HP ScanJet 4670 See-Thru Vertical Scanner

I am a long-time HP printer and scanner user, and I really liked the design of this scanner. Besides having a knock-out appearance, I loved that you could fold it up and put it on a shelf. However, this scanner did not meet my needs and I ended up returning it.

I bought it for two applications: scanning documents and converting them to text with OCR, and scanning old family slides. This is NOT the scanner to buy for either application. The cheap OCR software included with the scanner is virtually useless. My typewritten documents came out hopelessly garbled - it would have taken more time to correct the mistakes that it would have to re-type them from scratch. If you plan to use this scanner for documents, plan to buy a better OCR program to go with it.

As for scanning slides, the first unit I bought had a loose connection from the scanner to the slide attachment, and I had to exchange it. The second unit worked, but the scan quality was just not what I was hoping for.

I returned the HP and bought an Epson 3170 instead. It comes with a far superior OCR program, and Photoshop Elements to boot. I'm not sure the slide scanning is much, if any better. Could be I'm just asking too much from a flatbed scanner...

HP has a winning product with this scanner in my book. Not only is it beautiful to look at, takes up less valuable desktop real estate, but it produces beautiful scans- quickly. I needed a machine that could scan pages from books and old manuscripts without damaging them. This system fit the bill perfectly. I have additionally found a new delight in digging out old family negatives and 're-processing' them with this scanner. A great add-on, plugged it in, it was instantly recognised and performed perfectly.
I was baffled to read where other users had poor results from this scanner time wise so I decided to try it myself and see just what my own results would be. While for most of my color work I would only use 150 to 300dbi, I set the machine to 600dbi, Next I inserted a full page complex color graphic to be scanned. I set my stopwatch and pressed scan. My scan completed in just under 8 minutes, much less than the 20 to 30 minutes claimed by other reviewers. My only assumption is that these other reviewers were not using USB2 or there was some other internal glitch on their computers. Perhaps, it was just a PC thing. My system for running the test is a Macintosh G5 dual 2GHz with 2Gigs of RAM with true USB2 ports.
While the users manual could use some polish,I couldn't recommend it more highly. You need this machine!

I purchased this scanner for the simple reason that it looked beautiful and took up less space than the conventional flat bed scanner. This was a mistake. The software that drives the scanner is unnecessarily complex, clunky and difficult to use. Scanning slides often results in the HP Software locking up. What is a great idea has been spoiled by poor unfriendly software. Even the manual is difficult to follow - there isn't even a clear instruction of how to fix the slide adapter. A simple show and tell DVD might have helped. Perhaps, HP might expand their new relationship with Apple with iTunes to advice on how to write easy to use software. I cannot recommend this scanner until HP re-writes their scanning software.

This scanner is a work of art to look at.
The software is also not too bad.
The slide and negative scanning attachment is really cool.

As for everything else, well..
Higher resolution scans are extremely slow. I tried a scan at 600 DPI using maximum bit depth settings for text and graphics, and it took almost *20 minutes*. On the other hand, scanning at 300 DPI with the standard bit depth settings, I got a scan in 1 minute. Not bad, but still, a bit slow for 300 DPI!

The quality even at 600 DPI was not what it should have been.

If you want the most stylish scanner ever created to date, and don't mind really REALLY slow scans in order to get decent quality, then I'd recommend you consider getting one for yourself. But if you scan lots of documents, and need decent speed-to-quality ratios from your scanner, stay away.

And maybe a future driver upgrade will fix some of these shortcomings.

When the HP4670 was connected to my Dell 8300, the Intel 82801 USB Universal Host Controller reported "Device Not Recognized" and "Unknown Device". The solution is to buy a USB 2.0 hub. The software install reported error 1904, hpgwiamd.dll failed to install; this error can be ignored.
Scanned photos look great. 35mm slides are cumbersome to swap in and out.