HP ScanJet 3970 Digital Flatbed Scanner

by HP

Product Details

Product Manual [585kb PDF]

• Shipping Weight: 10 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B0000ACOW4
• Item model number: Q3191A#A2L
• Average Customer Review: 2.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (44 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
  • #14 in Electronics > Camera & Photo > Printers & Scanners > Flatbed Scanners
• Date first available at Amazon.com: July 31, 2003

Product Description

HP ScanJet 3970 Digital Flatbed Scanner

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Terrific performer for about $100, March 28, 2004

By 

35-year Technology Consumer "8-tracks to 802.11" (Mid Atlantic, USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: HP ScanJet 3970 Digital Flatbed Scanner (Office Product)

I purchased this to replace an older HP scanner that was a good performer,...but wanted to take advantage of the higher data transfer speed of a USB 2 capable computer.
I'm frankly surprised by all the large number of low grades other users have given this machine. It has handled all the following scanning functions easily and with consistenly high quality output:
-Scanning photos to digital files (.tiff, .jpg and other bitmap formats);
-Reprinting photos directly to a photo printer;

-Importing printed materials directly into MS Office documents and Adobe Acrobat documents;
-Direct output of a scanned text document to a printer;
-Scanning negatives to digital files for editing/printing.

Minor...but not serious flaws:
-Other reviewers are correct: it only does 2 35mm negatives/slides at once (but scanners with an auto feed capacity are going to cost 2x-3x as much.
-Two of the 4 front panel buttons are directly related to marginally useful HP-specific functions ("HP Share-to-Web" and "HP Memories Disk"; their apparent presumption is that we don't know how to FTP or author CDs;-
-This model is among the loudest home scanners I've heard.
-The bundled software isn't outstanding, but it's certainly functional (especially if you take some time to customize the settings).

For $..., the digital and hardcopy image/text outputs are highly resolved and crisp

36 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What's all the Fuss??, October 25, 2004

By 

IcartM "Things that make you go 'Hmmmm'" (Florida) - See all my reviews

This review is from: HP ScanJet 3970 Digital Flatbed Scanner (Office Product)

I recently purchased this item from a local electronics store for a really good price (open box items are my best friend). In less than 15 minutes, I was able to scan twenty-one 8.5" x 11" pieces of artwork created by my students. Using the software provided by HP, I also took the items that were created in the landcape mode and rotated them. I renamed them, copied them into a file and also created a photo album. I then printed out the photo album, 15 images per page. OK...so it was able to scan very well. I then decided to test its ability to scan negatives and print them out.

I took a negative that was about 8 years old. Scanned it and then opened it in windows viewer. I printed one slide out as as an 8" x 10" print, and another as a 5" x 7". I printed them out on a laser printer using 600 x 600 dpi. Both printed out very well.

If you want to make money using the scanner, you might want to invest in something more sophisticated. However, it works just fine for the basic user in a home environment.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars pretty good scanner, December 4, 2003

By 

Rosomax (Boulder, CO United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: HP ScanJet 3970 Digital Flatbed Scanner (Office Product)

For the price of $70-100 there are about 6-7 scanners. I picked HP for a simple reason -- proven durability. We have a couple of HP scanners at work and they've been used heavily for the past 3 years with zero problems. I've talked to many people who had Epsons and they all had problems of various kinds.
For the good: It scannes the old pictures very well. I come from a very "old" family and we have lots of pictures from 1800's. They turned out very good and easy to restore with editing software like the photoshop.
For the not-so-good: The software is a bit "clunky". Seems like it has too many tools that do the same job. A simple all-in-one program would have been just fine.
For the strange: Where's the power switch? You will need to physically unplug it if you'd like to save a couple of KWatts. One star taken off for that.
Otherwise a solid product that does the job.