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

I received the HP L7580 as a Christmas present to replace an older HP model. I've always purchased HP All in Ones and had good luck with using them for my small home office.

Unfortunately, this one has been a pain since day one.

First, I encountered all of the difficulty setting it up and installing the software that other users mentioned here. Once I got someone in tech support to talk to me, it took 2 hours, most of that on hold, and I figured it out myself. Overall, it took about 8 hours to install the printer.

6 months later, the machine will no longer FAX or COPY or SCAN. I got a paper jam one day using the document feeder up top (yes, it feeds in crooked and takes more than one piece of paper at a time!), and even though I have cleared the paper jam, it is telling me I have an "Original Loaded" and will not let me load any other documents for fax, copy, or scan functions.

I'm fortunate I can at least still print with this machine, but HP hasn't been very helpful- yet.

This is an awful product and HP should be embarassed.

I've been in the computer industry 13 years, so this is not user error.

I've setup about 10 of these in different companies, and several more for individuals, including one for myself. The problem with this printer is that the setup is in fact long, and most people ignore the instructions and fail to set it up correctly. I don't care if you have been setting up printers for decades, and you are a professional, if you do not follow the instructions then you will face tons of problems.

The only problems I have had with this printer is that the software decides to get "iffy" once in a while (rare in my experience), and I think it's more due to Windows updates than HPs drivers. That's the only reason I gave it 4 stars. After that, this machine is awesome. The print and scan quality are amazing and the cartridges last a long time, offering a very low per page cost. For personal printing i lower the quality to draft, it looks just as good, uses less ink, and prints out way faster. The printer also offers many settings for everything (printing, copying, scanning, fax).

Regardless of the reviews, I can tell you right now that this is a great machine. I know a company where they have 7 of these that are pretty much "abused" and they are all working fine. Just pay close attention to the setup instructions and operating environment.

If any of you need any type of assistance setting this up or fixing a current problem then please contact me.

***Note: This review is based on Windows XP.

Joshua Marius
[...]

As so many have noted, this was really tough setting up. Though, in all fairness, some of it was me doing boneheaded things that I only realized were so boneheaded later. Some of it wasn't, though. The software only loaded completely easily on one of my computers. On two others, it loaded but I got a message saying it hadn't loaded successfully. But, anyway, after several hours of messing with setup, I am not completely happy with this thing. It prints (and does all the other stuff) very well and it is so cool to have it hooked up to my network. So, if you can handle a few hours getting everything setup, I'd recommend this printer in a heartbeat - especially at the price I got it with a rebate at a brick and mortar store about $[...] less than the current (6/27/08) price.

I have medium sized client and the majority of their offices are 3-11 person offices all over North America and every office has at least one of these Office Jet 7000 (7300, 7500, 7600 or 7700) series MFD's, some have one for each field associate.

The problems have been extensive and common, FAX's that fail to transmit, or received faxes that seem to slice the page longitudinally as if someone sliced the page long ways.

Scanners that smear the back side when in duplex mode, device lockups requiring resets that are inconsistent and hard to duplicate.

The WiFi issues are the least of our problems and the best way to enable WiFi is create a static IP, if you try to use DHCP it locks up more than 80% of the time with all kinds of access points from Linksys, NetGear, D-Link and even the Cisco Aironet.

We fixed that insidious "Clear Paper Jam" error from the rear duplex loader / read for solution.


This device consistently stretches the text on every duplexed scanned side.
In other words, if you set the scanner to scan both sides of the page, the underside / 2nd part always stretches the text at the top of the 2nd page.

(SEE SUBMITTED PHOTO)

Sometimes, it has just been a single sentence, other times an entire paragraph.

Contacting HP TechSupport is as painful as it is useless. Search their tech support and find out everything else about this thing except what you need to fix.

Searched Google to no avail either.

BUT - the scanning performance speed is superb for an MFD in this price range,,,, too bad it just skews the tops of the even numbered pages.


------ SOLVING THAT "PAPER JAM" ERROR ------
REFER TO THE USER SUBMITTED PHOTO FOR GRAPHICAL NOTES AT THE other HP Officejet Pro L7780 Color All-in-One Printer/Fax/Scanner/Copier (C8192A#ABA)Amazon 7780 Product Page here:


Required Tools:
(2) Medium sized paper clips

Preferable Tools:
(1) Pair of pliers with rubber grips
(1) Edged tool such as wall paper knife, metal pick or toothpick to clean out gear teeth.


This fix applies to paper jams the device believes are in the rear duplexer and often occurs after a real jam that has shredded the paper inside the mechanism.

Despite the fact you've carefully cleaned out all the visible paper from inside with the cover open, paper can jam the gears used to drive the rear rollers and even the tiniest amount of shred prevents operation resulting in the impossible Paper Jam error.

HP Tech Support online and on the phone don't troubleshoot it past "clear the paper from the device than try again please" b.s.

After removing the duplexer, grip any of the four rubber rollers and attempt to rotate in either direction, if they don't move freely with little effort, then continue with these instructions.

Begin:

1. Take the first paper clip and contact the lower two brass rectangles, this fools the device into believing the duplexer is installed, keep the contacts bridged (don't remove your hand or the paper clip until Step 4.) THERE IS NO ELECTROCUTION RISK.
2. Press the "OK" button on the control panel to pretend the paper jam is cleared.
3. CAREFULLY OBSERVE THE pair of white gears on the left, if they seem to clutch, stall, skip or freeze then you have paper shards which are causing the jam.
4. Using a firmer grip or pliers, grip the furthest left rubber roller and rotate in either direction , the gears should rotate with your efforts and look for shards of paper in the gear teeth.
5. Use the paper clip, toothpick or any appropriate edged tool to clear the shards.

Bridge the lower contacts again and observe if the gears rotate freely, if so then you've cleared the insidious jam should be able to print until the next error from this piece of chiitt printer.

When it actually prints the way it is supposed to - it creates a very good quality copy. And, it's very handy to have the scanner built in. I rarely use the fax option, since we have another fax machine, and we also scan and fax through our computer more often.

BIG PROBLEM - our printer is now printing mirror images of what we want to print all the time!! We didn't do anything to the settings to create this problem, so I'm not sure what is happening. We can't figure out how to fix the problem.....

Very frustrating!!!!!