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41 of 42 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Good Value, Painless Installation., 7 Jul 2008
I ordered this printer through Amazon and it was supplied by Quigleys, I've never heard of them but they were extremely prompt.
The supplied set-up CD assumes you have three brain cells and two of them aren't working, but that is really no bad thing, and I imagine that even someone who had never grappled with a printer before would find the procedure very straightforward. It covers everything, including ink cartridge insertion, in a very clear manner, asking the user to confirm each step has been taken. It then prints an alignment page before you move on to the fevered excitement of connecting to your PC.
Set-up asks if you intend to use wireless or just USB, and then prompts for the USB lead to be connected. BTW, a previous reviewer seems to imply that no USB lead is supplied, but there was certainly one in my carton, it is a standard A-B type. I use Vista Home Premium, which detected the printer and installed the drivers in a few seconds as soon as the USB lead was connected. If you have elected to use wireless the printer then sniffs for an infrastructure (router) network and set-up gives a list of available networks, in my case only the one. After that you input your network password, assuming you have the good sense to use one, a test page is printed, and that's that, job done, put the kettle on. I have never experienced such painless set-up of a wireless device, Lexmark must have some outstanding software engineers.
It is entirely possible to switch your router off and connect directly to your PC as an ad-hoc network. I can't think of a good reason for doing that, but mention it to reassure any potential buyers who perhaps have a wireless laptop but do not have a wireless router. Also, someone might be saved from grief if I mention that there is no ethernet port; networking is wireless only.
Print, scan, and copy quality are all more than acceptable to me at this price. It will scan wirelessly, which is useful, and very much faster than I expected, just seconds for an A4 page. You have to go and poke a couple of buttons, but of course you're there anyway putting whatever you're scanning on the scanner. If you have more than one PC on the network you're able to select which to send the scan to.
Duplex is the facility to print on both sides of the page, but it is really a manual feature in this product. The printer driver prompts for the output page with printing on one side to be placed back in the feed tray. Naturally there is every chance you will do so with the paper either the wrong way round or upside-down, or both, with unfortunate results. All the same, this could be useful, it is selected by means of a checkbox in File/Print.
I have tried the card slot, using an xD type. In case it is not obvious from the product description and price, photos are not displayed on the LCD screen. The software is as seen before from Lexmark, giving the facility to print proofs of every photo on the card. You can then tick boxes on the proof sheet for each photo you want to print full-size, place the sheet on the scanner, and the printer will see your ticks and produce the required prints. All very clever, but I would have be without a PC and with no prospect of obtaining one before I would resort to such desperate measures.
Conclusion then. If you want a top-quality photo printer, then this is not for you. Similarly, if you need to hammer out hundreds of pages per day this is not for you. But for a cheapo general purpose 3-in-1 home printer with the added convenience of wireless connectivity, then I can recommend this. You know it makes sense.
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