Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

For about 20 years I have bought nothing but HP printers. At first they did very well for me and lasted for many years. The last two or three HP printers have been less than my expectations even though I have bought the more expensive and better rated models. I love to do genealogy. I love scanning obituaries, old pictures, documents, etc... into my files. The last HP printer I had was supposed to scan up to 7200 dpi so I thought it would be great for my scanning needs. I couldn't get the buggy thing to work half the time, let alone scan even at a decent 300 dpi. It was a royal pain -- always having to be restarted, not connecting to the network, giving error messages that it was offline, having to reinstall the drivers, etc... Hardly a week would go by without having to reinstall the driver and reconnect it to the router. And as far as printing out a decent picture to send in Christmas cards, well, forget it! The pictures would be orange or blue, washed out or nearly black. I have an older -- but quality -- photo software, but try as I might, that HP printer refused to print what I composed. It wasted more ink and paper and time than I care to even think about! Half my documents would print missing the bottom line or two or print with holes in the middle. It was crazy! I thought it was my older software and with software costing so much, I was determined to make do with what I had. One day I got so fed up with the whole printer/software situation that I grabbed my purse and headed to the office store to bring home new software no matter what the cost. Luckily, when I arrived at the store, I explained my situation to a knowledgeable person. She looked at the sample prints I brought with me and assured me my software was just fine -- my problem was my HP printer. She was an amateur photographer who only used Epson printers. I adamantly insisted it was my software, but she adamantly insisted right back that it was my HP printer. She guaranteed that if I bought a new Epson printer (which was a fraction of the cost of the new software I had planned to buy) and I didn't like it, I could bring it back for a full refund. I had nothing to lose, so together we picked out the Epson WF-3540 and I reluctantly took it home fully expecting to be bringing it back to exchange for that expensive software package. This new Epson printer stayed in the box for about a week because I wasn't convinced a new printer was the solution to my problems and I didn't have the time or energy to waste installing it just to prove that sales person wrong. I finally got it out and and started hooking it up -- *so* easy to do! Truly, I figured I had to have overlooked something because it was just too easy. Every computer in the house was immediately able to access this printer on the first try and have stayed connected to it ever since. My first test print was to copy a multi-color document. It turned out beautiful! Very clear letters, no blank spots or missing lines at the bottom. The color was wonderful. But I was still skeptical. Next, I test printed a picture in my file and it was beautiful as well. I scanned a new picture without any issue, composed it with my "old" photo software, and printed it out. It printed just as beautiful and with nice, balanced color. I was certainly softening to this new printer. I decided to give it a few more days to prove itself. I have used it for every day printing for several weeks now. It does a fantastic job. Smart little thing, too, as it can scan a document and print it front and back to save paper. My HP had a document feeder and was supposed to print front and back as well, but it always managed to pull in two or three sheets at a time, or skip some pages somewhere making the feature unreliable and wasteful to use -- not so with this Epson. This Epson has two paper trays which allows me to use both new paper for important documents and pre-used paper for unimportant documents which is convenient. My HPs have only had one paper tray and I was constantly having to swap paper -- usually after printing an important document on pre-used paper because I wasn't paying attention to what was loaded. Also, the Epson holds a lot more paper than my HPs have. I don't have to refill the drawers nearly as often which I didn't consider to be an important feature, but it sure is nice now that I have experienced it. Today I needed to scan in two, 20 page documents to PDF files. I used the basic software that came with the Epson printer and found myself smiling during the process. Two months ago it had taken me most of the day to scan a mere 6-page document into a PDF file. I remember that day and how irritated I was by the end of the process. If I got one complete scan in before that HP cut me off and gave me an error message I was doing good! Not so with this Epson. A simple scan was exactly that: Simple. Very simple. The software was very intuitive so I had no problem getting it to scan and save as I desired. Today I also needed to scan in some genealogy pictures first at a low resolution, then again at a higher resolution. I had been delaying this task because in the past scanning at a higher resolution was rarely possible with my HP. A few scans into the process, I found myself smiling, laughing, and finally tears of joy as I realized how nice this Epson was to work with. To say I am happy with this Epson is an under statement. I am absolutely delighted. I have tears of joy. Now I need to go back to the store -- I have a sales lady to thank. :) AS AN UPDATE... I did not use my Epson WF-3540 for a month. When I returned and resumed working with it, the YELLOW and CYAN did not print. I used the built-in Head Cleaner (Setup>Maintenance>Head Cleaning) and the yellow resumed to about 50%, but the cyan only printed a couple dots. After using the built-in Head Cleaner numerous times with no further benefit (and even changing the color cartridges with no benefit), I purchased a 4-ounce bottle of PRINT HEAD CLOG BUSTER by Inkmizer(dot)com (they are on Amazon as "A Bowl Of Cherries"). The man I spoke to was friendly and knowledgeable and even emailed directions to me. The product came quickly and with everything necessary. It was easy to use -- just a few drops on the resting pad, let soak, run the head cleaner, and test print. The first time I tried this, I let it sit overnight. In the morning, all of the yellow and most of the cyan was printing again. I soaked the resting pad a second time letting it sit over the weekend. Come Monday morning all colors were printing beautifully again. I am sure the problem was caused by my month-long absence which allowed the ink in the heads to dry up. I would hate for anyone to have the same issue and think the printer was ruined. This was a quick and inexpensive DIY fix that required no technical expertise. NOTE... I am not a "greenvine" user. No one paid me for my review or gave me this printer. I paid for it myself at an office supply store.