I purchased an HP Officejet Pro 8600 Plus e-All-in-One Printer (N911g) to replace an HP Photosmart Premium (C410B).
Prior to this I had the previous version of the Photosmart Premium - C309A.
With the c309A and C410B, I enjoyed the options available for setting printing and scanning presets. I run a SOHO (Small Office/Home Office) business, so have repetitive document creation and archive needs.
Both devices were temperamental and developed siginficant and very time-costly hardware faults. When it came time to replace the C410B, I shopped around for other manufacturers - none, though, were able to offer software for their devices that enabled sufficient customisation of presets.
Quite a few enable printing presets, but not scanning ones, so I looked at HP again. The 8600 Plus is offered with a 3-year warranty, so I figured it was worth a shot from the hhardware perspective. I took the printing presets for granted and really only checked the scanning preseets, ny downloading the manuals. All seemed good, so I ordered it.
I am running Windows 8 Pro (x64) on both PCs in the office. Having set up the device, I find the hardware a significant step up from the C410B. The software is, however, disappointing. It seems much more stable when connecting to my PCs, but is feature-poor.
Printing Presets
Bluntly, there aren't any - at least, not if you are of the vast majotiy running Windows. Bizarrely, this is enabled for Macs (you lucky devils). Both my previous HPs had excellent options for this, as does the Officejet Pro 276dw. Unfortunately, the 276dw is a lot more expensive, yet only carries a 1-year warranty (a 3-year warranty extension adds £70 to the price). One would hope devices aimed at office users would carry a more robust warranty as standard.
Scanning Presets
At first glance, there seems to be a rich variety of options, yet they are oddly crippled. In the HP Printer Assistant:
1. Scan to Document or Photo setting - you can create custom presets, but only from the PC, not from the 8600 Plus
2. Scan to Network Folder Wizard - this is a great feature, but you can't enable batch scanning. You have to stand there and feed documents one at a time.
What I can't understand is why HP chose not to enable these options - they have the capability and the software. By not doing so, they devalue this machine as an office MFP.
What I would like to know is if HP plans to address these issues or if there are workarounds to enable the missing functionality.
P.S. Today, the 3rd day of owning the machine, it is showing as unavailable (greyed out) in Windows Devices and Printers - yet seems to function normally when I test it.