Rating: 
Summary: This one is going back
Review: Many recent HP products have great designs but poor execution, and this is unfortunately one of them.Like many other reviewers, I was looking for a scanner with an automatic 6x4" photo feeder, since I was very sick of placing pictures on a flatbed one by one only to be confronted with slanted scans. This HP is the only one on the market with this well-thought-out feature. And like some of the reviewers, I saw its high rating in both PC World and PC Mag. But the two hundred bux was totally a waste. The scanner is bulky and huge! It's also heavier than most scanners you'll encounter. But the biggest problem is the photo feeder, which is very poorly constructed and jams all too easily. (Sidenote: I personally do not like HP laser printers because they jam easily, too. I guess HP's mechanical engineers need a re-education in designing these mechanisms.) I have hundreds of old 3x5 and 4x6 photos which I was hoping to digitize, but after getting very frustrated with having the first batch of a dozen photos (Kodak, Fuji and Agfa papers) jammed again and again and again, I pretty much gave up. This is an expensive scanner and it fails miserably at the one thing I paid premium for, the photo feeder, so it's going back to the store. My advice: wait for the next version, or wait for a similar offering from Epson or another competitor (hopefully soon).
Rating: 
Summary: Scan quality is good, the automatic photo feeder poor
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Great project in it's price range
Review: This is a mid-range consumer scanner with some great extra features that you don't find on other scanners in the same price range. After reading some of the other reviews I was hesitant about buying the scanner but made the plunge after using the scanner at a friends. Note that this was PC Magazines Editor's Choice. Check out their website for the review (www.pcmag.com). I have found that documents and photos scan easily, and I've even been able to get some of our family's old slides to scan. However, getting good scans of slide is NOT easy. If you want to scan a large number of slides get a dedicated slide scanner. Also, the automatic document feeded is OK for small groups of photos. It tends to jam easily when a larger number of photos are scanned at the same time. Again, I see this as a nice extra, but not a replacement for a $1000 auto document feeder. The scans are clear and crisp, however, it will slow down as you push the quality above 600dpi. My only complaint is the included software. I tried it out but quickly went back to my other photo editing software. Since TWAIN drivers are included, you can use your favorite photo editing software and skip the included software.
Rating:
Summary: Great project in it's price range
Review: This scanner is huge!!! Unless you have a desk with a lot of room, this baby probably won't fit. Thank goodness my desk has a rollout tray for the keyboard and mouse. I had to put it on the desktop, but it still hangs out the back!
Rating: 
Summary: WAY TOO BIG & BULKY
Review: This scanner is huge!!! Unless you have a desk with a lot of room, this baby probably won't fit. Thank goodness my desk has a rollout tray for the keyboard and mouse. I had to put it on the desktop, but it still hangs out the back!
Rating: 
Summary: Kludge, but what's the alternative?
Review: 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.
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