Glad to hear that banks use Lexmark ... I guess I'm not one
Pros:
Good Scanning functionalities, small footprint
Cons:
Mediocre color print quality, slow desktop software, printer last 18 months before it died
The Bottom Line:
To be skipped. Printer quality is too poor and sluggish software. You are much better to go with an HP printer
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Overall Rating:
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Author's Review
I've been using the Lexmark X7170 All-in-One printer for a while and I must say from the get go that coming from using HP printers, this is a great disappointment. Just as an fyi, my sister was also using the same printer and the same issues are on both machines so it's not just one. I say "was" because the printer stopped working after 18 months of usage. The issue is with the scanner light and would cost more than a new printer when you add the $50/hour for the repair.
THE PRINTER :
The printer in itself looks nice and doesn't have too much of a cheap plastic look and feel to it. It's footprint is fairly small which makes it convenient. Setting it up is easy.
LEXMARK PRODUCTIVITY SUITE:
In order to fully utilize the X7170 features, you need to install the Lexmark Productivity Suite on your desktop (in my case I am using MS Windows XP). The installation went fine but using it is a hog. It's a very heavy piece of software that slows down your system quite a bit. I have 756MB of RAM but it truly is not enough. I can't really do anything while it's printing or faxing. And speaking of faxing, the popup window that shows you the progress of your fax is always popping up in front of you thus making it very easy to press the wrong button. Also, if you try to continue prepping faxes while you are actually faxing, you are certain to freeze your system which may require a reboot. I have not been able to find the reason why it's doing this. My work around is to line up all my faxes by delaying them.
As for the other features, you get manage you pictures and documents directly from the Suite, but again, with a very slow response time. For Scanning, which works fine, you can either OCR or PDF. Those are nice features.
But overall, the tool is too sluggish .
PRINT QUALITY:
Overall it's very poor. The black and white prints are good enough on any paper. The color ones are very mediocre. Never been able to get nice good looking solid pictures even with BEST switched on. Again, on any kind of paper, I get these strikes ... and it's not the cartridge being dirty or something ... that was happening from day one.
The printer will not accept legal paper, so it's important to remember that. It does have an envelope slot which works but for the life of me I've never been able to get one to print straight ... they're always crooked no matter how well or carefully I place the envelope.
CARTRIDGES:
I've tried both the Regular and the High Capacity. The latter were giving me even worse results and I've tried several times but stopped because it wasn't worth my time. The regular capacity do not last very long so you go through a lot of them and they are not cheap ... though that is applicable for any cartridges anyway.
BOTTOM LINE:
This is a disappointing printer overall. It should not have the problems it's having with the software and the print quality since that's the business Lexmark is in.
