Excellent machine for home office use! (UPDATED 1/7/09)

Despite some negative reviews on other websites my wife and I bought this unit because of good prior experience with HP Printers. We were looking for a single, reliable machine that could fax, print, copy and scan letter and legal documents efficiently. We also wanted a flatbed legal scanning option and the HP Officejet Pro L7680 was one of the few that has it. The L7680 also has multiple, front-panel input slots for digital media and you can scan directly through digital photos using the built-in LCD Display to select which ones you want to print. The L7680 does not have to be online with your computer for you to do this, or to fax or copy for that matter.

The HP Officejet Pro L7680 was purchased from Staples, Huntington, NY on 6/29/07. The purchase price was $399.98 plus tax, minus a $100 promotional rebate that came in the mail about 6 weeks afterwards. Love those rebates! For an additional $44.99 I bought a swap-out additional 2-year warranty, because the machine is quite (mechanically) complex, just for the peace of mind.

The setup is pretty simple for a complicated machine. Be careful though, if you are not reasonably strong then get some help getting the L7680 unit out of the box! It is quite heavy. I had to buy a strong, small cabinet to put it on. HP's quick setup guide was well written and very easy to follow; so the initial setup took about an hour including installation of the software. It took some tweaking to get all of the software settings right for the scanner, printer and fax functions.

Everything has performed flawlessly since the purchase. The print heads and system do use a lot of ink when you set the L7680 up for the first time, but ink usage has been moderate since. The printer is very fast for an ink-jet; almost as fast as a laser. Even on lower-ink use settings the printing is just fine for regular correspondence, images and maps. The copier and fax functions are very easy to use. The scanner function allows us to control the number of d.p.i. for each scanned document, which helps to save storage space. This is important to me because I save lots of scanned documents so I can email them to customers and to my office. In addition, this allows me to keep down the size of the email attachments (.pdf files) that I send out.

My wife and I wanted a reliable multi-function machine and we seem to have found it in the L7680. We don't do anything fancy with the unit; just regular business and personal correspondence, printing, copying, faxing and scanning. The auto-document feeder works fine (as long as your documents are nice and flat without any bent corners,) even with different sized, mixed documents. We have yet to try the auto-duplex function so we can't comment on that.

The negatives:
1) Some of the plastic parts feel kind of flimsy.
2) The L7680 is a little noisy, like other, older HP printers.
3) It weighs about 45 lbs., so it is definitely not portable.
4) I can't run a highlighter over anything I print or it smudges, even when the document has been left to dry for some time. Something about the ink composition doesn't jive with the chemicals in a highlighter.
5) I find that when you print envelopes you have to guide them through the paper-feed by hand or the printing will come out crooked.
6) Color print quality is not that great, but we also have an Epson Stylus C88 connected for that purpose, so it's not an issue for us.

Other than that we have no complaints and we consider these to be minor drawbacks in a unit that has so many functions.

I have read plenty of negative reviews about the L7680 on other websites and in most cases it seems that the buyers expected to get the performance of a $3000 laser printer, $500 high-def scanner, copier and fax all rolled into one unit for 1/10th of the price. If you are going to buy this machine then understand it for what it is. Don't expect to be able to put a 40 page, 2-sided color, graphics document in the feeder and have the L7680 copy and reproduce it while being totally unattended and without a snag or two. I would not expect this machine to be the sole I/O device for a 15 person office. Heavier duty machines are available for that purpose. The L7680 is a jack-of-all-trades and master of none, but it is a lot of home-office functionality for $300 - $400 dollars, that's for certain.

If the L7680 unit turns out to be reliable, long-term - then we will have gotten excellent value for our money from this purchase. I would recommend it to anyone without hesitation.

1/7/09 Update to original review:  The ink that is used in this HP printer is of a relatively dry nature and takes a long time to set after printing.  I frequently print pages and then scan them using the ADF to get a .pdf file set up on disk.  Over time, the ADF will build up dry ink residue on the rubber drive wheels that pull the paper from the input tray, which causes them to slip and as a result, you get a document misfeed.  To avoid this, or to correct this problem if it is happening on your machine, periodically open the feeder cover, lift the rubber drive wheel assembly and gently rotate and rub the drive wheels clean using a lint-free cloth with distilled water or rubbing alcohol (I prefer the alcohol as it dries by itself.)  Make sure the wheels are dry before you close the assembly and feeder cover.  After I clean the feeder mechanism in this manner, the ADF runs like it is brand new.