Hewlett-Packard 2115

I really wanted this product to be good. It cost £200, and by the time you throw in a cable, glossy paper (for photo-printing) and a spare ink cartridge, I was £250 lighter.

Alas, after hours of frustration, and calls to the HP technical helpline (who would be better off giving advice on HP sauce, rather than Hewlett-Packard). I had to take it back for a refund.

First of all the positives.... I agree with some of bluenose01's comments (also concerning this product). Yes it is easy to set up, and it's a dawdle to use.

Now the negatives...

1. The SIZE - it's not small and neat. Go into a Dixons and check it out... it's a behemoth, A LEVIATHAN!

2. The SCANNING software - I've used a few scanners in the past, and I like to be able to control the resolution. I want to be able to sacrifice quality for speed and a smaller file, or vice versa. The scanning software for this product tries to be too clever, by selecting an optimal resolution on your behalf. You can override this, but the results are freakishly bad when you do.

3. The PHOTO PRINTING - One of the main reasons I bought this product was the impressive 4800 dpi printing spec. I envisaged printing my digital camera shots with true colours and fantastic clarity. I was disappointed to find variations in colour across the page, where there were none in the original image. Calls to the HP help-desk resulted in the usual "try cleaning it" advice, despite the fact that it was just un-wrapped. Their next gem of inspirational help was "take it back". Genius. And that was after I had been passed on to one of their engineers! (he designed the chocolate wrist-strap I believe).
So, not wanting to appear rash, I thought I would give it a while to bed in. Maybe it was too clean? Maybe it would settle down?
Three weeks later, I had to take it back to Currys. My 28-day refund period was about to expire. To be fair, they tried their best. They found an option in the printer settings which resulted in the colour variation becoming less noticeable. This wasn't good enough though, and I am now checking out the Epson range - any suggestions?

In conclusion therefore, I suspect this is a user friendly piece of kit, which does it all, to a fairly average standard.

It would be good in a home office environment or small business, where you want a printer/scanner/copier for high-volume, average quality output. If however, you expect photo quality scans and prints (and it's being sold on that basis) then I would tread very carefully. Take in a couple of your own files on a floppy (no not THOSE ones!!!) and ask them to demonstrate it.

Maybe I was unlucky, and got the dud one? Buyer beware!