HP PhotoSmart S20 Photo Scanner

List Price: $499.99

Features:

• Versatile--scans slides, negatives, and prints
• Scans 35mm film strips and slides at 2,400 dpi optical
• Scans photos at 300 dpi optical, 36-bit color depth
• USB interface for easy connection to your PC
• Exclusive S20 scanning software to optimize and enhance photos

Accessories:
Targus PAUH212U 7 Port USB 2.0 Hub	Targus PAUH217U 4 Port Ultra Mini USB 2.0 Hub	Monster Cable MP AV600 Power Protector	Monster PC700 Computer PowerCenter¿ with Surge Protection	Adobe Photoshop 6.0 [OLD VERSION]

Customer Reviews:

Works fine for me! [Posted on 2001-10-12]
I've owned this unit for a couple of years & love it. Very handy, dependable, easy to use, never had any problems & love the results. I do not work for HP nor do any of my relatives or friends & I do make money from my photos. That out of the way, I must confess that I resent "reviews" which take to task other users and arbitrarily classify us as "professionals" or "amateurs" based upon our level of agreement with the author. Most of the gripes I've read about seem to fall into 2 categories: (1) the Windows 2000 incompatibility: Hey, boxes are cheap - why not get a dedicated PC with compatible platform (e.g. W98)? - that's a common "professional" solution, or (2) the dust/lack of ICE software syndrome: Hey, try a little old-fashioned housekeeping! ICE is nice, but you also get degradation of detail with it, the usual technological trade-off...or maybe that doesn't matter when you're just doing wedding photos.

no win ME [Posted on 2002-01-19]
This scanner worked really well for me (I scan a LOT of negatives). The only complaints are:
-noisy scan
-DONT WORK WITH WINDOWS ME! There are no drivers and this makes it very hard when I depend on this scanner for work! So I need to get a new scanner now :(
Besides that it scans well

Excellent Color Negative Scanner [Posted on 2004-04-24]
The S20 can scan a strip of upto 4 or 5 images nicely in one hit! I have no idea about scanning prints as I don't use it for this. 300dpi for scanning prints isn't high. 2400dpi for scanning slides and color negatives is awesome!

There have been reviews previously at various places that complain that the S20 cannot batch process a whole negative strip. Wrong!! Use the twain driver though Photoshop, PaintShopPro CorelDraw, etc. When the preview is done, adjust each image shown as you wish, set your scan resolution, and then HOLD DOWN the CTRL key and select the images you want to scan. Press Final Scan. Done. Images all arrive nicely separately in Photoshop, etc. Simple.

Contrary to other reviews, you can scan every image shown WITHOUT having the remove and re-insert the negative strip for each photo as others have claimed.

I have tried using Vuescan with the S20. I have found that the HP's twain driver is more than enough to scan high res (3300x2200) images into Photoshop. Vuescan is very nice, but not needed. The S20's HP drivers are actually pretty good. Very easy to use. The image levels are automatically selected by the scanner, but you can opt to over/under-expose, resize, re-crop, re-color, etc yourself prior to the final scan.

The S20 is an excellent color negative scanner for a fraction of the Nikon LS-2000 price! I keep a can of compressed ait handy for cleaning negatives and occasionally the scanner itself.

HP forgot XP [Posted on 2004-04-28]
Although my S20 worked fine with Windows 98 on my previous computer, I was not able to find any drivers from HP when I bought a new computer running on XP. HP should be ashamed of itself for treating their customers in this manner. I will never purchase another HP product.

The S20 ***WORKS*** with Windows XP [Posted on 2004-05-25]
I am not rich and I paid a lot of money for this product.

Thankfully, it was worth every penny and I have been using it happily for over 3 years.

There are better scanners out there, but for the dollar, this is a fabulous machine: thus, the five star rating.

That said, please note that this unit ***DOES*** in fact work with Windows XP. At one point I thought it did not work either, but it does. HP released an XP driver/software for it.

At 70 MB, it's a hell of a download, but worth it for those of us that have moved into the 21st century.

You can download it from the HP website.

- Go to HP.com.
- Select 'Home & Home Office.'
- Type 'S20' into the Search field.
- The HP Photosmart S20 and a photo will appear.
- Select 'Download drivers & software' from this screen.
- Select 'Microsoft Windows XP.'
- Select 'PhotoSmart Scanner (SCSI) and S20/S20xi Photo Scanner (USB) Software.'
- Click 'Download now' to being downloading ps804en.exe.
- Follow instructions (or common sense) to install the software.
- A Windows-based message will appear during installation that recommends stopping installation because the HP Photosmart software has not passed Windows Logo testing.
- Despite your usually better judgement, ignore this and click 'Continue Anyway.'

I was terrified to do this, but I called and e-mailed HP directly and was told in both instances that HP had tested and verified compatibility of the HP Photosmart software with Windows XP.

My Hewlett-Packard PhotoSmart S20 scanner now works like a charm on my Windows XP.

Hooray for HP.

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