Rating: 
Summary: Not perfect, not awful.
Review: After reading all the negative reviews, I hesitated to purchase the 5500c. But with the knowledge that I can take it back for a full refund within two weeks, I bit the bullet and purchased one. I really, really wanted a scanner that could automatically feed photos, as I have intended for years to digitize all my prints, slides etc.; but sitting in front of the computer for hours and hours, manually feeding thousands of photos one by one, has so far not been working for me. Life is too short. So I am happy to report that so far, I have experienced only minor glitches with the 5500c, which can be expected of just about any new computer software or hardware product these days. (Hopefully this review is not premature!) Some people complained about how the software automatically organizes photos by month. What they don't mention is that there is a box you can simply check if you don't want it to do it that way. Further, under one of the settings menus you can select the destination folder, which allows limitless organizing possibilities. For example, in Windows Explorer you can create a folder called "wedding photos" and then program the scanner to send all your wedding photos to that folder, automatically sequentially numbered. Then you can create a separate folder called "vacation photos," change the setting in the scanner software, and send all your vacation photos there. It could not be easier. So I don't get what all the hub-bub is about. Second, people complained about endless software installation problems, freezes, driver conflicts, etc. I have a Dell P3 600MHz with 128MB ram, running Windows 98 - not exactly top of the line - and I had absolutely no problems, conflicts or errors installing and running the software first time up. I was scanning photos within 30 minutes of pulling the machine out of the box. So maybe I am just lucky, but thankfully I cannot report the same issues or frustrations. Finally, the ADF. Just about everyone reported problems with the photo feeder, and I must admit, I experienced a few jams when I got down to the last 3 or 4 photos in each stack of 20 or 30. Maybe it will get worse as dust accumulates on the rollers. But contrary to other peoples' reports, even when I did get the "document jam" message, I did not lose any of the photos that had scanned through on that run (all of which just fed through like clockwork) -- so all I had to do was stick the 3 or 4 remaining photos in on top of the next stack, and they went right through. All the previous photos went right into the designated folder. And yes, the scans do show part of the track on the underside of the cover - but I don't care. I am just archiving all these photos so I can retire my shoe-boxes full of photos to a shelf already reserved in the basement, and have all my photos on a CD or two. So if I later have to manually crop all these scans, big deal. The advantage of not having to sit in front of my computer, endlessly lifting the scanner lid, placing a photo, lowering the lid and hitting "scan" thousands of times, outweighs all the imperfections of this unit. Perhaps I should have waited for the next model to come out - but I have waited about five years for this one, so I think that is long enough. Frankly I am surprised every scanner manufacturer doesn't have a comparable product on the market, as the photo feeder seems to be such an obviously desirable feature. Oh, and by the way, the scans are beautiful, even at 300 dpi. I played around with the negative/slide reader too, and that seemed easy to use and pretty handy - although you have to set the resolution way higher to get a comparable scan to a 6x4 print, which greatly slows down the process. (I tried 9600 dpi, which created a 22MB file out of a strip of 4 negatives.) But that only makes sense, as you are essentially "blowing up" a tiny negative into an image that is, at 100%, even larger than your computer screen. So in summary, while the 5500c is not perfect, it is better than any other scanner out there right now that comes with an automatic photo feeder and a negative/slide reader, for under [$$$]. I am willing, for now, to live with its imperfections, if for no other reason than a pathetic lack of alternatives.
Rating: 
Summary: Every 2nd Photo Jams
Review: Bought this scanner primarily to scan in negatives...extremely disappointed in end product...clarity and resolution were horrible. The images didn't even come close to the actual developed photos. Returned the product the next day...bought Epson Perfection 3170 (for less money!!) and was extremely happy with scanned images. Don't buy the HP scanner!!
Rating: 
Summary: Returned the next day
Review: Bought this scanner primarily to scan in negatives...extremely disappointed in end product...clarity and resolution were horrible. The images didn't even come close to the actual developed photos. Returned the product the next day...bought Epson Perfection 3170 (for less money!!) and was extremely happy with scanned images. Don't buy the HP scanner!!
Rating:
Summary: Good scanner, not so great software
Review: Even though some of the reviews were quite negative, I decided to go ahead and give this scanner a try. I (like others) was very interested in the photo feeder. The good news is that that scanner was simple to get working and I haven't had many problems with the photo feeder. I've found that if you just throw a stack of photos in, you are likely to get a jam. If you make sure all of the photos separate easily, then you'll be fine. I've gone through stacks of photos with no major problem. Image quality has been just fine. Unfortunately, the software isn't that great. Like others, I've found the auto-cropping doesn't work well at all. I toss a photo in and on the first preview pass it never gets the auto cropping right. Strangely, it gets it correct on the second pass. Also, the software scans photos to a temporary location and then processes the images their final resting place once all scanning is done. You have no control over the temporary directory. While I was scanning a stack of photos at very high resolution I ran out of disk space because it was using my C drive as a temporary location, even though I had configured the software to place the files on a drive with plenty of space. Overall, I am happy. Even though the software isn't great, I know how to work around its limitations and it doesn't get in my way. Maybe... (just maybe)... HP will release a much improved update.
Rating:
Summary: Not worth the cardboard box it came in
Review: First, I am a HUGE HP fan. I love their printers and have had 8 over the last 14 years and still have four of them all over the house. I have used and loved HP Laser and Inkjet printers since the early 90s. So I really looked forward to using their scanner and photo feeder because my family of 6 has many thousands of 3.5 x 5 and 4 x 6 photos we want to scan and save to DVD. This was to be THE answer. Boy, was I wrong. Well, HP was wrong, I was just gullible.
This scanner jammed on every picture fed into it if you were not standing there to make sure that when it was shot out, it dropped flat. Then it failed to correctly crop all but one photo in each batch.
This scanner should have been dumped in a trashcan the first day I bought it but it was the only game in town so I after a call to HP Customer Service, I waited for a YEAR for HP to come out with the promised 2.0 software so that it would correctly crop the photos.. Version 1 would correctly crop ONE out of 24. The LONG awaited Version 2.0 would correctly crop the first and the last one of 24. Version 2 did almost nothing to make this any more an AUTOMATIC photo feed scanner than it was before. What is the point if you have to feed each one by hand and then re crop and rename them all???
I finally got rid of this doorstop and yesterday I went out and bought the new Epson Perfection 2480 Limited Edition! For any of you that want a scanner that actually scans AND crops the pictures correctly; IT WORKS PERFECTLY!
Within ten minutes of opening the box, I placed a stack of 16 3.5 x 5 for the first batch and then a stack of 24 4 x 6 into the hopper and gave it a file name (HP does NOT do this part) and it scanned them all, PERFECTLY CROPPED, named them with the name I gave then and then appended the correct 001, 002, etc after! It also remembered the last number so the next batch would just start numbers where you left off.
The Epson software interface is a bit clunky (no worse than HPs poor interface) but the scanner does it's job flawlessly! It scanned all the pictures with absolutely no help from me and it cropped them all perfectly and named them perfectly! The ONLY thing left for me to do was to turn the landscape ones right side up (using Vallen Jpegger, of course, to avoid any loss)!!
I am in heaven! I will truly be able to scan those thousands of family photos, UNATTENDED.
If you are in the market for a scanner to scan a LOT of snapshots and you do not want to have to do hours of work to fix them, do NOT buy the HP Auto Photo feeder models.
Hope this helps.
Rating:
Summary: Great Scanner
Review: I bit the bullet and purchased the 5500c despite the other reviews on this site. Previously I tried the Scanjet 4570c and the Epson 1660. The 4570c was fast, but the user reviews raved about the Epson 1660. The Epson was much slower and my Epson printer would not make prints from scans made with the negative adapter set at the hightest resolution. I didn't have this type of problem with the 4570c (or the 5500c). The 5500c produces scans that are better than either of the other scanners (even though the guts seem to be the same as the 4570c). The colors are so good that I haven't made any adjustments before printing (My monitor is calibrated, and I use the sRBG setting on my printer). I only use Photoshop Elements to remove some of the dust. The Automatic Document Feeder is great. Once you use it, you will not want to go back to manually placing pictures on the glass. I have not had any problems with the ADF. I've enjoyed the quality of the scans made from my old prints so much that I haven't even tried the negative adapter yet. The scanner is expensive for a home machine ...but it has not disappointed me yet. The HP software is also useful for laying out different prints on one sheet. The Quick Print feature is great if you want to print 4x6 prints without going through too many steps. I am a very finicky consumer so my rating of 4 stars should mean a lot.
Rating:
Summary: A decent picture feeder
Review: 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.
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: Great Idea
Review: I bought this last month and so far have scanned in over 1000 pictures from old albums. The automatic picture feeder is so nice you can just drop a stack of pics in and walk away until they are all scanned. Finally a way to get all those old snapshots into digital form. Only occasional feeder jams but easy to fix. Works flawlessly with Windows XP.
Rating:
Summary: Fast, high quality scans, but....
Review: I bought this primarily for the automatic photo feeder. It was great to be able to put in a stack of photos (I went up to 25 at a time) and walk away while it scanned. Had only one or two times when the feeder jammed; wished it would have allowed continuing after clearing the jam instead of stopping scanning on the batch completely. Quality is excellent but I'm returning it as it takes too much time to adjust the scans afterwards ("auto straighten" feature doesn't help--photos frequently feed crooked; part of scanner hardware ends up in the scans; frequently get 1/2" black band on left in scans). I might as well scan each manually so it will be done right the first time.
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