HP 1240 Fax Machine

Comment: I've had nothing but problems with this fax machine since day one. It jams constantly, pushes papers onto the floor on the rare occasion when it does work and even jams more than half the time when each piece of paper is hand fed. Don't buy one of these. It's a waste of money.

Comment: My work purchased this fax machine for limited use and thank goodness, because if I had to rely on this machine for everything I would be righteously mad!

The Good: design is simple. I haven't had any problems with error messages except to tell me the ink is running low.

The Bad: the fax is loud, and as someone who sits near it, it's annoying!

The Frustrating: faxing one page is fine, which must be about all the makers expected the customer to do. But faxing two or more pages? A serious problem. The second page pushes the first page out of the holding tray and onto the floor. The reason for this is simple, HP neglected to include a little stopper on the end of the tray to prevent the paper from sliding off. In fact, I'm writing this review staring at five pieces of paper scattered on the floor, and one dangling ready to fall if another paper passes through. It's a mess! I wonder how anyone could have designed something so flawed?

Comment: I don't know what the other reviewers are talking about. Maybe they have some sort of other agenda? My HP 1240 Fax works perfectly, I think it's fantastic.

Comment: This machine is the poorest fax I have ever tried to use. Not well constructed but worst problem is the annoying buzz which the machine places on the phone line, which makes it unusable to share with a telephone. HP admits the problem, but has no fix or return policy on this; they state as long as the unit can send and receive a fax then the product is fine!

Comment: H/P once a trusted name in electronics, certainly failed when they released this FAX machine. I purchased the 1200 series a few years ago, paid around $300 for it at the time, and received a defective machine. After sereval attempts to discover the problem, ( I kept losing the phone line) the phone man verified that the machine was shorting out the phone line. Too late to return it, I lost $300 and now use it as a color copier when needed. All these brands are spitting out products at record speed to compete with one another, yet apparently never taking their customer into account, with good quality control. I just ordered the Sharp UX B20 which was recently released, and now unavailable, the Sharp U X B20 E, same thing, and the Sharp 1600 - all unavailble! The Sharp faxes offer 600x600 dpi far superior to the standard 300 dpi with Canon and H/P, but good luck in finding them. I had a lengthly conversation with someone in the electronic repair business, and he recommended to never to buy Brother, they're in for repairs constantly, Panasonic frames fall apart, so that leaves Canon with a lessor dpi than the Sharp. Whatever happened to good reliable equipment?