Hewlett-Packard CM1312nfi MFP

So I have just finished my travelling trip and have ended up at my Girlfriends family for a while and as an IT support person I have been tasked with sorting out the entire IT equipment in the house. The printer in the property was over five years old and the cartridges were no longer stocked in shops so I decided that the only way forward was to go and buy a new one (that's what IT people do best)

After browsing around office world ...
...We wanted to buy a printer that could also scan as well, however this printer does more then that.

Installation

As I said I'm an It professional and my favourite printers are HP's. One of the resaons for this is the installation of them is quite simple. Once we unpacked I located the installation disc CD that comes in a windows format and also a Mac format to use on whichever operating system you use.

... more

So I have just finished my travelling trip and have ended up at my Girlfriends family for a while and as an IT support person I have been tasked with sorting out the entire IT equipment in the house. The printer in the property was over five years old and the cartridges were no longer stocked in shops so I decided that the only way forward was to go and buy a new one (that's what IT people do best)

After browsing around office world for a printer for ages we stumbled upon this one. We wanted to buy a printer that could also scan as well, however this printer does more then that.

Installation

As I said I'm an It professional and my favourite printers are HP's. One of the resaons for this is the installation of them is quite simple. Once we unpacked I located the installation disc CD that comes in a windows format and also a Mac format to use on whichever operating system you use.

This was the case with this device. It did however require you to put 2 pieces on the device, one is the copy feed tray and the other is the screen protection so the buttons don't stick out. This may seem a bit daunting at first but both are easily to assemble and simply clip into place.

The disk is a step by step guide to setting up the printer and it tells you where to remove the plastic safety components from in a logical fashion. My one criticism of the printer is that I was instructed to remove things from places when the plastic wasn't actually there. Now this may actually be my own fault as I simply went into override when the printer arrived and may have removed them without realising it and this hasn't happened to me in my previous installations of HP printers so I will give them the benefit of the doubt. When setting up the device it talks you through how to use the control panel on the printer to check some of its important settings.

In the box comes a

Power cable
Ethernet cable
Printer to USB cable
The installation CD's
Telephone cable
Instruction manual.

The printer has three modes and can be used for printing, Scanning and Faxing

Printing

The printing in this device is superb. The printer comes complete with black, Cyan, Magenta and Yellow cartridges and is ready to print as soon as the printer is installed. The printer is a LaserJet and it gives the usual high quality print from HP products.

However maybe the printer has one small problem here in that it is not the quickest device I have ever seen as it can only print 12 pages per minute in black and white. However this device is for a home environment and won't be used excessively so it isn't actually going to cause a problem, but for a reasonably sized business I would not recommend it.

Copying and Scanning

As part of the installation it asks you to do a copy of a page that you printed in the setup. Copying couldn't actually be simpler on the device. We havent had this product long and have had no problems so far, but will update the revied if we do.

On the front of the device it is split into sections for copy, fax and scan. To copy you simply place the paper into the tray at the top of the device and hit the start copy. You can also choose to do the copy in black and white or colour.

Scanning is also the same. However on thing is different. You have the ability to scan to the computer so you can scan a document through the printer and save it a local folder on your machine. Once this is done you can email. The file is saved in a pdf format which can be opened in abode reader which is free to install.

Faxing

Faxing again can be setup at the point of installation. It does ask if you want to use the device as a fax and if you choose no then it simply skips it.

The fax allows you to schedule faxes to go at a certain time, create a speed dial list of people you contact frequently and have a phonebook of people to easily contact them and save typing in the whole number.

Other features

The printer can be connected one of two ways. The first is by a simple USB cable from the printer to the machine that you want to print from. Or the second way, which I personally prefer, is to install it on the local network. All you need is to have a spare port for a network cable in the router or hub that connects you to the outside world. One problem I experienced here was that the printer wasn't recognised on the network through the software. However simply go into add a printer in the control panel and use a driver from the disk.

Installing the printer this way allows me to do onsite support easily. Simply type the IP address of the printer into an internet browser and you are given all of the printer settings and can password protect this to make it secure. You can do everything here and even get an audit trail of who is printing what exactly on the device.

The printer also has the ability to print photographs by simply placing your camera card into the front slot and following the on screen instructions.

Conclusions

I have set up loads of Multi function devices in the past and to be honest I haven't been that impressed with them, however this one has changed my opinion. The printer, scanning and faxing is extremely east to do on the device and the setup was also simple. This device is also lowest priced colour laser multifunction printer.

My only slight concerns are that if this printer is used in an office environment then it may suffer with speed issues. This is a product that I would certainly recommend for a home user.

you can find out any further details about the printer at HP site and searching for HP Color LaserJet CM1312nfi MFP

EDIT -----------

The paper tray on the printer is to small and leaves you constaly having to re-fill the paper. I'm coming from a corporate environment where there are 2 possbily 3 paper trays, but this only has one small one.

After reading the comments on this review. The printer is quite large, but sits nicely on a set of drawers. The only problem I could see with the size of the product is if you placed this under a computer desk it would elimate the ability to scan as you have to raise the top unit up and this requires a reasonable amount of space. Obviously to do this you could only lift it enough to fit a piece of paper in the scan unit and proceed from there.

Thanks for reading 

...less