Scion Reviews

This scanner has many good points, but doesn't live up to the HP name. It warms up slowly, scans slowly, and the manual slide mechanism on the 6390 version is a pain. I bought it to support a busy customer reception area, and it just isn't up to the job. Being a relatively expensive scanner, and an HP, I expected more.

The SCSI interface is VERY nice, and using it reduces the time per scan considerably.

I did not purchase my 6350 at Amazon, but did so elsewhere. I have lived with this scanner for 2 months now. Here are my thoughts on this product. Note that the 3-stars and title I give this product are slightly misleading. The scanning quality is exceptional. The automatic document feeder (ADF) is a huge plus, and convenience. The software package included is alright. The setup and connections were no problems at all. With minor tweaking of this product, HP could really make it a scanner that will get it 5-stars in every category. Consider the following: 1. The scanner does not include faxing software, or at least I could not find any. This is a minor issue, however.... 2. The scanner optical "glass" surface had smudge marks and foggy spots, right out of the box. Perhaps better quality control/assurance practices at HP will fix this. Items with such obvious defects should never leave the manufacturing facility. Note that the average user cannot clean the underside of the scanner "glass". Hp does not recommend this for the 6350. 3. HP should have packaged the standard document cover with this unit as well. In cases where the ADF is required to be removed for repairs, the standard top could easily be put on. 4. The construction and design of the unit is not conducive to keeping the interior dust free. I state this as the chassis has several visible openings, that could introduce dust, fibres into the inside of the scanner. Perhaps HP designed it this way for ventilation and dessipation of built up heat from the unit. HP could perhaps better the design in future versions of this model. Since the 6300 is the identical model without the ADF, this fact applies to it as well, and other similar HP models too. In summary, I am quite pleased with this product. It does have the potential to be a GREAT product with a little more effort on HP's part. Sincerely, aba4430

I have this scanner for more than a 1.5 years now. I have choosen it because it's HP, and for the document feeder (there is no slide adapter with the 6350, it is bundeled with the 6390).

What I did not like is the miss of a printed manual (only on CD-rom) and the lack of an extensive on-line help (the help is very brief)! The 5 buttons on the scanner is just a joke for me, never used - I always wanted to make a scan/copy with other settings than the defaults. I have also configured the scanner to be used over our netwrok, whcich does not have much sense to me, but it works without problem.

The scanner have a SCSI-II interface, which let's it transfer data to the computer as fas as it reads from the glass. The document feeder is very useful, especially when making photo copies (the photo copy utility is very useful) or whith OCR through big quantities. The control software is really good too, let's you take control of all settings, no cut down.

I can recommend this scanner for all serious soho users!

I Searched for a scanner with a [price limit] I seen them all and got this one. very easy to use, a nice bundle of software. "HP" did good with this one.

I bought this scanner a couple of months ago and I've been very happy with it. Although it has some weak points the scanner itself is so good that you won't even notice it.

Good points:

- It's fast as long as you are not using 1200 or 2400 ppi. It really slows down on those resolutions when scanning in color.

- Great images. The photos scanned with the 5400c are sharp, crisp and vivid. Sometimes when you get an image which is too bright or too dark you can easily correct it from the driver.

- The installation is a breeze. There is an illustrated poster which helps you setup your scanner and in a couple of minutes you're ready to scan your image.

- The software is great. Although it lacks some advanced color settings I think is good enough for everyone. And I don't know why is Mike saying in his review that you cannot specify output format. In fact there are many formats that you can save to:

- tiff
- gif
- jpg
- bmp
- pdf
- html
- fpx
- pcx
- png

- rtf

- There is an option to send your results to MS WORD, Excel, Adobe photoshop, etc

WEAK POINTS:

- If you want to scan with 48 bit color mode you have to choose it every time from preferences setting - it's also rather hard to find it.

- slow on 1200 & 2400 ppi modes.

- no printed manual

- the ocr software is also not the best.

_________________________________________________________________

I think it's a very good scanner for the price - buy it and you won't be disappointed. If you have any questions, please mail me: ...

I have recently bought an entire new computer system: monitor, CPU, printer and scanner. I was interested in a lower model scanner at first until I was talked into buying this model. I have NEVER regretted this purchase. I am a photographer and have prints from just about everything that need cropping after being scanned and this scanner does the job well. Scan resolution on this is great and the print quality when it comes out is just as sharp. I couldn't ask for more:)

In the market for a complete system like me??? Read my other reviews on: HP 753n computer, HP mx70 monitor, and HP 7350 printer.

Why didn"t HP include the necessary software to install this program ( Precisionscan Pro no. 2.52. ) or at least offer it at no cost without having to download such a very large scanning program. This isn"t very good for HP consumer relations. My next scanner will be a cannon.

I had many many slides from years of photography to scan and so I set out to find a scanner that (at least had a built in slide adapter) would allow me to scan them fast, and in high quality.

This product has done just that.
I've read that the drivers for this product (for some operating systems) were not shipped with the product. I have Win 2000 and it was basically a plug'n'play experience. (i think that problem was basically with ME)

I've used it to scan my photos, and the quality of them far exceeds my own expectations.

I've used other scanners before and i find it just as slow, or maybe slightly faster than others. This must be a persistent problem throughout the technology of scanning, and not reflective of this product.

The only thing i will say that is bad about this is that the three buttons on the front of the device are annoying! I have "hit" them many many time by accident, hence launching the program and starting the lamp, all unnecessary. (user fault of course) But i wish the buttons were on top... (and i'm sure there is some way to disable them... or maybe i just have to move my scanner to a new place in my room!)... But honestly they should not be in that location.

Overall, great quality, awsome price and a great product. I'm specially impressed with the slide adapter.

I bought this scanner at a wholesale club-- I've got no complaints with it. Scanner allows you to copy, fax, email and print all with a touch of a button. Plus it warms up faster than other scanners I have used and no annoying clicking noises. The resolution is nice and the scanning software is pretty straight forward. Great scanner, however an on/off switch would be nice.

I went through two scanners and about 10 hours before I realized it wasn't me, my computer or the "energy" of my office that was a problem. This scanner has a serious defect in its ability to scan anything that isn't very white or COMPLETELY flat against the glass. Vertical banding of dark and light stripes appeared in every scan I undertook with both 4600's.

I was given the runnaround by the HP tech(?) and am going to have to wait until HP or some other company revamps the technical issues of what is otherwise an elegant and smart design.

As a point of comparison I did identical scans with my Epson Stylus CX5400 all in one and when I could get a scan that wasn't plagued with the vertical banding I found the Epsons color and clarity superior at identical resolutions. (sarcasm here) Mind you, the Epson is a slightly more expensive ($50) printer copier scanner while the HP is only a scanner. This HP does not do what it is advertised to do.

This scanner does'nt work on an ASUS P4P800 motherboard. It is not recognized by Windows XP SP1. On other systems it works.
It is smart but only for the look, not for working.
It seems to be the same problem with HP 4700. I'm disapointed. don't stay in confidence with the nice look and the HP brand. This is not a good HP product, read the reviews on commerce sites.

Granted, this is a great scanner and an inventive design. For me, however, the design screams to be used in a mobile fashion. After all, the unit is touted as a great scanner for large or unwieldy items (as opposed to a strictly desktop scanner, for instance). In my case, I was looking to use it for copying from books for use in research. If you have tried copying from a book on a flatbed scanner, even one with an expandable lid, you'll know the difficulty involved. With the 4600, one can effectively crop the book in realtime, eliminating the guesswork. BUT, imagine my surprise to learn that the scanner comes with a wall wart AC transformer! The addition of a power adapter significantly undercuts the 4600's utility as a mobile scanner (e.g.--books in a library). As an owner of a usb-powered Canon flatbed scanner, it didn't even occur to me that the 4600 would be different. Note that the marketing materials leave the impression that the 4600 is usb-powered. It touts a "combination usb/AC cable", a phrase that is certainly open to interpretation. In this case, it isn't even true: at some point, the "combination cable" _must_ split into a piece leading to the pc and a piece leading to the AC adapter. What is the advantage in this??? Also, the marketing materials cryptically list among the contents this line: AC adapter (where applicable). What does this even mean? A big thumbs down to HP for crippling a potentially great scanner, and attempting to hide its true identity. It's great as a desktop scanner, but there are loads of competitors that are cheaper in that class.

Worked great out of the box and for the first few months, and then it stopped working. Period. Just gave me an error message telling me to call tech support when I'd try to scan. After several emails failed to solve the problem (Reply #1: Try unplugging it and plugging back in. Response #1: Nope. Didn't fix it. Reply #2. Turn it off. Unplug all the cables from it. Wait 5 minutes. Reconnect cables. Response #2: Nope, still broken. Reply #3: Try unplugging it and ...) I gave up and tried live chat. And, they replaced it. Their dime to ship it. Even though it was a gift and I had no receipt. Great service, I thought.
So, fast forward a few months and the new one stopped working. Big white stripe down each scan like there's a burnt out pixel or something. So, I emailed tech support. They have clearly reduced the skill level of their tech support. The number of emails I have traded has been ridiculous. The last one ended with the tech saying he didn't think there was warranty coverage. Frustrated, I tried live chat. After a painfully slow chat (think 15 minutes per response), the guy told me to call their toll-free number. That was it.
I'm pretty upset here. Upset enough to spend an afternoon at CompUSA trying to dissuade people from buying HP products. Amazing how quickly their tech support went from world-class to being a factor which will dissuade me from buying their stuff again.

Well, bought the scanner new. Called HP tech support when it would jam on every photo in the APF. Tech support sent a replacement APF Next Day Air. New feeder works better, but still jams on the 2nd photo (no matter how many are in the feeder) which appears to be more likely a software problem since the photo will feed on the next pass. Color scans sometimes yield yellow bands across scanned photos or 8 1/2 x 11 documents and black & white can have dark streaks (also suggesting a software issue). Most importantly, when the APF jams, it holds the second photo at the feeder, answer <> to the error message, click <> for the non-existent photo, then APF feeds second photo all the way through the APF, does NOT scan but obviously had no problem feeding the photo. HP - beware - fix your existing customer problems before they come back to haunt you. Also, scans of thin paper reveals the charcoal gray scanning belt in the scans - HP - please release a white insert to cover he APF scanning belt so that regular scans can look normal and not garbage-like. Otherwise - cool idea just looks like HP should have used a QA process before releasing the product.

By the way - HP tech support says that they haven't had any reported problems like the APF jamming or software issues - seems that they are keeping their techs in the dark. HP customers - you need to YELL a little louder to get HP's attention.

I bought one of these at the end of July, 2003 to use with a Mac OS 10.2.6. I installed the software that was on the CD included in the box (HP's website had the same version available for download). Reading the previous reviews, I'd determined that this was either going to be a hit or miss purchase. I've got hundreds of photos to scan and was praying this was going to be the answer. So far I've scanned in about 50. The machine works well, for the most part. I place a stack of pics on the feeder and the machine runs until it's done. There are some problems though. They're mainly mechanical. Sometimes the belt that grabs the pics doesn't actually grab the pic. This is the main issue. When it happens, I readjust the pics, click OK on the error message on my screen, and the machine picks up where it left off. The only other issue has been the autocrop feature. It crops a good deal off the size of the scanning bed, and that's good, but it's conservative in how much cropping it actually does, so I have to crop again. No big deal though because iPhoto's easy. But it would be nice if it worked flawlessly. Scanning stacks of pictures is the only reason I bought this, so I can't comment on other aspects of this item.

This scanner isn't perfect. It's the only thing on the market that I'm aware of that can accept a stack of pics. You'll need to check on it to be sure it doesn't skip a picture or get stuck. The bottom line however is that if you've got stacks of pics to scan, this item is worth purchasing.

Avoid this scanner if you own a Macintosh. The scanning hardware is quite good, but the software is truly awful.

As near as I can tell, it is largely incompatible with MacOS X 10.3 at any functional level. TWAIN scanning into Photoshop CS is not functional. The "HP Director" software barely works, it is often unsuccessful attempting to launch other applications to do its bidding, especially when trying to set preferences.

Using the copy machine functionality to scan and print, doesn't appear to work with my HP printer, as the scanning software complains about the image being too wide (before it even starts scanning) which isn't the case.

I'm still trying to get it to reliably scan a document without "surprises" and I haven't even looked at the other features.

I'm a power user, and know my way around OS X.

The HP software is horrific.

I've had the same experiences that many others report. My scanner cosst, well, let's say multiply the number of your fingers and toes by two. Even at that prc-point, this product is a disaster.

The good news: The hardware is solid. You can return it easily. HP support is ok but bureaucratic, given that they have to work within the limits of the product.

The bad news: I've NEVER seen such bad software (and I've used a lot). As others have noted: It's slow, very buggy, and gets quite confused about what's happening with the scanner. And there are too many little apps--in all, lots of complexity and little sophistication. But the biggest problem is that its design completely ignores the variety of workflows you might have for scanning different docs in different contexts. Rather than making scanning efficient, you might begin to suspect that HP was intentionally trying to waste your time. Why else would they release such software? This is a plea to HP: Please, please give your software development much higher priority. Look at the Apple iLife apps for usability experience ideas (I say this even though I'm using Windows). If you need to, divert money from your advertising to software development. It'll be money well spent towards keeping your reputation alive.

Specific example problems: Scan settings appear to be arbitrarily remembered by the various programs. Data transfer among the multiple programs is at best unreliable--after doing multiple hi-res slide scans to save time I've had the terrible "HP Director" appplication just crash before handing off the files to the "HP Photo & Imaging Gallery". Poof--all the scans are lost (I can't even find the temp files...and of course where they're stored isn't documented). Resetting default scan values doesn't seem to take. The "HP Scanning" application (there are too many small apps installed) seems to constantly lose track of whether the lamp's warmed up or not--even after it's been on for an hour! The "HP Photo & Imaging Gallery" is incredibly slow--it seems to constantly and needlessly recreate thumbnails of large scan files. (It's slow using version 2.0 of the scanner software on a 1GHz XP machine.) Frequently it'll display two thumbnails for the same file, or no thumbnail for a file you just scanned. And it freezes. And the selection of tools is uneven: zoom but no hand to move around images (scroll bars only). And, and, ... . HP, please partner up with a company that has stable existing software, such as ACDSee's image viewer.

I can't imagine what it's like working at HP these days handling tech support for this product. My sympathies to HP tech support.

I have used the 4570C intensively for over a year and have had no problems whatsoever. Why there are so many complaints about the software is a mystery to me. It takes ten minutes to install and off you go. The only problem I've encountered is that when you scan a photo from a book but have scanner set to slides (which I also scan), you get lots of horizontal lines until you fix the problem. The troubleshooting technique in manual resolves this issue, irksome though it may be, in just a few minutes. My picture files take up about 14 gigabytes on my hard drive so you know I have been using the 4570 intensively. I would buy another one for my lab but Best Buy quit selling them.

I wish I read these before I bought one Amazon last year. It was in very very light use (maybe less than 20 uses!) in less than 10 months and now it's dead.

This is ridiculous. A 90 day warranty on their crappy items and they give one year warranties on their overpriced ones.

I will never buy anything from HP ever again.

I am very disappointed with the quality of their entry-level items.

From a big name like HP (well Compaq) and the millions of dollars their execs are getting....

NO RECOMMENDATION. AVOID AT ALL COSTS!

My HP Scanjet 4200C was operated successfully for 2 years using Windows 98SE. I upgraded my PC which came with Windows Xp Home edition. Windows XP does not support the HP Scanjet 4200C software. Also, unable to find a WEB site to download HP 4200C drivers compatible with Windows XP. What is my next course of action?

I love my HP scanner, plain and simple. Not only was it a breeze to install (cause it came with one of those dummy proof fold out diagrams) but also I never have to worry about how to configure it when I need to scan something fast. The 3 buttons on top are even too much, I only use one 90% of the time. And when I press that, it asks me beforehand which program I wanta send the scan to as well as opening it for me automatically after scanning...

But the best part about this scanner was the free Adobe Photo Home Deluxe 3.0 edition it came with... It is sooooo user friendly that you'll be doing things with your scanner more often than you think. I retouch old scratched up photos like a pro, I montage stuff like any tabloid, AND I can even make cards using their wizards step by step tabs...

I have tried other scanners with similiar abilites, but they're no way as direct and easy to use as this one. I forgot to mention that I can take any photo and make it my wallpaper using this program, after tweaking it... And that's another plus... The color this scanner reproduces is even better than the original... well atleast on my monitor... Do yourselves a favor, if you're looking for alot of bells and whistles that you WILL use, get this machine...

No problem with USB on Win98, Win98SE or Win2K. Software crashes regularly, cannot be uninstalled, won't work with Officejet 1150cse on same computer. Scanner plate glass came dirty on underside, not cleanable. HP support says this won't affect images but it does. Document feeder only worked once. Scan quality good except for dirty spots on scanner plate glass (top edge). Lamp failed after approximately 10 hours of use and is not replaceable (only used every few months). HP support is not helpful, web site difficult and little information on this model. Requires too much time to get working for busy office that only needs occasional scan. Other HP products have been excellent but very disappointed with this one.

HP doesn't want you inside the scanner changing bulbs and cleaning the underside of the glass - too difficult for the average user and you can damage beyond repair. Service is available through HP by contacting the HP Customer Care Center at 1-800-474-6836 But smoke, etc. is outside the focal range and does not affect the scan (I know, I smoke and that is mainly where it comes from)

RE bulb problems, I found my bulb was fine. If anythng goes wrong reset the scanner. Just power everything down, disconect the cables and power for 30 seconds. power up scanner (usb or scsi not conected) repeat 3 times, then a forth time with everything conected. Start up your computer and it all works. you may also have to check that your hpscnmgr.dll and hpscnmgr.hlp files are still in your wwindows system32 directory - if not, reload your software (available on the HP website)

I also had the paper feed problem, HP told me how to clear and clean it. Bottom line was HP service answered my email within an hour (as they usually do) and continued to work me through any problems. Those problems didn't occur until after almost 3 years .. as these things go that is pretty impressive.

BUT - I would like to have a larger flatbed (legal documents, etc.) and sugest that to anyone buying a scanner

If you're like me, you probably have a number of handwritten and typed notes that you want to scan into your computer (along with a chaotic shoebox of pictures). This scanner has saved me so much time and it will save you time, also. Whereas every other scanner forces you to attend to the scanner to change EACH page, this scanner takes a bunch of pages and scans them in at once. Presto!

Then, using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software, you can turn those typed notes into Microsoft Word documents you can edit yourself.

Need to get your documents scanned into your computer? Get this scanner!