Highway Robbery!

Our law firm purchased this scanner and tried for months to get some decent usage out of it. After multiple phone calls to tech support and then HP corporate headquarters, we threw up our hands, dumped it, and were blessed with the good Providence to purchase a Fujitsu ScanSnap S500, which blows this piece of cr*p out of the water.

To start with, the installation of the 5590 is a miserable experience. We previously had an HP 5510 multifunction (print/scan/copy/fax) that did its job reasonably well, but decided to "upgrade" to this machine in order to take on a heavier scanning load, as well as to be able to duplex. (By heavier, we're talking 5-30 pages a day - not the worlds heaviest load, by any stretch of the imagination). We also have an HP 3390 machine networked in to the LAN.

The 5590's software just did not want to play along, even with it's own "brother and sister" HP machines. Installation involved completely uninstalling the 5510, installing the 5590, and then having to re-install some of the 3390 software on the machine where the 5590 was hooked up - HP just seems to write programs that poison each other.

The scanner worked intermittently at first, with what seemed to be some minor hiccups. After a while it would jam pretty frequently. We ran an ADF/printer cleaning sheet through it, and I gave it the once-over with a can of compressed air. Still it jammed. A call to HP tech support connected me with someone in India who insisted on going through the psychological warfare tactics now common to many tech support centers ("Check the power cable... is it plugged in firmly?") Finally, the tech support rep, after about 30-45 minutes, got around to having me download the four (four!) software patches that were causing this known problem.

After installing the patches, the performance seemed to improve - for a while. Then, at a seemingly random moment, the software failed, giving me a "communications error" message. Another call to tech support ("Check the power cable...") led to the rep telling me to download the same four (four!) patches again and, when I insisted I had already done so, to completely uninstall and reinstall all of the software.

After threatening to sue HP and getting the cold shoulder (they wouldn't even put a supervisor on the line with me), I called HP corporate. I was eventually put in touch with some sort of product-line support specialist. The specialist promised to overnight me a CD-ROM with the most up to date software. He did, although it appeared to be for a different scanner product. I installed it. Still had the same problem. Uninstalled/reinstalled. No change. I tried calling that rep back and got his voice mail. I left a message, and never got a response.

At that point, we decided the time-suck of trying to deal with a failing $300 scanner (which was now 13 months old) was a cure worse than the disease. We've dumped that boat anchor and are the proud and extremely happy owners of a Fujitsu ScanSnap S500 - we couldn't be more pleased (see my review of that product for details).