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Rating: 
Summary: useless ADF
Review: I bought the scanner specifically to use its ADF, since I have many 3x5.5 and 4x6 photos I'd like to bulk scan. The scanner does not offer either page size, but instead offers many other sizes like A6 and "Japanese Postcard" and a few other odd sizes. Picking any of the offered sizes, I get pictures that scan wrong, coming out too long. Although I can scale the pictures aferwords in Photoshop, it's a step that should not be necessary and results in reduced imaze quality from the resizing.I've also noted that the HP software will scan directly into a progam, but not directly to a file. Since I want to put in a stack of pictures, scan them to files, then put in the next stack, and keep at it for a large number of pictures, I find it a waste of time to have to wait for the pictures to load into the HP Director or Photoshop or some other program only to have to manually close them all before continuing with the next stack of pictures. I've made sure that I have the latest drivers and have spend several hours on a few occassions trying to make it work. I'm about ready to give up on it. Since I bought the scanner specifically to use the ADF and the ADF won't work correctly, the scanner is useless to me.
Rating:
Summary: I didn't believe other's review, now I regret
Review: I should say I didn't believe that this product is as crappy as other reviewers described. Because I really like some of HP products, especially HP has been in ADF scanner business for so many years. So I went ahead and bought a HP 5550C with thoughts that I (as a computer professional with 12 experience and a former HP employee) can manage to make it work. But clearly I'm wrong, and so wrong that the 5550C software is by far the worst software I have ever seen!!! I really do not understand that why HP even bothers to release this product to market, and HP should really "fire" the software team and the QA team for doing nothing but damaging its reputation. I agree with other reviewers completely. The 5550C hardware looks well constructed and sturdy. The problem comes from the software piece. Sigh ....
Rating: 
Summary: Good machine but have to work around software defects
Review: I use the scanner everyday for everything from documents to photographs. It is actually capable of scanning a stack of pages in the ADF very quickly into B&W PDF files. Unfortunately, as other reviewers point out, the HP software is mostly useless for this function. There is a trick that I will point out to everyone with this scanner or considering it if they can pick it up cheap from others who have given up: if you use Paperport or similar software and set the driver to windows WIA (rather than the HP driver), then set Page Size to "Quarto" when scanning from the ADF, then it works great. This is bizarre, and I have tried all the other page size settings and Letter will not work--you must use Quarto. Anyway, this proves that the machine is capable of good performance. It is alas software that limits the performance. Perhaps better WIA support will come in the future. In the meantime, despite the bad software, I found this machine to be the best value for a combo flatbed/ADF scanner that could take at least 35 pages. There are other choices like the Fuji if you want ADF without a flatbed, but it's still more expensive.
Rating:
Summary: Good machine but have to work around software defects
Review: I use the scanner everyday for everything from documents to photographs. It is actually capable of scanning a stack of pages in the ADF very quickly into B&W PDF files. Unfortunately, as other reviewers point out, the HP software is mostly useless for this function. There is a trick that I will point out to everyone with this scanner or considering it if they can pick it up cheap from others who have given up: if you use Paperport or similar software and set the driver to windows WIA (rather than the HP driver), then set Page Size to "Quarto" when scanning from the ADF, then it works great. This is bizarre, and I have tried all the other page size settings and Letter will not work--you must use Quarto. Anyway, this proves that the machine is capable of good performance. It is alas software that limits the performance. Perhaps better WIA support will come in the future. In the meantime, despite the bad software, I found this machine to be the best value for a combo flatbed/ADF scanner that could take at least 35 pages. There are other choices like the Fuji if you want ADF without a flatbed, but it's still more expensive.
Rating: 
Summary: Very good hardware, very poor software
Review: I wish to concur with other reviewers about the HP 5550C scanner. When you get the software to work correctly, the scanner can produce superb scans and the automatic document feeder works almost flawlessly (it occasionally jams, but not very often). But the HP software has been terrible. After a long wait, HP did release a fix so that the scanner does seem to work with Adobe Acrobat with no error messages, but the software still doesn't work completely correctly on multipage scans. I would unhesitatingly recommend the hardware of this scanner; but until HP can produce good software to interface with the scanner, you might want to consider other options.
Rating:
Summary: Great Scanner, HORRIBLE Software
Review: I would first like to preface this review by mentioning that I used to be a programmer and system design analyst for Accenture, so I know a thing or two about software. It is really a shame that this great scanner comes with such lousy software. I already owned an HP scanner when I upgraded to this model specifically to take advantage of the auto document feeder (ADF) that allows for unattended scans of multi-page documents. Supposedly. Here's the problem--the software from HP that comes with the scanner is so buggy, slow and poorly written that it pretty much negates any advantages provided by the hardware itself. It is very inflexible, and unpredictable results occur whenever I deviate from the default settings--and the changes I make often do not take anyway (e.g., I deselect preview for scanning documents, yet it continues in preview mode anyway, slowing the process of creating a PDF). For example, if you want to scan a color document in 256 colors at 450 DPI using the document feeder, good luck. To achieve this, you will have to scan that document page-by-page or settle for the default settings of the software. The software supposedly allows for creation of scan "profiles" that apply specific settings when that profile is loaded, but I have not been able to get this feature to work after many attempts. It gets worse. If your goal is to take documents, large or small, and convert them to PDFs using Adobe Acrobat 6.0, the HP software keeps trying to reconfigure itself right in the middle of the process! There was a patch available on the HP website for this, and it has now disappeared. You might conclude that a good solution to this problem would be to download version 2.0 of the software. Wrong. The developers apparently thought it would be a nice treat to perpetuate this flaw in the new version, and no patch is available! Ridiculous. It's a shame, and a real step backwards for me, as my 3-year-old HP scanner is easier to use and interfaces with Adobe better than tne 5550C. Shame on HP for selling such an inferior product.
Rating:
Summary: Great Scanner, HORRIBLE Software
Review: I would first like to preface this review by mentioning that I used to be a programmer and system design analyst for Accenture, so I know a thing or two about software. It is really a shame that this great scanner comes with such lousy software. I already owned an HP scanner when I upgraded to this model specifically to take advantage of the auto document feeder (ADF) that allows for unattended scans of multi-page documents. Supposedly. Here's the problem--the software from HP that comes with the scanner is so buggy, slow and poorly written that it pretty much negates any advantages provided by the hardware itself. It is very inflexible, and unpredictable results occur whenever I deviate from the default settings--and the changes I make often do not take anyway (e.g., I deselect preview for scanning documents, yet it continues in preview mode anyway, slowing the process of creating a PDF). For example, if you want to scan a color document in 256 colors at 450 DPI using the document feeder, good luck. To achieve this, you will have to scan that document page-by-page or settle for the default settings of the software. The software supposedly allows for creation of scan "profiles" that apply specific settings when that profile is loaded, but I have not been able to get this feature to work after many attempts. It gets worse. If your goal is to take documents, large or small, and convert them to PDFs using Adobe Acrobat 6.0, the HP software keeps trying to reconfigure itself right in the middle of the process! There was a patch available on the HP website for this, and it has now disappeared. You might conclude that a good solution to this problem would be to download version 2.0 of the software. Wrong. The developers apparently thought it would be a nice treat to perpetuate this flaw in the new version, and no patch is available! Ridiculous. It's a shame, and a real step backwards for me, as my 3-year-old HP scanner is easier to use and interfaces with Adobe better than tne 5550C. Shame on HP for selling such an inferior product.
Rating:
Summary: Absolute bottom of the barrel software
Review: I've owned, recommended and used HP products for many years and am a business systems consultant. I have written and designed systems software and application software as well as sold software. Most of my experience has been in technology and sales management. Do not buy this scanner. The software is worse than bad. I too could not believe the other reviews and wanted the ADF so bought it anyway. Normally, HP does quality work, but not this time. If HP had any decency, they would create a new version of the software and release it to the owners of this product along with an apology. In my many years of work in the information technology sector and considering the current state of technology, I cannot remember a product this poor from a major vendor.
Rating:
Summary: Good Hardware Software Stinks
Review: The software that comes with this scanner is so bad you will wonder how it was ever shipped. Just awful. I spend four hours at various times trying to get it to run with Paperport. Completely incompatible. All I want is to scan pages into PDFs at 300 dpi in black and white using Paperport. It can not do this simple task. If you use its own software for scanning the results are even worse. If you like talking to tech support in India for hours on end with no resolution, buy this product. Unless you have a relative who works in tech support for HP and you want to talk to him regularly on company time - run away!
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