies don't seem to realize that their customers' impressions are made/broken on the very first interaction with support. In this regard, HP fails (much like Dell) to resolve issues in a timely and appropriate fashion - and, therefore, makes me not want to buy their products.

So, I'm going to return this to CompUsa tomorrow and buy that Canon MP830 that I *know* to be an excellent printer - at least they can support their products appropriately.

As a former professional photographer, a printer's performance as a photo processor is really where the rubber meets the road. Let's face it, in this day and age, almost any multi-function unit from a reputable manufacturer will do a good job on the typical uses of faxing, printing and scanning documents, and that sort of thing. But how will they perform as photo printers?

I shoot Nikon pro-level cameras and lenses, both film and digital. I have a Canon 9950F dedicated print scanner, a Nikon CoolScan negative/slide scanner, and an HP 8750 as a dedicated printer for larger format photo prints. I use Photoshop, Lightroom, DNG Converter, and other top-end photo software. The quality of my photo prints is absolutely crucial to me artistically.

What I wanted was a printer that would allow me to print standard size prints -- 4X6 and 5X7 -- without having to run them through my 8750, while still getting lab quality prints in an archival medium.

The 7580 fills the bill admirably. It uses the Vivera inks, which on HP's Premium Plus papers will last for over 100 years. That was a vast improvement over my Canon i9900, which though it was a fine printer that yielded excellent images, those images could be expected to start fading in a pretty short period of time. That was simply unacceptable to me.

Image quality, as I wrote, is as good as one gets from a lab. As a photo scanner, it will be more than adequate for the vast majority of users, with a good interface. Scan qualities can be improved through the use of Photoshop, Lightroom, or many other available software programs.

I will say that once I get to print sizes of 8X10 and up, there's a (to me) noticeable difference in the quality of the finished product between my 7580 and my 8750. But at smaller sizes, the differences in quality will be unnoticeable to all but the most demanding, and even at 8X10 the average viewer probably wouldn't notice the difference in quality.

I have to say, I love this printer, and strongly recommend it.

I installed the printer no problem through the network. 2 computers are on XP and the other is on Vista. It installed just fine without any problems, I installed the software on one of the machines and I manually did a driver install on the other 2 computers. All the computers print without problems. The only reason I gave this printer a 4/5 instead of 5/5. I had a canon mp830 before this one and that printer was awesome. The advantage the canon has over this is the scanning quality. I think the canon scans in better quality, but I've only had this printer for 1 day so I need to adjust the scanning options. Just to be fair, I believe this printer has a better and DEFINITELY faster print quality. One of the reviews said that there was a scanning problem. I scanned many times and got that memory problem once. Besides that it's a great printer. In general I like Canon and HP printers, they both have there pros and cons. Overall I think this is a great printer. I love the fact it has separate ink cartridges just like Canon.

This is a good printer, but Mac users need to be aware: if you are running Leopard (OS X 10.5), the software CD that comes with the printer will NOT install on Leopard. The printer WILL work on Leopard. But you need to go to the HP Web site, click on Software & Driver Downloads, search for the printer. Once you find it, click on Mac OS X, and then download the file called "HP Officejet Full Feature Software and Drivers - Mac OS X v10.3.9, v10.4 and v10.5."

Hi,

I received the L7580 printer as a replacement for a defective HP7310. I was told at the store that this is a much better unit and I will save a lot of money etc. Time will tell. I spent hours trying to fix a problem with my WinXP computer after installing the printer software that came with the unit. For some reason my computer would no longer do an orderly shut down. I would literally have to hit the manual shut off button. And we know that doing a hard shut down is not always a good thing. I spent about an hour or so with tech support people where they told me to make sure my virus software was disabled and had reinstall the printer software. Nice people from tech support but after reinstalling three different times I decided to go another route. I am somewhat of a techie since I work as a tech in a school. So I had hit control/alt/delete and noticed one item called the srvhost.exe that was using up 95-98% of my CPU processing. I found the following web site whereby others had been experiencing similar problems.

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1157701&admit=-682735245+1192415825007+28353475

I tried the solution written by someone on typing up service.msc and followed each step. That finally solved my computer shut down problem. HP has to come out with an updated install software that corrects the problem.

This is simply the best printer/scanner/fax I have ever owned. It replaced a six year old HP V40 that never printed as fast as it was advertized. This machine can crank out 6 color copies a minute and 20 black and white copies a minute. It is the size of a desk top copier, is network and wireless capable (with the proper adapter) and is capable of two sided printing with the proper accessory tray. I've owned many HP printers and most last at least five years without problems. This is 2006 technology and cost about $220.

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

I looked long and hard for a new all-in-one and found almost everyone to be lacking. Having read a couple reviews on the L7580, I purchased and discovered it's very simple to set up and works like a charm. I would highly recommend for anyone who wants a powerful home system or solid office system.