HP Scanjet 4600 Review

I picked this one up at staples. For the money it is all right. Only one major problem: The cheesy hinge. I could not secure it to the hinge right out of the box. It has slightly rounded edges acting as a chamfer to lock the main unit to the holder. This may get annoying after time. Photo’s and OCR is great. Side note: the top is actually supposed to be removable for books and other items. Be very cafeful with it and you will have a good unit.

Rating: 7 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful.

I believed that this scanner would replace my old Cannon and Acer scanners, but the software does not have any capability to work with printed materials which need special attention: Halftone printing, elimination of moire patterns in newspaper, magazine, art prints, and all sorts of custom processes that were available with my other scanner control programs. I am severely disappointed.

I now have spent several hours searching for an auxiliary program, so far to no avail.

Rating: 5 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful.

I have had trouble with the power supply or maybe it’s the software. I don’t know and neither does HP. The thing just quits on me and I’ve had to return it twice. I’ve tried spending 70 minutes talking to an HP rep from India to no avail. I spent half the time spelling my name for him. Then he asked me if it was plugged in. That took 10 minutes! My office is full of HP equipment (because it used to be the best), but it appears that their quality and customer service aren’t the priority anymore. I’m eagerly awaiting for a competior to do it right. For now, I’ve purcahsed a dozen of them for $38.00 each and throw them away when they fail.

Rating: 4 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful.

Very good scanner, fast, software reliable. Easy to use and set up.

The only const is the missing driver for Linux.I run a dual boot with mandrake 10.1 and apparently there is no support at all for this device.

hope the driver will be soon available though

Rating: 5 :: 0 out of 1 people found this user review helpful.

This is great for scanning construction plans, but I went through 12 scanners before I decided to stop punishing myself. For some reason the power decides to stop working after 5 scans. What a piece of junk! I wish someone would come up with something like it that works.

Rating: 1 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful.

poor scanner – what a waste of money and time .Plenty style – low on software quality and HP support .No help from HP people.Do they have a telephone support? .Will have to dump it.Don’t buy.

Rating: 1 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful.

I’ve had my 4600 for about 6 months and haven’t had any issues with it. It’s pretty quick, looks good and stores unobtrusively. I don’t do a ton of scanning, but it’s been worth every penny. Considering the other reviews, I guess I’ve been lucky.

Rating: 8 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful.

I have had a 4600 for about 6 months and it has worked great both in the scan and OCR mode, (I have a 5-7% error rate with a 300dpi setting for OCR.

With the last update from Microsoft, it has created a glitch that I have never had before. But I plan to reinstall the driver which should resolve the issue.

Rating: 8 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful.

Physically, the scanner is great, but the Mac software is terrible. It crashes, refuses to run, fails to finish. And every week their updater pops up, saying there is new software but listing nothing.

Rating: 6 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful.

It is the second HP scanner I used. It started to malfunction almost immediately after instalation (the HP software is unbelievingly aggressive and dumb). Now it show only half of the scanned picture (left). And that only when it is in a good mood. Otherwise it simply runs to the top of the page and starts ratcheting there not being able to detect the end of the page.
HP support virtually none.
Do not buy if you want to spare yourself from trouble.

Rating: 1 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful.

Beats me why a company the size of HP cannot find more competent people to write decent software for this otherwise good product. I have scanned thousands of pages with mine over the last 4 years, with constant annoyance due to software issues. It will work fine for 20 scans and then start to insert black sections on the scanned file that do not always appear on the preview. Yesterday it ran fine all day for about 100 pages, today it is only scanning half the width, and it seems to be permanently stuck in that mode now. I wonder if HP ever listen to their customers, or if the giant company arrogance syndrome has got them now!

Rating: 5 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful.

The scanner rarely works or is recognized by my windows XP operating system. Even after multiple attempts at fixing the problem, reinstalling drivers, and even moving the USB plug to other ports. Nothing is wrong with my computer; it’s all in the scanner. A worthless buy in my opinion.

Rating: 1 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful.

I LOVE the color accuracy and how well this catches the finest details. The software is great for those of us who like to fine tune our settings.

The only pain is that it is so SENSITIVE to outside light. You can NOT let any outside light get through when scanning something, as you will get those weird streaks and bars in your scanned image. I have to keep the scanner completely covered and cover the see-threw glass with layers of papers to keep all outside light from getting in. It is because of this super light sensitivity that this scanner is NOT good for scanning anything thicker than a piece of paper.

But for what I do, as an artist, it’s perfect! It catches even the finest amount of detail in my artwork and does a fantastic job of matching colors!

~~Bee

Rating: 8 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful.