My digital life — bumps along the way

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Update 2/10/03 : HP has fixed the problem — see my posting on this matter. I’m up to 12,000 photos scanned — this is a great product — all you need is the new software!!!!

I’ve set off on a project to digitize all of the 5,000+ photos I’ve taken since 1987 …. and bought a new HP ScanJet 5500c to do the job. It has an automatic photo feeder built in and works well ….. but …..

The problem is with the software design. You can stack in a bunch of pictures, and it will auto-feed each one and scan it. This way you can do 30 or 40 photos at a time.

But some software-engineer-bozo wrote the program so that each photo is sent to a temporary file as soon as it is scanned. Do a bunch of pictures, and a bunch of temporary files are created. And then, when the last photo is scanned, those temporary files are then copied into your main photo directory. But Windows inevitably can’t handle this and generates a file error — “”An error occurred saving the images to the chosen file location”” — so that instead of getting 30 or 40 photos, you get maybe 5 or so. The rest are lost in file-copy heaven somewhere.

Turns out others have had this problem — as seen on an Amazon.com review: “But the biggest problem I had with the scanner was that when the scanner scans through a stack of pictures, it will scan every picture and once all are scanned, then it sends them to the computer. Frequently, I would scan a stack at 600 dpi, and at 600 dpi it takes a considerable amount of time, the scanning program would mess up in the middle of the transfer, and you’d have to rescan half of the stack.” I’m not even scanning at 600dpi, I’m doing 300dpi!

HP has a nice story out about how it is building the base for the digital home of the future. Sure would be nice if they made workable product.

Why can’t they write the dang software so that as soon as it is scanned, it is saved in the permanent file?

I’m so frustrated with the product I’m close to returning it.

Why can’t companies design and deliver on the promises they make with their product?

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THE FUTURE BELONGS TO THOSE WHO ARE FAST features the best of the insight from Jim Carroll’s blog, in which he
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