Rating: 
Summary: Good beginner-serious amateur scanner
Review: After reading review after review for film scanners I decided to purchase the HP S20xi and I don't regret it. If I properly exposed a slide in the first place I hardly need to make any adjustments to the scanned sample. The S20xi scans my color and chromogenic negatives wonderfully. The scanning software that is including in the box is good. With it you can crop, adjust brightness, shadow areas, colors, etc. before you perform the actual scan. My only complaint so far (I've only had it for three days and I've scanned about 60 pictures so far) is the dust. I have a light box and I clean the neg/slide until I'm sure it's spotless before I put it in the scanner. The scanned image still has some dust spots and I've use air on the scanner to no avail. It's not too big of a deal to me to remove the dust spots using Photoshop, but it would be nice if the scanner had ICE or at least was willing to let my air remove the dust! Overall, I'm very happy with the S20xi...if you want to enhance your images for personal digital printing or simply archive your photo library to CD (as I'm doing), the S20xi is a good alternative to higher priced scanners.
Rating:
Summary: Love it!
Review: But... it is made to scan slides, color negatives, and photographs only. 5" x 7" is the size limit. It is wonderful for what is does, but it is _not_ a document scanner.It fits perfectly into what I am trying to do, but if you are wanting to scan a 8 1/2 x 11 document, this is not the machine.
Rating:
Summary: Five years of daily use and still scanning
Review: I am a photographer and I've used this tool almost everyday for five years. At 16 bit, 2,400 dpi this scanner makes a 40 mg file. This scanner is easy to use, reliable, an incredible bargain. If you don't need resolution above 2,400 dpi you can't miss with this gem.
Rating: 
Summary: Great price but outmatched by newer scanners
Review: I bought my HP S20 last year and have had great success with it. The setup is easy (USB) and the scans are fast and accurate. Photoshop quickly corrects any color problems. However, after using a Nikon with Ice3 (cubed) I must say that I am trading up. No longer having to remove dust and marks from my scans will save me hours of tedious Photoshop work. HP, please add ICE!
Rating:
Summary: Great price but outmatched by newer scanners
Review: I bought my HP S20 last year and have had great success with it. The setup is easy (USB) and the scans are fast and accurate. Photoshop quickly corrects any color problems. However, after using a Nikon with Ice3 (cubed) I must say that I am trading up. No longer having to remove dust and marks from my scans will save me hours of tedious Photoshop work. HP, please add ICE!
Rating: 
Summary: Good film scanner, but missing photoediting software
Review: I bought S20xi recently and it produces good pictures at 2400dpi (but a bit more grainy in areas, like blue sky). The HP scanning software is very handy to use, including adjustments for exposure, color, sharpness and viewing histogram before the final scan. And it works fine on my W2K PRO/SP2 and W98 machines. The scan speed is not super fast, but it is ok for my personal use. The one complaint I have about the scanner is that it does not bundle any popular photo editing software, such as Adobe Photoshop Elements or even Microsoft Picture-It (...), while it comes with Ulead PhotoImpact4.2. You do need to use the above programs to remove dust/spot and scratch from time to time.
Rating:
Summary: A dependable workhorse
Review: I have an earlier SCSI version of this scanner (over 6 years old now and it still works great, how many IT products can you say that about?). In fact, it was my first scanner of any sort. It is a dependable workhorse that produces quality scans. The feeder for slides, film strips and prints is convenient. I use it to scan my 35 mm slides for submission to a magazine I contribute to and have had many published, some directly from the scans. It is rare that I ever scan above 600x800, even for direct publication. It is also a workhorse for my scans for web publishing and digital archiving. This scanner is the single best IT investment I have made over the years. HP's web site does include XP drivers for this scanner.
Rating: 
Summary: Works occasionally
Review: I've had the S20 for several years. It suffers a lot from "communication lost".
The software upgrades do nothing to solve the problem.
Buying expensive cables does nothing. Re-installing software does nothing.
Adding high quality USB ports does nothing.
Swapping computers (at least five different machines) does nothing.
Once in a while it works and then it works adequately.
You can tinker yourself to death with this one.
Rating:
Summary: Works occasionally
Review: I've had the S20 for several years. It suffers a lot from "communication lost".
The software upgrades do nothing to solve the problem.
Buying expensive cables does nothing. Re-installing software does nothing.
Adding high quality USB ports does nothing.
Swapping computers (at least five different machines) does nothing.
Once in a while it works and then it works adequately.
You can tinker yourself to death with this one.
Rating:
Summary: great multi-purpose scanner
Review: I've owned this scanner for almost 1-1/2 years and love it.I agree with the one reviewer about not being able to adequately clean the dust off but it's easy enough to remove any spots with PhotoShop. I like being able to have one scanner for all film types and I have lots of slides. I now just process film...and use the scanner to get the pix into my computer. I never buy prints anymore, why bother!
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