Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

So far I've had this printer almost two weeks, and I think I've finally figured out how to get it to stop crippling my system. At first, the drivers on the CD caused my internet connection to drop every minute or so. I downloaded the latest drivers from the HP website and at first it appeared that things improved, but I discovered that the drivers caused my computer to hang after a short time and hose my system so bad it wouldn't even shut down! On one occasion of turning my computer off without shutting down, it actually messed up my operating system and I had to rebuild my machine! I can definitively trace the problem to the HP drivers because the problems occur only after installing the drivers, the problems disappear when the drivers are uninstalled, and even on a freshly built system I experience the same issues right after installing the HP drivers! For those stuck in a similar rut, here's the steps I've gone through after many hours of tinkering and talking with HP support to get things working (hopefully): 1. Download the latest drivers from the HP site. Version 4.42.0.0 seems to work okay. 2. Don't install the "Smart Web Printing" components (they may hang IE). 3. Give your printer a static IP address through the controls on the physical printer (you can't do it through the management software). 4. Disable the three HP-related services in services.msc. 5. DO NOT allow an automatic update installing the ~April 2008 Imaging Device Functions "critical patch" which will corrupt your system. Other than the driver problems, the printer itself is fantastic. I've had printers hooked up to print servers before, but never an all-in-one that allowed printing, scanning AND fax-related activities over the network. The supporting software is also fantastic. Not only can you launch a scan from your network-connected computer, but you can designate that you want it in a searchable format (.pdf, .rtf, etc.) and the optical character recognition (OCR) software does a good job of recognizing text and sizing it appropriately (thus the scan is not just an image, but a document whose text you can cut/paste/etc.). Also, apparently you have the ability to have received faxes save straight to your computer over the network instead of being printed out, the two-sided printing is better for the environment, as is the Energy Star rating which is a big plus in my book! In short, the driver situation makes this purchase a sketchy one, at least for Vista owners, but the great features and capabilities of this printer have me hanging on instead of returning the printer hoping that HP will eventually resolve the problems. UPDATE: Actually, even with the above tweaks, I still exprienced problems with the drivers crashing my system (e.g. freezing after waking up from sleep mode). I even went so far as to downgrade from 64-bit to 32-bit, but my system is still dragged down by this piece of garbage and there's no ETA on an updated driver which has sat unchanged for at least three months. Sad. It's a good product marred by awful drivers/software. I'd take both stars away if I could. SECOND UPDATE: If you're looking for a good WiFi printer, but own Vista, consider the Epson WorkForce 600 (which I'm now using successfully with Vista) or HP's Officejet Wireless 6500, which is basically the "certified for Vista" version of the J6480.