HP’s New N8460 Scanjet – still some bugs in the system
Final Grade: D-
Quick Summary:
HP has just released it’s most current version of the higher end business robustness model of scanjets, the N8400 series. The newer models are basically identical to the earlier 8300 models that we have been running for some time. In fact the N8460 looks almost like a twin of the 8390(with out a “N”). We looked at the N8460 and ran some tests, not only comparing it to the 8390 but looking for what we would need for normal expectations. We prefer to use the Smart Document Scan Software (SDSS v 2.0) as it has to most flexibility, options depth and ease of use.
Our findings were incredibly disappointing, for the most part. When doing black and white (B&W) scans, the results were incredibly dark, dense and hard to read and view (scanned at 600dbi, duplex mode to a .PDF format). Further we found that even though HP has done some incredible work at fixing the awful color scan results of SDSS 1.2 on the 8390 series, you can’t really scan a lot of pages in at a time. We’re used to being able to scan in 100 pages or more. The N8360 died at less than 50.
Frankly, we think that the N8360 may have been released too early and with not enough real testing being done. We’d recommend holding off on this model for at least 6 months and maybe by then HP will have had time to test this thing and fix the problems.
Now, the details:
HP has just brought out the follow up product to the 8300 Scanjet line – the N8400 Series of Scanjets. Why they suddenly decided to put an “N” in front of the model number is something I’ve yet to understand and yet another thing that HP’s tech support doesn’t seem to know.
The 8300 Line is a great little work horse for doing B&W scanning but it had some serious issues with longer multiple pages of color scans when after several pages the color quality would go to hell and things really didn’t look like something you’d want to deliver to a client. SO, I was really eager to get my hands on a N8400 series to see if it fixed these old nagging and unresolved issues and how much new speed and functionality it brought to the table with it. Here’s what we found
INSTALLATION:
Installing the product was rather mind numbingly simple. It basically unpacked and plugged in just like the 8390’s we’d been using for almost two years now. Matter of fact if you didn’t know there was a difference, you’d swear you were working with a 8390!
The software didn’t come in the box like it should have or used to but a quick visit to HP’s support web page and problem solved. Kind of nice to have a few CD’s floating around, but then, when you can just download to the server and install from there, who cares any more and you’re getting more current stuff.
For ease of use and saving on my sanity, I chose to still use the Smart Document Scan Software (SDSS) supplied by HP versus the HP Solution Center. The Solution Center has been nothing but a hard to use, klunky kluge that lacks a lot of the nice functionality that the SDSS software has, so SDSS is still my preferred software for this line of Scanjets. SDSS version 2 ships with the N8460’s.
The SDSS software configures not only fairly simply but very similarly to the 8300. There are some interesting differences though. I wasn’t able to get the check boxes to come available for automatic density/brightness. It was stuck at 50%! Which may explain some of the problems we’ll talk about later.
EASE OF USE:
Frankly, the Solution Center software sucks. Don’t use it. The SDSS software is simple to use and offers a lot more flexibility in functionality, target document types, scanning methods, etc.
The hardware works as easily as a fax machine, load the paper and either hit a preprogrammed button for the type of scanning and object resolution or just select it on the SDSS menu and hit scan. Then when it’s done, the SDSS software can be configured to prompt you for the name on the fly. It would be nice if you could also specify target drive and directory on the fly, but that’s evidently not been in the cards for several years now..
DOCUMENTATION:
Since I didn’t get any CD’s with my scanner I had to rely on what was on the HP support website for drivers, software and documentation. The only thing I could find was a .pdf giving me the basics on how to configure and use the SDSS software. I guess after that it’s the online helps and experimentation.
CERTIFIABILITY:
Not everything I tried worked as I expected it to. I didn’t expect the problems that I found on the density issues and the sizing error when resolving color scans to PDF’s. Those items were VERY annoying and basically show stoppers for me until they’re resolved.
FUNCTIONALITY / USEFULNESS:
This scanner has great potential to be a good work horse. The problem is, there’s still enough bugs in the software to suggest holding off until HP gets the time to really test this thing thoroughly and fix the bugs.
We’re used to being able to scan multiple pages at a time. The Automatic Document Feeder (ADF – sometimes refered to as the AutoDocument Jammer(ADJ), should hold about 100 sheets of paper…so that you would think you should be able to scan in 100 sheets in a run into a single document. In fact, we regularly scan in 400-1200 sheets through the 8390 without any issues about document sizing. We ran into some show stopping problems with the N8460. We couldn’t even get it to create a target document from 50 sheets of duplex scanned paper at 600dpi. The SDSS software has a bug in it that generates an error telling you that you don’t have enough space on the disk drives to save the target document. Keep in mind that the test environment we were using had 167GIG of disk left and the whole scanning into raw format took about 3GIG…so, we would more or less expect a document around 2-3GIG…so that would leave about 162GIG of disk space left over. Clearly there’s an error on how the SDSS software either calculates the required space required for the final format file or the amount of space available on the target disk. It took about an hour and multiple transfers within HP tech support to make this clear to them. By the way, this document was eventually scanned into a 8390 without page count incident and resolved at about 2GIG. We are still laughing from HP tech support telling us that this scan would resolve into a final document with a size greater than a TERABYTE! Now that’s a helluva lot of reading!
Further, we found that black and white scans were creating incredibly dense and high contrast scans which were incredibly hard to read. The same document was scanned on a 8390 and came out fine.
If you are a heavy 8300 series scanjet user, you may have run into the scenario when occasionally the scanner flips into a mode where the even pages of the scanned pages are totally black. There’s several ways around this when it happens, but rest assured, the problem has not been fixed with v.2.0 of SDSS on the N8490.
All of this has been reported to Tech support.
TECH SUPPORT:
Well, if when you call tech support and you’re constantly put on hold so that the person you’re talking to can relay your question to someone who actually has a clue what’s going on, good tech support, then you’re as clueless as some of the people I ran into in tech support.
Further, it would REALLY nice if HP tech support had a FTP site that you could send them examples of problem scans for analysis. We keep getting the “can you email me the document” response from tech support…uh, emailing a several gig document is generally frowned upon on the internet.
WHAT I WANT TO SEE IN THE NEXT RELEASE:
- Tech support people that actually have used the product and understand how it should work
- Full automatic selectability for both density and brightness buttons
- Faster and better communication from tech support on longer term problem resolution.
- FTP site to upload bugging results for problem determination and resolution
SUMMARY:
For a product that has such incredible potential, I was really disappointed in not only the lack of serious testing before it went public but the lack of knowledgeable technical support staff to support this thing. Our errors are now being handled by a case manager in Colorado and being reviewed by HP’s R&D in India. Hopefully we’ll get some beta code to test that actually works here in the near future. Until then, the box basically sits on a table waiting for software that works right.
AT THE END OF THE DAY: When it’s all said and done, I would totally suggest avoiding this product line until HP has resolved all the outstanding tech issues that they seem to be dragging their asses on. This product has some INCREDIBLE potential to be a high quality work horse, but clearly someone’s totally asleep at the switch when it has come to testing quality and reliability of this series of Scanjets.
I’m Don Rima and that’s the view of this product From Where I Stand…
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I totally agree with you sir. The forums at HP is full of disapointed customers who can not get any support what so ever from HP regarding the SDSS Aplication error. An application that works just fine for a while and then suddenly chrashes everytime after scanning documents and saving to .pdf files. Shame on HP…