HP SCANJET AUTO PHOTO FEEDER

Rating:
Summary: You Get What You Pay For
Review: I bought this product with the intent of digitizing my family's photo collection, both pictures and negatives. It hasn't worked out.

The auto photo feeder continually jams, I cannot simply put in a stack of photos and wait for it to finish - I have to poke and prod the photos through. Every few pictures, the photo will fail to eject completely out by a couple of millimeters, and the HP software will hang and I have to REBOOT my computer to continue. It does this with brand new prints as well as older ones. I got it working OK with a stack of stiff 3x5 index cards - but it just doesn't work for me with photos. It's great if you want to scan a bunch of blank cards.

The TMA (Transparent Material Adapter) for slides and negatives is a pain to use. You have to use a two piece carrier to put the film into, then put it into the TMA, then remove the feeder, and then put the TMA onto the flatbed. It's easy to scratch your negatives while jamming them into the carrier used with the TMA. I did a couple of rolls of 35mm film; it took so long I gave up on that feature.

The software controls for adjusting the scan are difficult to use and to learn. Maybe I am just used to PhotoShop, I just quit messing with it cause it took so long.

The only thing I use my 5500c for now is copying documents and scanning a few pictures on the flatbed. I could have gotten something for a lot less money that would do this.

The manual might as well not be there. For example, I got a flashing error "22" on the scanner's display, and tried to find out what it was. It wasn't in the manual or in the help. I finally figured out I had the TMA in backwards (it fits in perfectly well in both the right and wrong orientation), but the documentation was no help at all.

Several emails to HP were no help. The scanner is what it is, I guess. It didn't cost a lot and doesn't really do much. Having the TMA and the auto feeder on this scanner is like a dancing bear - you are not amazed at how well it dances, just that it dances at all.