Rating: 
Summary: Horrific Macintosh Support
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Horrific Macintosh Support
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: PC yes, MAC no
Review: I bought the HP Scanjet 4750c about three weeks before buying my new G4 Power Mac, not knowing of the compatability issues.
On my old PC this is a terriffic scanner, particularly for its price category. It's very fast and the Photo and Imaging Director software is pertty intuitive with a versitile photo gallery that is a bit like Mac's iPhoto only with more options. You can perform various functions either from within the software or from the buttons on the scanner itself. I gave it four stars as a PC scanner.
On the Mac it's a disaster. I waited five months for HP to come out with a driver for OS 10.2 only to find that was very flawed, though I could get a basic scan out of it. HP does not use TWAIN, sticking instead to its stand-alone software, and they just haven't gotten it right in the Mac. Then when I updated my OS to 10.2.5 the scanner software didn't work at all. HP told me there is a known issue with 10.2.5 in which some of the scanner extensions are deleted from the Systems Extension folder. I never found out because trying to get into the folder completely locked up the Mac and I had to do a forced shut down and pray I hadn't damaged my computer.
I will say this: the HP technical support personnel are among the best I have ever delt with; friendly, patient, and generally knowledgeable (and starting in April it's a free 800 call).
If you own a PC and are looking for a fast, reasonably priced scanner, the HP Scanjet 4570c is a decent option. If you own a Mac, look elsewhere.
Rating:
Summary: PC yes, MAC no
Review: I bought the HP Scanjet 4750c about three weeks before buying my new G4 Power Mac, not knowing of the compatability issues.
On my old PC this is a terriffic scanner, particularly for its price category. It's very fast and the Photo and Imaging Director software is pertty intuitive with a versitile photo gallery that is a bit like Mac's iPhoto only with more options. You can perform various functions either from within the software or from the buttons on the scanner itself. I gave it four stars as a PC scanner.
On the Mac it's a disaster. I waited five months for HP to come out with a driver for OS 10.2 only to find that was very flawed, though I could get a basic scan out of it. HP does not use TWAIN, sticking instead to its stand-alone software, and they just haven't gotten it right in the Mac. Then when I updated my OS to 10.2.5 the scanner software didn't work at all. HP told me there is a known issue with 10.2.5 in which some of the scanner extensions are deleted from the Systems Extension folder. I never found out because trying to get into the folder completely locked up the Mac and I had to do a forced shut down and pray I hadn't damaged my computer.
I will say this: the HP technical support personnel are among the best I have ever delt with; friendly, patient, and generally knowledgeable (and starting in April it's a free 800 call).
If you own a PC and are looking for a fast, reasonably priced scanner, the HP Scanjet 4570c is a decent option. If you own a Mac, look elsewhere.
Rating: 
Summary: Good scanner, mediocre software, poor Mac OS support
Review: I bought this scanner because it has the features I was looking for, including a built-in transparency adapter and support for both Windows and Mac OS X. It works reasonably well on Windows. If you scan on the higher resolutions, of course, you'll need lots of memory, disk space, and patience. At lower resolutions (300 dpi) it's fast and quiet. The software is somewhat lame... you can adjust the settings at the preview pane before capturing the scan -- but if you want to adjust settings and capture a new scan, you have to start over on the preview pane (it won't remember your last settings, size, crop, etc). Transparency scanning was kind of disappointing. The automatically adjusted image was way too dark, and the entire negative strip showed up as one image (I was hoping the software would be smart enough to detect the individual frames... no such luck.) The greatest disappointment is the lack of Mac OS X support. The box says it supports Mac OS X 10.1.2 "or higher", but after fooling around for a while and not having any luck, I discovered on HP's web site that OS X 10.2 is not supported. One can only hope they'll eventually fix the problems and support the latest OS.
Rating: 
Summary: Very Happy with this scanner
Review: I bought this scanner for one reason. I wanted to scan 35mm slides. The product info says it will do this. However, all my slides are in jackets and the tma adapter for this scanner will not accept them. I can scan 35mm negatives just fine. If I want to scan my slides, I would have to remove them from the jackets which would be time consuming and pretty much ruin them. I also find the manual and help information for the scanner to be pretty much useless. If you are new to scanning then this is not the machine for you. My one star rating is because the scanner will not do what it advertised it would.
Rating:
Summary: 35mm slides??
Review: I bought this scanner for one reason. I wanted to scan 35mm slides. The product info says it will do this. However, all my slides are in jackets and the tma adapter for this scanner will not accept them. I can scan 35mm negatives just fine. If I want to scan my slides, I would have to remove them from the jackets which would be time consuming and pretty much ruin them. I also find the manual and help information for the scanner to be pretty much useless. If you are new to scanning then this is not the machine for you. My one star rating is because the scanner will not do what it advertised it would.
Rating:
Summary: could have been a litte better
Review: i bought this scanner to replace a paperport one touch that is not supported by Windows XP home edition. it has many good attributes including: fairly fast scanning at 600 dpi or less, good opitcal resolution, reasonable color reproduction, good image editing tools in the twain and image gallery, flawless installation on my dell 4550.
what i didn't like:
1) twain interface is a bit cumbersome, and if you decide to go through the twain, it wants to do a 6 sec preview each time you open it, whether or not you want a preview.
2) the one button copy function is only fair and cannot be programmed for a new default scan quality.
3) the images that pop up in the image gallery after scanning often have that funny repeating color pattern that goes away if you zoom in several levels; it makes assessing the quality of your scan more difficult.
4) documentation is poor.
NOTE: none of these is a fatal flaw but they detract from overall utility.
Rating: 
Summary: How can a company stay in business peddling this crap?
Review: I got one of these as a Christmas gift and have spent the last 3 hours trying to get the software to work. Does anyone test this software before it's released to the consumer? There is some kind of bug that keeps telling me that I need to insert a disk in order to scan an image or document. Happens for the HP software and any third pary such as Photoshop. I'm in the middle of downloading some 6 or 7 patch files that are supposed to fix this and several other problems. However, I doubt it will remove all the other crap tacked on to the installation such as the HP support and product registration software. HP has a scan tool on their WWW site that is supposed to tell you what updates or patches you need and the 4570c is listed as a supported device. The tool tells me that it cannot find any supported devices attached and wants me to check the USB connection. Windows found it as soon as the power was turned on. Speaking of power, I had to make a trip to Wal-Mart and get a power strip just for this scanner. The power supply is about as large as a family-size bar of soap. If this wasn't a gift I would take it back for a refund. I can't recomend any other scanners. Maybe this one will be worth the time once the software problems are corrected.
Rating:
Summary: No complaints
Review: 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.
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