17 out of 17 people found this review helpful.
Very Useful for the Money
Date of Review: Nov 11, 2007
The Bottom Line: This is a good inexpensive printer perfect for home use.
I love my HP 4315 all-in-one. For the reasonable price of $70 to $120, it has a lot of features. I wanted a scanner that allowed documents to feed into the machine for a reasonable price. I was using a flat bed scanner and when you are trying to send documents by fax, and it is very time consuming. Also the hp 932 printer was chewing up every fifth or so a page. An all-in-one is a sensible answer to the fact that you have to find a space for every peripheral.
I have owned it for 10 months. It was easy to set up the first time, and equally easy to set up the second time when I moved and forgot/lost/packed all my documentation.
The scanning is very easy. I was able to scan all my (two) loan applications and save them in my computer. This was very valuable, because my application arrived at the mortgage office 10 days late. I was able to get my mortgage broker a copy, which is kind of a silly story if you will let me digress.
When you scan a document, you press scan and then select a setting that dictates what kind of file is created by your scan. I always pick hp photosmart premier. This creates a photograph quality high pixel image. When I found out that my mortgage application was late, I started emailing my application to my broker. However the files were so huge, that the emails kept failing. It took a couple hours to send about one third, and I gave up. I saved the application to a CD and sent it to him. Why didn't I fax it? I must enjoy punishment. On Monday I called my broker to tell him that I sent the CD and found out that his email was shut down because of the huge email attachments. Oh well, I hope you can see that you do have to spend some time with the features to optimize functions for your own needs.
When scanning piles of documents you need to work with piles of five to seven or the feeder will skip pages by taking two or three together. Legal size documents will slip off the landing tray when the next document comes along, so you need to keep tracking of documents coming in and going out.
One disadvantage of a document feeding scanner is that you can't scan small items. I have been able to scan a business card, but it took a ridiculous amount of effort and is hard on the small scanned item. Of course if you want to scan small unusually shaped items, you should buy a flatbed scanner.
I have faxed documents directly and from files. Both are relatively easy. The answering machine mode is great. Before I used my Windows' fax/modem software to receive faxes and if left it on accidentally it ruined my phone calls. This feature allows me to leave the fax on all the time which is nice.
I find that the inkjet print quality is fine. I do find that the print cartridges are used up relatively quickly, but this is very usual for hp printers. I find that other reviewers find that it is a slow printer. It is much slower that my father's all in one, which is also HP but higher end. I don't know which model it is, but it practically fires out documents at an impressive clip. The 4315 is much faster than my hp 932, so I am very satisfied.
