HP ScanJet 5590 Digital Flatbed Scanner

Author's product rating:   

Speed	Slow
Colour sensitivity	Poor
Resolution	Good
Ease of Installation	Very poor - very time consuming and confusing
Value For Money	Very poor

Advantages:	I cannot see any advantages with this product
Disadvantages:	Software is convoluted and unreliable, paper jams are difficult to clear

Recommend to potential buyers:

no

Full review

In summary:

• Very unintuitive, convoluted and unpleasant to use (same on Win2K as XP)
  - sometimes the SW hangs during scan and needs a reboot
  - sometimes the SW crashes with a dialogue "try reinstalling HP software", and needs a reboot
  - sometimes it scans and after conversion to pdf every page is blank
  - very occasionally it scans a document properly
• If the sheet-feeder jams is says to refer to the documentation to clear it, which doesn't exist. There is no way to clear the jam except to pull hard & hope. No levers to release it like one would expect.
• Frequently has error 23 (lamp failure) on power-up and needs to be power cycled to work again.

Everything has to be started by pressing a button on an application called "HP Director". There are 4 apps started from this:
1) Scan Picture
2) Scan Document
3) Make Copies
4) View & Print
also Help
also Settings (which are used in conjunction with settings found in (1) and (2)!)
- Each application has to be exited to return to "HP Director"1) Scanning a Picture
This app scans a preview and allows a configuration to be saved. Only after exiting this app are the scanned pictures released to view through "HP Photo and Imaging Gallery" - this is rubbish (and is not possible to disable). To scan a picture / slide making small adjustments to your liking the following process is required:
(1) start "Scan Picture"
(2) load and/or set up scan area / preferences etc.
(3) press "Accept" to actually scan it
(4) exit app (& scanned image is released)
(5) wait for "HP Photo & Imaging Gallery" to start 'automatically'
(6) exit "HP Photo & Imaging Gallery"
(7) load image in your preferred editor
(8) back to step (1)
- Making adjustments to one part (e.g. picture area) changes other settings (e.g. lighten/darken)
- Scanning slides is easier than negatives as it get adjustments back-to-front with negatives
- Software is slow e.g. re-sizing a scan area is very processor intensive and takes a long time
- Slides / negs are scanned very badly and need to be corrected using an external application
- There is no hour-glass so it is difficult to know when the software is busy or has crashed

2) Scanning a Document
Scanning using the document feeder is even more painful. E.g. to scan a document using B&W, 600dpi:
(1) start "Scan Picture"
(2) set up scan area / preferences etc. (e.g. B&W, 600dpi)
(3) save these settings under a name
(4) exit "Scan Picture"
(5) open Settings and select settings saved in step (3)
(6) exit Settings
(7) start "Scan Document"
(8) scan documents then save as…
(9) if you don't like the results, go back to step 1
- If the software crashes on say, the 200th page, you lose it all. Furthermore you'll have do find the very large temporary directory yourself to clean up the mess

Don't waste time and money on this scanner.