HP Scanjet 4850 Photo Scanner (L1950A#B1H) Review

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(More customer reviews)I've never been so frustrated by a piece of equipment in my life. I had an older HP scanner that died after scanning thousands of documents, so I naturally looked to upgrade to a newer HP model. This thing is terrible. It worked fine for about a week, but then I started getting errors in the scans. Soon after that the scanner began freezing up regularly and then it ceased to work altogether. I went to the HP web site looking for a patch, and what do you know? A lot of people have been having the same trouble and they had a software patch that would supposedly fix the problem. Unfortunately the patch doesn't help.
At this point, the scanner works about 1 in every 10 tries. It usually freezes up, which then requires a total reboot of Windows. I've managed to get 3 things scanned this morning in about 30 minutes. This scanner is headed for the garbage if a new patch isn't available soon.
Update: I have now downloaded SIX PATCHES from HP's web site and the scanner appears to be working. Obviously it is the software that is incompatible with the combination of Windows XP and various other imaging programs I have loaded on my computer (HP warns about this). I have software for Canon and Fuji digital cameras, so they may be the culprit. In any case, I still wouldn't recommend this scanner given the compatibility issues that come with it.
2nd Update: It is now two months since I posted my original review and I definitely stand by it. I continue to have problems making this thing work right. It's so frustrating whenever I want to scan a document to keep an electronic record of something and I have to shut down my computer or start and stop the scanner. I can usually make it work, but it is NEVER simple and ALWAYS time consuming.
Another Update: Today has been pretty typical of what it's like to try and use this awful scanner. I had six documents to scan. The first three scanned fine. The scanner locked up on the 4th one. Had to reboot and start over (it erased the first 3 scans). This time I scanned 3 documents, stopped and saved everything, then went to my other 3 documents. Now it locked up on the 2nd document. Keep in mind, when it locks up, you can't cancel the job. You have to reboot and start over. By the way, the error message I got told me to reinstall the software yet again. I'm wondering how many of the patches are included in the latest version of the software because I seem to add at least one patch every week.
Final Update: The scanner was destroyed by office workers angry that it failed to perform even the simplest of tasks. Rumor has it that it was thrown from a 3rd floor balcony and then run over repeatedly with a delivery truck. In any case, this was the worst piece of electronic equipment I have seen in 20 years. We connected it to state-of-the-art computers and it was remarkably awful on a very consistent basis. Sorry HP, you're not what you used to be. Canon anyone?

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