Hewlett Packard ScanJet 4300Cse Scanner

This scanner will NOT work with Vista. HP has no Vista driver for it, and apparently no intention of ever supplying one. A generic scanner program doesn't seem to solve the problem either. don't try this with Vista.

I originally used this scanner with 98se and was very happy with it. We upgraded to XP and the problems began. First XP wouldn't recognize it when I tried to connect it to the same USB port that it worked happily with before. I tweaked and fiddled and read on the web about a lot of people who had the same problem.

Hp help was no help. I didn't have any of the suspect hardware they mentioned. I downloaded updates and tried to reset the compatibility. Nothing worked. So I connected it with the parallel cable. It now works but o-h s-o-o s-l-o-o-o-w-l-y.

So I went from being fairly happy with this beast to being quite unhappy.

This scanner was the easiest piece of equipment to istall I have ever done. Instructions are very clear and take you step by step through the eentire process. Pictures scanned quickly and clearly. Easily filed on my computer and other programs. I am very happy with this scanner and with the price I paid.

I bought this for our office where we occasionally need to scan a picture into a form we can print or OCR some boilerplate text.

I hooked it up to a Windows 98SE machine. It's an older computer so I used the serial rather than the USB port. I'm not sure if this slowed the scanner down or not, but it does seem to move slower than my other scanner from a different manufacturer. It's also noisier.

The software is adequate. It will allow for OCR. I'm not sure how easy it would be for someone new to using OCR or a scanner to get started, but I was up and running with only a couple of false starts-- it didn't like my word processing program (one of the biggies too, one that many people consider Perfect) but you can export the OCR file as text to wordpad with a little experimentation.

All in all worth what I paid for it.

As of this writing, Amazon[.com] has this item on sale at a fantastic discount. I purchased it, got it up and working, and I've been nothing but pleased with the results. The instructions are simple yet clear, and the process is trouble free.
There are plenty of other scanners that can do more and do them faster, but this HP scanner does all the fundamental tasks 90% of us will ever need, and it does them well.
It is lightweight yet sturdy, and is a handsome-looking unit.

My only complaint with it is the length of the USB cable. Another 12-18 inches would have been nice, as not everyone has a plethora of desk space within close proximity to the back of their hard drive.