Bad Hardware, Terrible Software!

I recommend that you eliminate the HP 5590 from any consideration of potential scanners. The quality of the software and drivers provided with this product are among the worst I've ever encountered. More than just being difficult to work with, there is a strong likelihood that the software may corrupt other important files on your system as it has mine, like the windows registry.

I tried to install this scanner on a brand new dell XPS system and have spent hours on the telephone with hp's support center in India trying to get it to work. The drivers included on the disk are dated mid 2004 and haven't been updated since. After the initial install, re-install I encountered several operating system crashes (windows xp - blue memory dump screen) which caused me to have to boot to a previous configuration. I was instructed to uninstall my printer (an hP 8450) and then re-install it in some convoluted order with the scanner in order to get the two HP products to work with one another. How stupid is it that two products from the same company would not be more compatible with one another? Furthermore, HP software installs a lot of unwanted crap on a system - the full install from the included CD of printer drivers/print software was over 600 meg - that's about the same space as all of MS Office takes up. Moreover, during the install HP adds (in my Epinion) an excessive number of entries to the window's registry, yet fails to remove them all during the uninstall process; leaving a lot of unneeded materiel in the registry - thanks, but NO THANKS. I could go on and on, but by now I think you get the point.

The bottom line is this: after much time and effort I still have not been successful in getting the scanner to work on my new dell. The best I can tell is that the scanner and printer both utilize HP's Photo and Imaging software, and this has resulted in problems; either because the versions of the software are different or because the installation programs are so poorly written that neither does an adequate job of checking for other software that could result in conflicts. If you are considering a new scanner I would not recommend the hp5590 based on my experience.