By the way - HP tech support says that they haven't had any reported problems like the APF jamming or software issues - seems that they are keeping their techs in the dark. HP customers - you need to YELL a little louder to get HP's attention.

The good news is that that scanner was simple to get working and I haven't had many problems with the photo feeder. I've found that if you just throw a stack of photos in, you are likely to get a jam. If you make sure all of the photos separate easily, then you'll be fine. I've gone through stacks of photos with no major problem. Image quality has been just fine.

Unfortunately, the software isn't that great. Like others, I've found the auto-cropping doesn't work well at all. I toss a photo in and on the first preview pass it never gets the auto cropping right. Strangely, it gets it correct on the second pass.

Also, the software scans photos to a temporary location and then processes the images their final resting place once all scanning is done. You have no control over the temporary directory. While I was scanning a stack of photos at very high resolution I ran out of disk space because it was using my C drive as a temporary location, even though I had configured the software to place the files on a drive with plenty of space.

Overall, I am happy. Even though the software isn't great, I know how to work around its limitations and it doesn't get in my way. Maybe... (just maybe)... HP will release a much improved update.

Do not buy.

This scanner isn't perfect. It's the only thing on the market that I'm aware of that can accept a stack of pics. You'll need to check on it to be sure it doesn't skip a picture or get stuck. The bottom line however is that if you've got stacks of pics to scan, this item is worth purchasing.

Unfortunately it didn't work. The feeder would make noises but would never grab any photos.

I tried chatting with HPs support over the internet. It was horrible. I had to sit and wait as many as 7 or 8 minutes for the guy to type a response back. And all he could suggest was I try a different kind of paper (hmmm, lets see, its photo paper?)

So I took the scanner back the very next day. Don't waste your money on this. There are much better scanners available.

Some people complained about how the software automatically organizes photos by month. What they don't mention is that there is a box you can simply check if you don't want it to do it that way. Further, under one of the settings menus you can select the destination folder, which allows limitless organizing possibilities. For example, in Windows Explorer you can create a folder called "wedding photos" and then program the scanner to send all your wedding photos to that folder, automatically sequentially numbered. Then you can create a separate folder called "vacation photos," change the setting in the scanner software, and send all your vacation photos there. It could not be easier. So I don't get what all the hub-bub is about.

Second, people complained about endless software installation problems, freezes, driver conflicts, etc. I have a Dell P3 600MHz with 128MB ram, running Windows 98 - not exactly top of the line - and I had absolutely no problems, conflicts or errors installing and running the software first time up. I was scanning photos within 30 minutes of pulling the machine out of the box. So maybe I am just lucky, but thankfully I cannot report the same issues or frustrations.

Finally, the ADF. Just about everyone reported problems with the photo feeder, and I must admit, I experienced a few jams when I got down to the last 3 or 4 photos in each stack of 20 or 30. Maybe it will get worse as dust accumulates on the rollers. But contrary to other peoples' reports, even when I did get the "document jam" message, I did not lose any of the photos that had scanned through on that run (all of which just fed through like clockwork) -- so all I had to do was stick the 3 or 4 remaining photos in on top of the next stack, and they went right through. All the previous photos went right into the designated folder. And yes, the scans do show part of the track on the underside of the cover - but I don't care. I am just archiving all these photos so I can retire my shoe-boxes full of photos to a shelf already reserved in the basement, and have all my photos on a CD or two. So if I later have to manually crop all these scans, big deal. The advantage of not having to sit in front of my computer, endlessly lifting the scanner lid, placing a photo, lowering the lid and hitting "scan" thousands of times, outweighs all the imperfections of this unit.

Perhaps I should have waited for the next model to come out - but I have waited about five years for this one, so I think that is long enough. Frankly I am surprised every scanner manufacturer doesn't have a comparable product on the market, as the photo feeder seems to be such an obviously desirable feature. Oh, and by the way, the scans are beautiful, even at 300 dpi. I played around with the negative/slide reader too, and that seemed easy to use and pretty handy - although you have to set the resolution way higher to get a comparable scan to a 6x4 print, which greatly slows down the process. (I tried 9600 dpi, which created a 22MB file out of a strip of 4 negatives.) But that only makes sense, as you are essentially "blowing up" a tiny negative into an image that is, at 100%, even larger than your computer screen.

So in summary, while the 5500c is not perfect, it is better than any other scanner out there right now that comes with an automatic photo feeder and a negative/slide reader, for under [$$$]. I am willing, for now, to live with its imperfections, if for no other reason than a pathetic lack of alternatives.

So, now, I've got a deadline to meet, a scanner that is useless, a computer that's frozen up more times than Lake Erie, and few remaining hairs to pull out.

From all of the reading I've done, it seems that at least 50% of the 5500c's sent out by HP are defective, so if you like gambling, go ahead and purchase one of these babies. You might get a good one. I, on the other hand, will be returning mine tomorrow and reinstalling my Epson 2450.

So in my experience, you still save time scanning pictures, even with the occasional transfer mess ups, and while the photo feeder damages the pictures, all the handling of transferring pictures to and from a regular scanner could amount to damage too if you're not careful.

This scanner is definitely worth taking a look at, but if you have problems, don't be afraid to return it

My only complaint concerns the software. HP tries to guess what you want to do. After scanning, it is set up to collect your group of photos into a separate folder every month, which is located in My Pictures. So if you bulk-scan several groups of pix that should go into the same folder on your Desktop, you run into problems. The numbering starts over with each scanned group, so you can't just add a new group of images to the last one because they will have the same numbers. (Maybe there's a way to change that, but who wants to wade through all the help files.)

This scanner is a great invention, and much needed to deal with those shoe boxes full of old photos. Maybe HP listened to all the complaints and improved their product!

The included Funhouse program is very nice too.

HP technical service was fantastic. They quickly diagnosed the problem (believed there was a problem with the fans that pull the photos through) and sent me a replacement which arrived < 48 hours after I called with the issue. The new APF works fantastic.

The only reason I don't give it five stars is because the auto crop feature needs improvement. Every photo still needs to be manually cropped around the edges.

Next I installed on a win 98se machine and the software worked better but the APF repeatedly reported jams after feeding one photo and often would not feed any photos at all.

I am a very tech saavy and experienced scanner user with transparency, photo and document scanners and had a terrible time with this one. I hoped to scan a large number of photos efficiently and have had an HP 6350cse with a document feeder that has worked great for years and an HP Digital Sender that I bought for my ofice that is also great, but the document expertise does not appear to have translated well to this innovative attempt at photo feeding. Sadly I will be taking this back tomorrow and doing lots of scans on my Epson 2450 instead.

I wouldn't ever recommend this scanner or this company to anybody.