HP multiple products = many headaches

A client had a brainstorm to convert his mountains of paperwork into a 'paperless office'. He even hired a temp to do all the scanning. Well, he did some research and bought his second scanner that was just as bad as the first. At least we got this one to work!!! We already had a bad experience with a different company and scanner, and we thought HP would be more reliable, since his all in one printer scanner copier installed flawlessly and has been working daily for over a year now with not one problem, not even a major paper jam.
So, he hands me the HP scanner and i sit next to his Vista running machine, and i am quite scared out of my vista wits, not even a little hopeful, after the previous 4 hour nightmare. Not a three hour tour, a three hour tour. Gilligan could have done better!! He wanted the Scanjet 5590 with duplexing ADF and he wanted to use it for small business scanning, light to medium duty office scanning. Sounded like a perfect lower end, high speed scanner for the job. The HP software installed with no problems after quite a long time, and we fired up the scanner. As soon as we started, the system froze, and forced a cold boot. Then the messages started appearing. Apparently, his other HP all in one was not liking the newly invading software, and did not allow some of it to be installed. Even thought it was a different animal, and different software, it rejected it like a bad kidney transplant done in the remote jungles of Brazil! I was forced to uninstall it all, even the all in one stuff, that was working fine. I tried manually using the commercial normal TWAIN driver that was supplied on the install disk to get some clean response from the new HP scanner. The driver had no reaction from Vista, as it nevr could find it, no matter how hard we looked for it. So i tried to re install the software from the disc AGAIN, this time with the other HP stuff completely removed. Again, a quiet and long install, and a reboot finally let the scanner appear under Vista's mean and stubborn device list. SO we fired it up again, and we wee greeted with an instant paper jam, apparently this scanner has no ability to deal with document jams from the top feeder and it just hangs when this happens. No time out like a badly behaving child, not even a peep. So another reset. The doc feeder is ok for beautifully flat and perfect 8.5 by 11 paper but if there is anything wrong with the original paper, like a bent corner or, forbid, a fold!! the feeder will easily jam and freeze if you don't stand there like a dummy and guide the paper in the document each time. So much for a built in 'document feeder', you have to find someone to do that job. Im am not thrilled with the feeder's ability to pull in documents and to keep them aligned anyways it always manages to scan them in sideways more often then not. The reason for this is that HP made only one roller onside this toy to pull the documents in and that leys the paper twist and shout. After a day of fighting with this hunka junka, paper path where the paper passes through to get scanned got completely dirty quite easily and was not easy to clean by any means, it was even getting visible on the on screen previews. Also the scan bar would also "hang out" on the other side of town and it doesn't seem to want to return to the 'home' position. You need to cycle the power on the scanner to reset it, aka: yank the plug out of the wall.
In conclusion, the images are lousy and crooked and ink and dirt filled, and if you buy this scanner for multiple page auto document feeding, the feeder hardware just doesn't work good at all. Never mind the HP software just does not install if there is another HP product on board. I would guess they would be able to integrate their own products, but noooooo, that is too hard.
In conclusion, HP was a big letdown. We are going to try again with another brand of scanner, this time i am going to read some other epinion reviews first, to make a good, honest, researched decision this time.