HP ScanJet 5530 Scanner

I'm going to keep this short. The scanner preformed well with all tasks except, as noted elsewhere, the Automatic Photo Feeder option and its many problems--failure to feed, jams, misalignment, ad nauseum. Seeing as how the APF is the main reason for buying this scanner, such issues become major concerns.

But that's all been exhaustively detailed. My main complaint has to do with longevity: I've had the scanner a little over 2 years and it died dead. HP said there was nothing they could do but offered me a "special deal" of an upgrade. Well, their offer was indeed special, especially pricy. NewEgg offered the same scanner, shipped, for $65 less. Yikes.

My last scanner, a Canon, lasted for 9 years before I decided to upgrade to the HP. The Canon was still working beautifully the day I got rid of it.

Upshot: not happy with HP, product quality, supposed support, and product durability.

Other reviewers who gave this scanner a one-star rating got it right. Read their reviews for a detailed description of problems. My experience pretty much dittos theirs. Let me start by saying that I am a really big fan of HP products, and had high hopes for this scanner. I didn't mind the size or weight of this unit at all. The problem is is that the primary reason to buy this scanner is for the automatic photo feeder, and it plain just doesn't work! Fuji paper photos don't feed at all. The photos that do scan are always cropped incorrectly: part of the image is cropped, always on the same sides, and part of the scanner is included as part of every scan. According to HP's support site, their is no remedy for this problem.

And the HP scanning software could have been written by 12 monkeys during their lunch break...it's horrendous! There is no excuse for a company with the expertise and experience that HP has to produce software with such a poor interface, and it doesn't even work right. I don't know how many times I spent an hour baby-feeding photos through the scanner, only to find out it didn't save a single, solitary image. Where the @%$!* are they??? It somehow managed to rename some of my other images, though, that I had saved on my hard drive...what the **!?? I searched all over the web for reviews and comments on this torture device, and anybody whose actually used it for any length of time and tried to get help from HP got bupkis! This thing is defective and HP should step up to the plate and give buyer's their money back or something that works like it says it will on the box!

Yes, this scanner has all the problems mentioned by the other reviewers, but the autophotofeeder (APF) makes it worthwhile. Yes, it fails to pick up pictures now and then and gives you funny messages that should say, "Hey! Restart your scan!". Sometimes, you have to help it take up photos for some glossy prints (Fuji is the worst) or cheap paper. But, it rarely messes up your photos (I think this was by design. Better to not scan than to design a feeder that periodically rips up photos.)

I have two major critisms: 1) Some photos have dust on them or because they are glossy, when they get scanned, they have what appears to be dust. An autodust remove feature would have been good here. 2) The scanner should increment the photo names, just like your digital camera does. I've been saving the photos by month and year and now want to combine by year alone and the photos all have the same name since they start over the numbering with each scan job.

Despite the pains and failures of the scanner and the software, it's still the best alternative out there for scanning the last twenty years of photos that you may have squirelled away in your attic. We are doign it so that we can have our pictures show up on screen savers around the house. I've had some of my technobob friends over and shown them the thing when it is in operation. Their jaws literally drop! Yes, you don't have to painfully scan photos one by one. No, they aren't perfect scans. If you want that, you can always go back and do it manually. But if you want to digitally archive your photos (which I think is impossible to do manually), this is the only way to go.

I bought the 5530 primarily to be able scan a stack of photos and also 35mm framed slides. This scanner does both. I read the other reviews and was concerned about the device but bought it anyway. HP offers a 30 day money back return - no hassle policy. Regarding the "jam" problem, at last one of the other reviwers was correct in saying there is nothing in Help about this situation - you have to go to HP online to obtain the info. I told the help tech guy in India that they should mention this in the help screen - I got a song & dance - bottom line was they ain't gonna do it. But the jam is no big deal - the photo drops onto the glass before you get the jam error message. You must use photos of the same size - per the instructions - and do not use photos with "corrugated" edges. If you have any of those, trim off the edges before feeding them into the device. I found the resolution on the slide scans to be OK. The whole slide scanning operation is slow & even more so for me personally because the USB on the scanner is high speed and my PC is not. The editing software is not so hot as the other writers explained but you can use other software for that. All in all, I think it works as advertised.

I bought this scanner with the Automatic Photo Feeder so I could digitize my grandparents' photo albums and create a present for my mother. I'm now seeking a refund directly from hp. This is why:

1) The APF is not usable.
2) The scanning interface is abysmal. (actually a script running in Internet Explorer!)
3) HP support has offered no response to problems.

The hardware would actually be cool for the price. The APF does a good enough job sucking in a stack of photos, jamming frequently but not too frequently. But hardware cannot work without software, and tragically this scanner has been saddled with possible the worst scanning software ever written - actually negating the usefulness of the APF and making even normal flat bed scans a nightmarish experience. My simple photo album project revealed critical flaws that must have been found in HP's quality assurance department, but inexplicably were not addressed.

DETAILS:

1) Problems Using the Automatic Photo Feeder (APF)

PROBLEM: False "jam" errors. Often the scanner reports that a photo has jammed, but the scanned photo is not jammed at all. It is sitting in the output tray exactly where it should be.

PROBLEM: Scan is not saved when an error occurs (such as a "jam" error) even though the scan was completed successfully (and can be swiped out of the temp folder before it gets deleted if you are quick enough). This is by far the most infuriating item and shows that HP skipped the quality assurance phase of development.

PROBLEM: "Descreen" is not available as a scanning option when using the Automatic Photo Feeder (APF) in batch scans.

PROBLEM: Saved scanning profiles are not applied to photos in the APF - unless there is only one photo in the feeder (or it's the last of a batch) - which forces one to insert one photo at a time, virtually negating the concept of batch scanning a stack of photos.

PROBLEM: Photos are consistently cropped incorrectly. The left edge of the image is cut off, while the right side of the image includes a portion of the scanning hood. It appears there is an offset problem. This problem occurs regardless of the size of the photo and is especially problematic with photos with rounded corners (most of the photos I'm scanning)

PROBLEM: Photos are not saved after each scan. Instead the software waits until all photos in the batch have been scanned before writing the images to the destination folder. This methodology has three major drawbacks. 1) I scanned 6 photos through the APF without realizing there was a photo already on the glass. 2) Any errors / software mishaps will result in lost scan(s). 3) Work cannot begin on scans until entire batch is finished

2) Problems Using the "hp scanning" interface

PROBLEM: Cropping rectangle dimensions do not "stick". Clicking "Descreen" or "New Scan" causes new coordinates to be auto-generated, even when "Automatically Crop Scanned Images" is disabled. Most scanning interfaces remember settings from scan to scan so a pleasant workflow can emerge.

PROBLEM: Number Fields do not always hold their values after typing them in manually. Sometimes this is not evident until several clicks later when the number fields spontaneously revert to previous values.

PROBLEM: After manually adjusting exposure and color settings - moving the cropping rectangle loses them and inserts auto-generated settings.

PROBLEM: Clicking "descreen" makes custom exposure / color settings revert to auto generated values.

PROBLEM: Dragging any of the sliders to min or max causes elements in the interface to become "selected" (like a web page) and can even "scroll" the entire panel behind its frame border so that some controls are inaccessible. Often adjacent sliders become selected and upon operating their knobs the mouse cursor turns into the "CAN'T DO THAT" symbol (circle with line through it). Once this symbol comes up, the slider knob will stop moving. Upon releasing the mouse button the user finds that the knob is stuck to the mouse cursor. Clicking on the interface a couple times will drop the knob and deselect the offending interface elements but by this time carefully placed settings have been lost.

PROBLEM: The "Color Adjustment" wheel features a an un-clickable surface, and an icon that cannot be dragged more than a few pixels before you get the Internet Explorer CAN'T DO THAT icon (circle with a line through it). Then when you let go of the mouse, the icon is stuck to the cursor and the carefully placed setting is lost. This makes trying to do color correction a waking nightmare.

PROBLEM: Menu bar: "Additional Items" and "Scan Preferences" lead to identical menus with identical title bars (the title bar says "Scan Preferences") However, the help file confusingly alludes to some significance in the difference between these panels.

PROBLEM: Auto Exposure consistently over-exposes skies, eliminating subtle details and creating huge areas of solid white.

PROBLEM: I have found no explanation for the "Best quality scan from Automatic Photo Feeder" preference. The only information I found on the hp support web site was that it "Optimizes scan settings for the automatic photo feeder" What does this option do and what would be a reason for disabling it?

3) HP Support responsiveness

After 22 days of promises from HP support (in India), they still have yet to address any of these issues. I send them this list over and over, and they tell me they have forwarded my comments but never address them. Even the simple questions about the functionality of the product (last item in my list) go unanswered. I've seen some of these issues about their software reported over a year ago and they have never addressed them. There have been no updates to the software since September of 2003.

From what I understand, this software is used in much of their imaging product line so beware. There's more but I have a 1000 word limit!