Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

We are about to receive our 3'd unit after the first two broke. The first one stopped feeding paper after 19 sheets were printed. It just stopped picking up any type of paper from the tray. I spent a couple of hours trying to figure out what was wrong including a hour talking to HP support. We returned the unit to Amazon (thanks Amazon!) to get our money back. Then we bought one at a nearby Staples figuring it would be easier to return. But after 121 pages the document feeder stopped. This time there was a broken plastic piece that fell out of the doc feeder. It was too late for Staples to just take it back so we had to kill another hour with HP phone support and are awaiting a refurbished replacement unit. The build quality is just about one level above that that would make it fall apart when you picked it up out of the box. The software and firmware is shameful. Embarrassing. (I am a software engineer) For example: -- There is no way to get to the very useful web server on the printer from any of the existing printer setup/management. You have to somehow figure out the printer name and save it as a favorite or go to your router to get a list of clients. -- The fax process is to first call the phone number, tie up your line, and generate long distance charges while it then gets ready to print (a 30-60 sec process of cleaning the ink heads, trying paper feeds, etc.) (and i'm only faxing here), and then tries to feed a document in to fax. Hey HP: Another approach, taken by most other fax machines, is to scan the documents, then dial up and send, then deal with the result report later. -- When the paper feeder works, it can not deal with special paper like labels or business card stock very well. It either can't pickup the paper or gets 2 sheets at a time. -- If you get a replacement printer you have to go through the whole network printer setup again, first deleting the original printers. -- The setup wizard has many dead end points where you can't cancel out. You have to go to the process manager and kill the process. -- And of course buying a printer is now just a shortcut for signing up for ink cartridge Spam. The whole backdrop here was, for me, that our old Dell wireless printer could not connect with Vista very well. So, i figured why not go with the best: HP. They *must* have great software and hardware by now. I guess not though. I don't know what happened, but somewhere along the way the build and software quality of HP printers, at least home office, has completely gone downhill. The reason we are trying to stay with this one model is the $ink investment we have. Next time will be another printer manufacturer. I have now spent more time in about 2 months (including this rant) on printer baby-sitting than on our old Dell for it's 5+ year life. Including trying to get Vista drivers to work. And, the Dell worked better (except for drivers.) So my recommendation is to ignore the (likely paid) rosy reviews here giving multiple stars and learn from this report: 2 bad units out of 2 so far. Edit: 26-Feb --- I am now also having the error printing from XP mentioned in other reviews. When I do a print from Word, it says Network error can't print, do you want to cancel. Then a while later, it starts printing. I want to print and fax, not system manage a printer. What has happened to HP??? Buyer beware ymmv, pp