Scanner Reviews

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!

The quality of the scan is good and the software is easy to use, but the photos jam periodically coming out of the feeder. I bought it specifically for the automatic photo feeder and that is the reason for the 2 stars. If the feeder is not important to you, then you will be happy with this scanner.

I hesitated buying this scanner based on previous reviews on several sites. But, with a ton of old photographs to scan, I was hoping to find a reasonably priced autofeed scanner, and this was really the only show in town for under $200.

I scan photos using the feeder directly from PhotoShop, using only a semi-automated approach (i.e., load up the pix in the autofeed, launch PS, import one by one using the preview screen, but generally keeping the same settings for all photos in the batch).

The scanner is not perfect, and the first reviewer provided an accurate assessment of where the scanner has its weak points (although, in contrast to this reviewer I have been able to scan photos--old and new--on many different types of paper...it appears that this is a hot-or-miss item by individual scanner).

However, with a little bit of time (the software is kludgy...and the documentation subpar), I've been able to really crank up the number of photos I get scanned in a session. And, with the right settings (higher res than the default, turning of HP sharpness, etc) you can get high quality scans.

I was so thrilled about my Visioneer 5800 USB Scanner, I scanned all my medical records and pictures and anything else I wanted to save and send to someone else. Then I was away for about a week and came back to scan more documents and clicked on the icon for my scanner. It told me to unlock the scanner, the lock is located on the bottom of the scanner. I have looked and felt under the scanner several times and I don't see it. Where should I be looking for this lock? It must be invisable because I don't see it. I would love to scan more but it won't let me in until I can find the lock and unlock it. Please help me with this. It made very nice copies of all my records and pictures. But now it is not doing anything because I can't even get into it because it has to be unlocked.

The two star rating on this scanner got my attention!! I've used the Visioneer 5800 USB with Paperport software for three years, and I've never had a problem. It's simple to operate, makes terrific scans of not only papers, pictures, etc., but also objects, such as coins, pocket knives, and other such items. For the cost, ease of operation, & quality of copies & scans, I don't see how it can be beat!! I give it a 5 star all the way!!!

This is the best scanner that I have ever owned. How can it only get 2 stars?? I use this piece of equipment every day, and have never been left wanting. Even though it was an inexpensive scanner to buy, I have never been sorry.

I bought this pen to be used as a dictionary (it can translate from English to any language in principle). The pen works; I haven't got any technical problems. Its OCR is not bad.

However, the price is way too much (I paid $150). Perhaps, most important of all, I didn't find the pen very appropriate for use as a dictionary. For example, while reading a book, for every new word (which usually doesn't come frequently) the pen needs to be turned on (takes 3-4 seconds), and then the word needs to be scanned (this you have to do slowly and carefully, and several times in case the OCR doesn't work). Overall, I found out that scanning significantly slows down reading. Perhaps, superpen is faster than looking up words in a dictionary, but not much faster.

I didn't like its dictionary software much either (not all dictionaries are of same quality!); I tried english-english and english-turkish dictionaries.

Recently, I saw an electronic dictionary (the ones with a small keyboard on it) for $45. Probably, that would have been a better choice than superpen if you only need a portable dictionary.

I purchased this product because I read and pull citations from many scientific articles and texts and put them in a bibliographic citation database.
The WizCom SuperPen definitely has a learning curve, but I found it to be short. I estimate that I'm getting approximately 98% accuracy now scanning articles with very unusual word content (paleoclimatology). This rivals the accuracy when I type these same references and is much quicker.
The SuperPen makes some demands on the user.
1. The pen must be held at a fairly steep angle to the page; 80 to 90 degrees seems to work best.
2. Accuracy seems to increase if you switch to left-handed mode so that the scanner head is looking into the upcoming text
3. A constant speed seems to work best, but there is little difference between given speeds.
4. The user must develop a consistent method of moving the scanner parallel to the lines of text. The largest error rate occurs when the scanner head is skewed or the path of the device is at an angle to the line of text.
I did discover one little idosyncracy. When the system is powered on, it tries to open the last file which you were editing. If that file is very large, the pen times out before the file is loaded. That behavior can be by-passed by holding down the Escape button as the power is turned on, thereby activating the main menu. At that point, go to the option which permits a longer time-out period and set it to some higher number. That is the only real problem which I have had so far.

This scanner is convenient for those who need to remember large amounts of information. You can use it in place of taking notes while reading textbooks. Also, if you want to copy short passages, it can be quicker than just photocopying the whole page. One of the most helpful features is that you can beam scanned notes to your computer or organizer. There is a learning curve, so you will need to spend some time to be able to get accurate scans. I have not tried out the foreign language dictionaries, but it seems like these could potentially be a big help with translation.

Don't buy this scanner.
Though the hardware is reasonable at the price (but mine malfunctions if placed too close to the computer), the software is truly the worst software of any type that I have seen in recent years. The software has infuriating problems such as refusing to scan an image of standard dimensions unless I preview every scan. As a result this scanner is very hard and very slow to use for scanning printed documents intended to send to an OCR package. I was expecting it to be slow but it is unspeakably slow because the software is VERY slow to laod and initialize and many of the software features can't be used and workarounds are needed at every turn. I was trying to use it on an 800MHz Windows 98 computer. The updated drivers on the HP web site are in some ways worse than the older ones. When you've wrestled with it for an hour to scan in a simple 15 page document you will get the idea. Best avoided if you can find any alternative.

Good scanner, decent software.

The scanner itself is lightweight and somewhat small, though it is not intended for space-saving. It's not bulky like most Visioneer models, but it's not slim, either. The one problem I have with the scanner itself is that the top often slides off when I don't intend it to, and it's annoying to have to put the little hinges back into the scanner.

The quality is okay; it's not something I'd use to scan pictures and expect them to be all perfect quality, but I scan art with this scanner, and for that purpose it is sufficient. It's not meant for something professional, and for the price it is well worth it.

As far as the software goes... the people complaining that it makes their computers freeze probably have a technical problem with their computers, not the actual scanner or the scanner software. Problems such as this could easily be fixed if people had the incentive to actually learn a little something about computers, instead of expecting the entire digital world to work with the simplicity and "user friendly" ease of AOL or Windows XP. It'd be nice if all of the digital world did work like that, but the real world doesn't, either. Sometimes it's a simple problem such as a driver incorrectly installed or the wrong driver installed (which, in most cases, is the USER's fault) and people spend months struggling with their computers going haywire. Then they end up complaining that it's the company's fault, when a lot of times I'm just seeing it's the innate inability for some humans to interact with technology. I'm just a little tired of seeing good products get bad reviews and bad ratings because people don't know how to work with technology.

Tangent aside, this is pretty much a good scanner with decent software (personally, I prefer importing the images through Adobe, but, whatever).

This is a review for the model before the 2300c came out. The 2200c scanner works just fine, not fast but gets the job done. I have never had problems getting the picture I wanted, never had to scan more than once. Good, solid product.

Initially I was stunned by this technology. I scanned text from books, the newspaper, nutrition information off a candy bar wrapper... all with reasonably good results. Once I started to use if for serious work, I was substantially less impressed. I had planned to collect specific data fields from a printed directory; instead of using a sheet-feed flat-bed scanner followed by heavy cut&paste, I thought I could just selectively hand-scan the needed data fields. While the OCR accuracy might be acceptable for short passages, the error frequency becomes unacceptable when more text is collected. The frequency of errors was so great that I went back to the flat-bed and cut&paste. I like the ergonomics of the unit. I am trying to figure out what I can still do this device.

I like this gadget, although it's far from perfected yet. I use it mainly to look up words in foreign books as I go along. For that purpose it usually works great and saves me a huge amount of time leafing through paper dictionaries or poking at the keyboards of electronic pocket dictionaries. (Note that the C Pen only looks up words in dictionaries. It cannot "translate", as the promos claim it can.) It takes a little time to get skilled at scanning text, and in a recent book I was reading it couldn't recognize the frequent German letter combination "sch" in a relatively normal typeface. Usually, however, it presents no serious difficulties.
For scanning large amounts of text, I don't think it's very convenient, because it's just too slow and not very accurate. You can, however, transfer the text to your computer and run a spellcheck on it in Word or some other program. That helps a bit. One nice thing is that it's smart enough to know that when it hits a hypen at the end of a line it probably needs to join the divided word.
It's sad that C Pens are so hard to get. It has the potential for great popularity, but in my experience Swedish companies let their popular items just get rare, rather than meeting market demand.

I used to had to manually copy excerpts and text from books while doing reasearxh, one day I saw this kid at the library come in, pulled a stacjk of bboks and started driving this small pen accross it... I asked him whart that was he showed me the C pen 600 scanner and how it worked, ten minutes later he left and I was still on my first book!

Now I have a life again! Could not live without this little device; I wonder why doesn't everyone else that does reasearch use one. What a time saver and no mistakes is the best!

After reading so many reviews now I am disappointed I bought a Mircrotek scanner. The software has a simple mode then a mode with more controlable features. The scanner never responded properly with the more complex mode so I just used the basic. It worked ok until the short warranty ran out. One day I turned it on, scanned one page and poof smoke started pouring out. After inspecting the inside for the cause, I found a transistor had 2 bad solder joints made by the factory that finally oxidized to point of failure and burned out several components. Contacted Microtek by email for parts. They would not sell me any parts but wanted me to spend much money to send them the scanner for repair. They were even too cheap to furnish me with a schematic. A quality company supplies them with the literature when purchased new. Steer clear of a company who cannot stand behind what they peddle.

Although we received this for free with a computer purchase, it has not yet been worth it. After struggling with crashes and extremely slow speed (e.g., 60+ seconds to launch Word) and spending hours on the phone with various tech support reps, all the while thinking it was a problem with the brand new Dell or Windows XP, we encountered an error message that would pop up upon shut down. It indicated a problem with the file SDII.exe. I did a quick Google search and discovered that SDII.exe is a file that the Microtek software installs and launches on startup. The file has a known bug that causes it to hog most of your processing power and RAM. I checked the Task Manager, and sure enough, SDII.exe was there, consuming 99% of the CPU. Since that file is only necessary if you use the scanner's one-touch keys, I disabled the file, and we had our computer back.

As for how the 3800 scans, it's a decent scanner for the money. The bundled software has adequate features, and scan times are relatively fast. We have not been able to use it much, however, given the amount of time it used to take to launch and run the software.

If you're thinking of buying this scanner, first check with Microtek to make sure they have addressed the SDII.exe bug. If they haven't, you'd be better off steering clear.

The scanner is actaully good. It is very user friendly, at least what was my expereince. However, it is kind of slow with anything from pictures to files. However, for it's price it is a great scanner and you can do many cool tricks once you find out how to do them. Overall it is worth the money!

Positives: Easy to connect, put in CD, reboot the CPU and plug in the scanner. Done. Speedy lil machine and very usefull since I have a lot of material that is legal sized. ...

Negatives: Scanners today have more buttons, where as this one only has 1 button

This scanner was a charm to set-up. Once the Microsoft SP1a was installed (absolutely necessary for USB 2.0), and the software was loaded, I plugged this scanner into the USB port and it instantly was operational. This is the only reasonably priced legal size scanner and it appears to be an excellent device.

My boss was looking around for a scanner that did legal sized documents and this was it. Most of the other scanners only do letter sized stuff, so if you need legal this is the way to go. Tiger Direct got it out to us pretty quickly and we are happy with it so far. I haven't ventured into the more advanced portion of the software, but the basic function is easy to use. It previews automatically and puts the box around the image so you just hit scan. Very happy so far!

This isn't a horrible scanner. The only problems I have arereally with the software and support offered with it. Compaq reallyis not good atsupporting the majority of their hardware, and their scanner is no exception. They don't even provide the proper drivers on their web site. The only way to get it up and running is via the CD that comes with it, which forces it's own software on you, which did not work well on my computer at all! Large (full-page) scans would always freeze my system, even in Windows 2000; and every few weeks I have to remove the device from my Device Manager and re-install it, because it simply stops working and needs to be refreshed. When it works, it works fine, but it's usually a pain and Compaq is of no help...

We have had the scanner 4 years and it worked well without much problem. We had to pay someone to instlal the software when we first got it and the buttons never worked. But it scanned good pictures. Color scans of black and white pictures did come out with a blueish cast. We didn't have a lot of problems until we bought a new computer with XP. Then the software that came with the scanner wouldn't work. We had to get another program from the internet to make the scanner work. Now if I didn't use the scanner yesterday, it takes the computer 45 minutes to find the scanner. If I used it yesterday, it takes about 10 minutes. I know the scanner works well but am considering buying another scanner more compatible with XP. Is that necessary or is there some way to get it to work with XP?

The S4 100 color Usb Scanner works fine on window 98 and below but is not fully functional on windows XP Home addition. the scanner operating buttons become non operational and you have to use other programs like Pagis Pro to scan items and then using that program to print or save. The scanner will not work by its self from its control buttons. The technical data has not been posted as to feather or not this scanner is XP supported

I've recently upgrated from ME to XP Prp and found that this scanner is not working (not recognized) under Windows XP. Microtek doesn't seem to have specific drivers fron WIN XP, only for WIN 2000, 98, and 95. Although I did purchase this scanner about 2 years ago, I never had problems with it under Win ME.

The Microtek Scanmaker V6upl is a good scanner at a decent price. It scans photos with good color and detail. The PhotoImact software (included) is excellent software for making adjustments to the photos. Forget the Adoble Photo Deluxe 2 (also included). OCR is above average using Textbridge 9, but not worth much (typical) using the included limited OCR software. The drawbacks are it takes up a lot of deskspace (but can can scan 8 1/2 x 14 documents), and the included transparency adapter gives very poor results on slides for which it is intended. Overall, a good scanner, well worth the current price, especially if you will scan some documents longer than 11 inches.

Even though some people did not like this scanner, I compared it directly with The Hewlett Packard 5300. I scanned a photograph on each scanner. The scan on the Microtek was MUCH sharper! Plus, the V6 UPL will scan legal size documents as well as 4 full size photos. This feature does come in handy from time to time. This is a reliable scanner that produces sharp results. The only thing I don't like about it is that it is alittle noisy during the scanning process. It makes a "scraping" noise that bothered me at first because it sounded like the scan was causing friction. But, once you get used to this scraping sound, the results are quite good. Plus, the price is very reasonable. I recommend this scanner very highly. I have had mine for over 6 month now with no problems.

I was a HP printer fan until I purchased the 7140xi. I purchased it because it came with a print server & networking capabilities for my home LAN. After 40-50 hours on the phone with HP Support; calling friends for technical support, weeks of frustration, and many installs/uninstalls later--the HP printer is being returned. I could not get the HP software to install on my desktop with Windows XP-Home. I was able to install the HP Director software on 1 Windows 2000 laptop but not on another W2K laptop. My advice: consider another multifunction. I just ordered a Canon Multipass 730 & have given up on a networked multifunction for my home LAN.

The hardware functionality is excellent for our small office; however, the Windows PC-Hosted software is awful! The "scan to destination" feature is only compatible with Acrobat 5, and will it only work from the profile under which it was installed. So, if you log in as "bob" and install Acrobat and the HP software, you will only be able to create pdfs while logged in as "bob". Acrobat disappears as an option under all other profiles. Judging by HP's forums, this is a well known problem; however, they haven't released new software since 9-17-2003. The media slot can only be accessed through HP's proprietary software; thererfore, it doesn't appear as a drive, and can't be shared over the network without installing the nasty HP software on every machine.

If you just want a great fax/copier get this. If you'd actually like to use the other features in a networked environment, forget about it.

After having problems receiving faxes from certain fax machines, I just returned my HP to buy a Cannon Multipass.