HP ScanJet 4070 PhotoSmart Scanner

This scanner and software is fine if you only use XP, but I bought this 2 years ago, about the time Vista was coming out so I thought HP would make it compatible with Vista. No such luck, HP wrote the software for XP and then dumped support. They half attempted to write a driver for Vista but it is slow and you can't use HP software, so now I have to stay with XP. This will probably be my last HP purchase.

I love this HP scanjet -- It has never giving me a bit of trouble and I use it often...it is always there and ready to go when I need it. It does slides also.

I bought the HP 4070 Scanner and used it with Windows XP for a couple years. Last Christmas, I bought a new laptop with Vista Home installed, and HP had no Vista driver available for the 4070. I did a lot of searching on HP's web site, and subscribed to their tech newsletters, but never found any solution. After several months, HP provided a "minimal driver", but it would not work with HP's scan software, so the front panel buttons to scan to printer, etc. would not work. My solution has been to keep my old desktop with XP for the sole purpose of scanning. HP orphaned this scanner. Their "solution" is for you to buy another scanner. Guess what, I'm not going to buy HP again. I can't believe HP is still selling the 4070 and not supporting it with a full Vista driver.

I BOUGHT THIS AS A GIFT FOR MY HUSBAND, WHO IS HARD TO BUY FOR AND HE REALLY LIKES IT SO I WOULD DEFINETELY BUY IT AGAIN. I USE IT AS WELL. IT HAS REALLY COME IN HANDY MANY TIMES. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!

...and this scanners software is no exception. I do graphic design for a print shop and I needed to replace my ancient and worn out epson expression 800. The specs for the ScanJet 4070 looked good so i gave it a shot.

dont get me wrong, the scan quality is ok, but this thing is SOOOO SLOW!! The first scan of the day every day takes about 3 or 4 minutes just for the scanner to warm up! then it takes another couple minutes to actually scan the art (longer for higher res scans). When you're trying to manage about 7 or 8 jobs at once and customers want their prints and proofs right away, that is COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE!! HP wont do anything about it either because they're so huge and make so much money, the DONT CARE about what we think. I've called and complained more than once. But the speed of the scanner isnt even the worst part...

The software is crap. It makes its own settings and refuses to save mine. The interface is NOT intuitive, i cant get the descreen option to work no matter what. Dont even think of uninstalling and reinstalling, the software glitches up even more, and if youre lucky it wont crash your pc every time you turn it on. check their site, most of their products have all sorts of uninstall patches, etc. can you believe their scanner software is 300 megs!??!? 300 MEGABYTES FOR SCANNER SOFTWARE?? ALL OF PHOTOSHOP ISNT EVEN 300 MEGS!! and guess what? theres no 3rd party software for the scanner... great.

the most annoying thing to me personally is that the scanner decides what color corrections it wants to make to the image. in the options i set it to NOT correct anything, but it still does anyway. i have to load the software (1 - 2 minutes) wait for warm up (3-4 minutes) let it do its preview scan, which it does automatically even if you dont want it to (1 -2 minutes), change all the settings to what i WANT them to be at (another 30 seconds or so) then scan (usually 2-3 minutes). so all in all it takes about 8-10 minutes to scan what i can scan from my cheap little canon bearpaw in about 2 minutes or less.

if this story isnt enough to deter you from buying this scanner, than you deserve the trouble it gets you. also, hp PLEASE get some decent programmers!!!!