Hewlett Packard Laserjet Pro M1536DNf Multifunction Printer (CE538A)

I have both HP's and Cannons in my office, all color, and frankly I just got tired of spending thousands of dollars annually per machine on color when most of what I print should only be black and white anyways. Since my staff didn't seem to care about our costs no matter what I requested I decided to change the game. We bought the M1536dnf and I was very pleasantly surprised. The dark black print is crisp and sharp and even better than our HP 2840 and far better than the never dark or sharp Cannon MF 8350 (they talk about "true black" but all we got was genuine "grey"). They (we have bought another one of these as a HP 1606) work perfectly over the network in our Windows 7 and Win Server 2008 environment (the 2840 choked on the software upgrades and lost full functionality).The first print is fast and the machine is very quick. It is far more machine than I expected for the price. I LOVE buying one single cartridge now for two production machines and we will likely add another prnter of the same type at the end of the year. The color cartridge savings have paid for both machines and their toner supplies within 60 days. The output is very professional and now the staff are using inexpensive pre printed color letterhead instead of shortcutting by printing letterhead on the fly (which never looks as good in any event).If we have a real color project which is not that often we take it to Kinko's or similar and get much sharper and more professional output than we ever had internally and it only runs $15 to $25 for a big presentation.The only con we have is that for some reason the fax unit prints a confirmation sheet on incoming faxes which is, frankly, dumb. Either the fax is here, or, it isn't. On outgoing faxes we do want a confirmation page as we send contract documents via the system. You only get to select confirmation "on" or "off" and that's the way they built it. I would like a large paper tray, but, it only takes seconds to refill it.Overall, a lot of printer for the price and working well in contant use after five months.

There's no substitute for an actual network printer for sharing with multiple computers and for locating the printer at some remove from your computer or laptop. I got this to replace a USB laser printer which I had plugged into a USB port on my router-- always an unreliable way to do it, it would stop working every couple of months and I'd have to reboot stuff or reinstall it. And there's no substitute for a good old solid b&w laser printer. The ink doesn't have to dry like with inkjet, nozzles don't clog, and text quality is better and it's faster and cheaper per page than a color laser. It just works, all the time.Double-sided printing should be a requirement for anyone who prints documents. And you get a built-in scanner with document feeder, and copier.This is the only b&w laser printer of any kind that supports AirPrint, which lets you print directly from an iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad, without any computer involved. The printer appeared automatically on my iPod Touch, I chose if I wanted to print double-sided and how many copies, and that's it-- worked perfectly without any configuration. Handy for printing articles or maps when you don't feel like booting up your computer, or for using your iPod Touch or iPad at home and leaving your laptop at the office. The printouts look pretty much exactly like printouts from a normal Mac.You do have to upgrade the printer's firmware once to add the AirPrint feature. You download that upgrade from HP's website. The upgrade can be done painlessly from a Mac, and works over the network.In addition to being the only b&w laser with AirPrint, there are also not too many b&w laser all-in-ones out there, and not too many laser all-in-ones that can print double-sided.Printing from the Mac, including double-sided printing, also works perfectly without any software installation-- you can skip the included CD. It's a PostScript printer, which even nowadays helps some fonts print more correctly under some circumstances.You can also scan from the Mac without installing any software, using Apple's Preview or Image Capture applications. Both the automatic document feeder and the flatbed work perfectly. Note: This applies to Snow Leopard, the latest version of OS X. On my roommate's older Mac with Leopard, we had to download the HP printer driver and scanning software, which was easy enough and worked fine.A networked scanner is also convenient because you can share it among multiple computers, and it doesn't have to be near your computer.This all-in-one's only functional shortcoming is that you can't press a button on the scanner to scan directly to some computer, like you can with some Brother all-in-one's, for example. That feature is only really a time-saver when you're scanning multiple pages of a book, since you can't use the automatic document feeder so you'd have to go back and forth to the computer for every page. Or potentially with any object that you need to hold flat, if you've located the scanner at a distance from your computer. Making a copy on the printer and then scanning the copy with the document feeder could be a workaround, but wastes paper. Or put your computer near the scanner/printer.Scan quality is not necessarily top-notch, but it seems fine for documents and it's fast enough. Especially with the document feeder, scanning a multi-page document at 300dpi in grayscale to a PDF is very fast.Since this is a b&w laser, copying really works just like a copy machine. It's very fast.Compared to the slightly more professional b&w LaserJet P2015dn we have at the office, this printer is a little louder printing, but maybe a touch softer and faster at duplexing. Unlike the 2015, this printer doesn't have expandable memory. Also unlike the 2015, this printer doesn't have a fully enclosed input paper tray, or an optional straight paper path out the back. Print quality seems more or less similar.Warm-up times, both for scanning and printing, are fast. The first page comes out quickly and subsequent pages are fast too.I find the industrial design pretty ugly, but its footprint is small for the features, especially the depth. It is pretty tall and maybe a couple inches wider than it really needs to be. In general HP has a lot of experience with this stuff, and even if all the parts don't look luxurious, they work well. Overall this printer is a great value for the essential features you get.

I was impressed by this machine. HP is my favorite brand for quality, ease of use, and ink savings. This machine has hit the mark. I bought this machine to replace an HP officejet 5510 at our church because its ink cartridges dried out too fast and it was too slow for our needs. There were only a few small tweeks I would have made had I designed it...Pros:Scan quality awesome, really easy to use/save/send and super fast!Print quality wonderful and very fast.Cartridge life is great! I really put it to the test over the first couple of weeks with several large copying projects and it preformed beautifully.Speed on all features has been great as well!Noise level is great, I used it during a church board meeting and no one even knew I was using it!Ease of use is great...we have a lot of older, technologically un-inclined people in our church who are finding it very simple to figure out. A nice change for them!Cons:The size is a bit bulky and weight is a bit more than I would have expected but neither are show stoppers for me. It is not hideously large or weighty...just a bit.The software took quite a long time to download to my computer...that may have been an issue with the computer however! By quite a long time, I think it took about 20 minutes all together to get it set up. The instructions were very easy to follow and I had no issues other than having to go find something else to do for several minutes while it was downloading. The other HPs I have used had software that would automatically come from the machine instead of the disk...that would have been a nice feature here.Overall, I think this is a great machine! It does not take a nuclear engineer to set up or use and it produces a nice copy, fast scan, easy fax and great cartridge life.