Good Service on OfficeJet 4215
By Merle Nicholson
merle@merlenicholson.com
I bought a new HP OfficeJet 4215 all-in-one from NewEgg.com – a low end one at $80 plus $6.50 shipping. It’s a FAX, copier, scanner and inkjet printer. I ordered it online and received it via FedEx five days later. As I unpacked it, it didn’t take long to find out the “front panel overlay” that snaps around the keyboard was missing from the box.
It wouldn’t work at all without the cover. There are four switches that have to get depressed by this cover for the machine’s own setup to work. It would power up, but I got messages that the panel overlay wasn’t installed, and it went no further.
This printer has an LCD screen that enables all sorts of setup options for all of its functions, including prompts for cartridge replacement. There’s no guessing here; this little baby tells you what to do. It said to install the overlay.
So I called HP’s 1-800 support number about 4:00 PM the same day, talked to a pretty good customer service lady presumably in India; it took her several minutes to find out she could FedEx me one, and a follow-up email gave me an expected delivery for four days later. The next morning at 9:00 AM the FedEx guy was at the door with box in hand, say about 16 hours after I called tech support. Installed and working in 16 hours. It’d be hard to complain about HP’s service.
The machine works pretty well. I haven’t found anything I haven’t liked so far. My research finding reviews haven’t anything bad to say except for printing speed, but the cost was more important to me than speed. You can’t say that it’s slow, anyway, just not fast, about the same as my other printers. I have an old HP 722C I have set on draft black and white (the color cartridge emptied years ago) for very fast b&w copies, and a nice but rarely used Canon 850i for excellent color prints. All three are attached to the same PC, one parallel and two USB.
This OfficeJet has USB connection only. Other, more expensive models have Ethernet and even Bluetooth. The power cord is a simple small cord, no power cube – the way it should be. There are the incoming telephone line connector and an outgoing one if you want to connect a phone instrument.
My spouse wanted a copier that is easier than using the utility and scanner on my PC, and I’ve been exchanging FAXes with some business associates lately. I’d been connecting and powering up my notebook to receive FAXes, and I’d grown pretty tired of it. My past experience with multi-function devices wasn’t too good, and I never recommended one to anyone unless they owned nothing – no printer, scanner or FAX machine. Then you could justify the cost. But all that’s in the past. This does a good job of all of these functions for the price of an inexpensive printer. I’m keeping my flatbed scanner though; obviously you can’t slide a book into the OfficeJet.
For FAX there are plenty of options for telephone line situations. You can set it up for a dedicated line, share it with a telephone using distinctive ring detection (an option from your telephone utility); share with a telephone and/or answer machine and receive only when you press a button. The instructions even go into sharing it on a line with DSL.
For copying, you just stack the paper in the scanner input tray, press Copy, quickly set the number of copies if you want more than one, then press the Black or Color buttons.
If you’re attached to a PC by USB cable, you can send scans to the PC – you set the default directory and it’s automatic. Just load the paper and press Scan. It couldn’t be easier. There is a scanner utility installed on the PC that detects the scan. It includes OCR if you receive the scan as Text. There is also photo organizer and photo printing software and more – see the list below.
You can FAX from the PC – and if you’ve shared the FAX on the network – from any networked PC. When you FAX from a PC, you select the OfficeJet FAX printer. A panel pops up on the attached PC with boxes for destination telephone, cover page fill-ins, the works. In my own case, the OfficeJet is attached to a PC I use for networked backups along with two other printers. If I FAX from my networked personal PC, I then have to go to the backups PC to fill in the FAX destination information.
And of course this is a FAX machine that stands alone; it doesn’t have to be connected to a PC at all to FAX or to copy.
And obviously it’s a standard color inkjet printer, too. If the printer is shared on the network, you can add that printer to any other PC and the printer driver automatically installs over the network, a feature of Windows XP. It has two ink cartridges – a three-color and a black. You can convert the printer to a 7-color photo printer by removing the black and snapping in a photo cartridge. I haven’t tried this out, but there’s no reason to expect anything but good results; all the reviews I’ve read praise the photo quality. After all, it’s an HP.
Specifications are below this photo.
Hewlett-Packard OfficeJet 4215
Some specs:
USB Cable not included
Printer:
FAX:
Copier:
Scanner:
Software:
HP Image Zone Photo & Imaging software: HP Director, HP Photo Gallery, HP Image Editor, HP Instant Share, HP Photo Prints, HP Album Printing, HP Quick 4 x 6 prints, Readiris OCR, HP Send to Programs u