Decent printer, Excellent value

Printing: I found the print speed to be impressive, especially for a small, inexpensive unit like this. The print quality is excellent for text and simple graphics. However, prints of photos and some large graphics often look pretty bad, with unevenness and banding in any large area of black or solid gray.

Copying: Quick and good quality; doesn't require computer to be on/connected. Copies and black & white scans fail to register light blues and greens, but this is a minor complaint. In the rare case where this is a problem, you can make a color scan and then print out the resulting image.

Scanning: This is not a scanner for anyone who cares about speed or color accuracy (Duh!), but it is possible to coax fair-to-medium quality images from it if you take some time. Green and purple fringing of B/W text and graphics is horrible at lower scan resolutions, but only moderate at max resolution. Color accuracy would not be too bad, except that some colors are almost comically oversaturated. For example, pale yellow scans in as day-glow canary yellow. This can be fixed in any decent photo editor, but it wastes time and slightly degrades image quality. Resolution is 1200x600 DPI color, 2400x600 B/W. The "enhanced" 9600 DPI spec is, to put it bluntly, a lie.

Speed: Startup, print, and copy speeds seem good and snappy to me. B/W scan speed is okay. High resolution color scans are slow, over 4 minutes (!) for an 8.5x11 inch page. That can be a significant limitation, because high resolution is the only thing that helps the color-fringing problem. Don't even *think* of using the parallel interface if you plan on scanning frequently; that 4 minute scan using USB turns into a 20 minute scan with the parallel port (and yes, I had the port in ECP mode).

Software: Not bad for a free bundle (I use Windows, so I can't speak for the Mac software). The "Control Center" seemed silly to me at first, but it does allow you to set up pre-defined scan and copy options that you can trigger from the front panel of the printer, without having to open up a separate program on the computer. PaperPort is basically an OCR and file format converter pretending to be a Document Management System, but I am amazed at how good it is turning printed documents and spreadsheets into Word and Excel documents. I haven't used any OCR software in a while, though, so maybe my standards are low.

Noise: The fan makes a pretty good whoosh when starting up and printing, and the copy/scan head makes a WadaWadaWada sound that is annoying but not loud. It's been fine for me, but don't expect to print or scan anything if your roommate is sleeping in the same room (unless of course you don't mind waking up your roommate).

Paper Handling: I can't believe how many features this thing has, given its price. The paper input and output trays, the document feeder, and the flatbed glass/lid are all lightweight, but they work and they don't seem flimsy. The flatbed lid is not removable, but it does have floating hinges that allow magazines and thin books to be put on the glass without stressing the lid. The output tray -- more of an output slot, really -- seems badly designed at first, until you realize that the whole top of the printer opens up like a clamshell, allowing you to get at small format pages. Printing on envelopes curls them a fair amount, but even expensive printers often do that. I haven't had any curling problems with normal paper, except when running pages through twice to print double sided, and even that hasn't been a noticeable problem. As mentioned, duplex printing is manual, but the driver walks you through the process of putting the pages back in the paper tray in the proper orientation.

Other: The unit creates a pronounced power glitch when it powers on or prints; all the fluorescent lights in one end of my house dim noticeably for just a fraction of a second. This may have more to do with my electrical system than with the printer, but I haven't noticed this severe a problem with other appliances, even refrigerators and hairdryers. The power management kicks in when the printer is idle for a few minutes, and it's smart enough to leave the print engine asleep when you scan without printing.