Epson Stylus Photo 580 All In One Inkjet Printer Review

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(More customer reviews)I've owned 4 or 5 other Epson printers (as well as several from HP) in the past, but the Stylus Photo RX580 all-in-one is the easiest to use printer I've ever had, with excellent picture quality and a very good built-in scanner as well. Combine that with the fact that it is the least expensive of the printers I have bought and you'll see why I consider this a bargain.
Let me start with the scanner -- it is quiet and fairly fast. The supplied TWAIN compatible software has three levels: fully automatic, "home" use, and professional. It works well. The resolution is fine for home use, although it is not a scanner for film or slides. The scanner integrates with the printer allowing use as a stand-alone copier. It can also copy photos directly to the face of an (inkjet printable) CD or DVD. And there are some interesting surprises -- you can print an index of a memory card -- then fill in a few choices (with a black pencil or pen -- like a test answer sheet) and scan the index sheet and the printer will print photos from the memory card, only the photos you choose on the index sheet, sized and borders as you selected. Very cool -- and easy to use. The scanner also allows you to directly prepare greeting cards without the computer.
The print quality is quite good. The Claria inks are dye-based inks (NOT pigment, as incorrectly stated in other reviews) giving them bright colors, and able to print on many surfaces. This is one of Epson's "Hi-Definition" printers -- which means tiny droplets and great pictures. The inks are separately replaceable, and available in two sizes (regular and high capacity -- from Epson direct -- 50% more ink for only $5 more). The printer works best with Epson papers, and can print on virtually any stock Epson sells. It also creates excellent prints directly on printable CDs and DVDs -- the results can look very good, and are much better than add -on labels.
The 2.5" built in color LCD is very useful -- it allows meaningful dialogues with the printer as well as previews of images from memory cards, etc.
The printer is fully Mac compatible (as well as PC) and includes some useful software, including a CD/DVD print layout program.
What does it lack? Well, an USB cable -- but, unfortunately, most prints ship without a cable. It doesn't do paper sizes bigger than 8.5" wide, and its not aimed at professional photographers (who want larger images, higher resolution scanners, and more permanent pigment inks), but for home/office use it works quite well.
All in all an excellent all-in-one at a reasonable price. I'm very happy with it.

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The Epson Stylus Photo RX580 photo all-in-one brings superior photo printing home with full-featured scanning and copying plus Ultra Hi-Definition printing. Get total performance for your photos, documents and CDs with or without a computer. Print beautiful photos without a PC. Use the 2.5color LCD to view, select, rotate and crop photos from memory cards, digital cameras and mobile phones. For larger memory cards with hundreds of images, use the exclusive Print-by-date mode to quickly sort through your photos. When it s time to print, the RX580 automatically analyzes and adjusts the color and lighting of each image, plus easily removes red-eye. You get phenomenal photos without extra effort - it s like having a lab technician right inside your all-in-one. Precision 6-color printing with Claria Hi-Definition Ink produces the ultimate combination of photo quality and longevity. You can feel confident about sharing and displaying stunning, borderless photos that are smudge, scratch, water and fade resistant, up to 200 years album storage. Best of all, the RX580 races through every project, printing black and color text up to 30 ppm and 4 x 6borderless photos in as fast as 13 seconds and better than lab quality in as fast as 32 seconds. With high-resolution scanning, this powerful performer makes it easy to restore the color to old, faded photos for brilliant reprints and enlargements - PC-free. You can even make photo greeting cards, using your own photos and text, without ever turning on your computer. Plus, print directly onto ink jet printable CDs/DVDs for professional-looking results with no messy labels. The Epson RX580 makes it easy to achieve amazing results whatever the task at hand, from crisp color copies and scans to Ultra Hi-Definition photos with remarkable richness, depth and clarity. It s all possible with Epson.

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Fujitsu SCANSNAP FI-5110EOXM-15PPM FOR MAC USB 2.0 ( PA03360-B035 ) Review

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(More customer reviews)
I am offered items to review almost every day; everything from iPod cases to large format printers to hard drives to monitors to the plethora of software available on the Macintosh. Most things I turn down, as there are only so many hours in the day, and only so much space in my office for another piece of hardware. So when the opportunity came up to review the ScanSnap, I was surprised that I actually wanted to.
I had in my mind, before the unit arrived, what the ScanSnap was all about. A document scanner, not a flatbed scanner. I read it does duplex scans (both sides of a document at the same time) and outputs directly to Adobe Acrobat format. It all sounded good to me, but the proof is in the pudding.
Well, the pudding is small, as in tiny, it is fast, and it tastes really good! Okay, enough of the metaphors.
The ScanSnap is so much smaller than I had thought it would be. When I first unpacked it, I looked back in the box to make sure there was no base unit or something I did not see. This thing is about the width of a half loaf of bread, and the depth of half that! Small and tiny, just the sort of thing my desktop work area appreciates.
Size matters, yes, but not as much as functionality does. If it does not work as advertised, well, it could be the size on an iPod and I would not be impressed. Thankfully, the folks at Fujitsu have not let me down, as the ScanSnap works and works very well.
Installation is painless but does require a restart. I noticed that there is no TWAIN import functionality, but for the purpose this document scanner was created for, I don't see this as a negative. You won't use the SnapScan for importing high-res graphic files. For that, a drum or flatbed scanner would be more appropriate.
On the software side of things, SnapScan uses Adobe Acrobat Standard, which comes free in the box with the scanner. When a document is scanned it (more on that in a moment) it is saved as an Acrobat file. This is great for a number of reasons. First, Acrobat has become the default document format for transmitting and printing most documents. It is flexible, easy to use, but also powerful enough to use as an electronic workgroup and documentation online (or off) workflow. You can set passwords in Acrobat so that you can have some control over who can / can't open sensitive documents. Spotlight can also search text within PDF files, although not documents scanned with the SnapScan, as these documents are scanned as a picture, without any OCR involved.
No OCR (Onscreen Character Recognition, the process of a software application understanding text when it is scanned in and converting it to editable text and font) is probably the most disappointing aspect of the SnapScan. While it is great to be able to quickly and painlessly scan in all your important documents, there is no way to search for text within those scanned files. Also, the user is not prompted to name each file as it is scanned, so to create somewhat of an organized structure of your scanned documents, the user is forced to go back and rename files. I found doing a Save As in Acrobat worked well, after which I would delete the original scanned PDF.
The SnapScan settings give the user a good combination of options such as compression rate (the lower the compression, the greater the scan quality, Paper Size (I leave it at Automatic Detection, which works great), file format (don't like PDF? Save your scans as JPGs instead), Scanning options (quality, color mode, and scan button), Save options, and Application options in case you would rather Preview open the scan over Adobe Acrobat. All in all, most of the option a typical user would need to control the scanner.
The ScanSnap software automatically launches at start up, so there is no need to hunt and find the application to start scanning. The software and hardware is all ready to go.
The most impressive aspect to the ScanSnap has got to be the speed a document is both scanned and displayed on screen. The advertised speed is 15 pages per minute, which may not sound like much at first, but basic arithmetic will show that is four seconds for one page. And not just one side of the page, but both sides of each page! The scanner is intelligent enough to know if what you are scanning is a one or two-sided document, and acts accordingly.
One button scanning. Add the document(s) you want to scan in the feeder (50 sheets capacity) and push the big round button, and the ScanSnap takes it from there. It is so simple; the ScanSnap is the Macintosh of small office documents scanners.
I had so much fun working with the ScanSnap; I got carried away scanning every document I could find. Mortgage papers? Checks. Insurance papers? Check. Old pay-stubs? Birth certificates? Receipts? Check, check, and check. The scanner is so simple to use, and PDF's small enough (even on high quality settings) to easily archive, I feel this is the first document scanner I can use to truly move all my important papers into electronic format.
Here are the specs:
Scanning Range: A4, A5, A6, B5, B6, Business card, Letter, Legal and Custom sizes (can set for up to 5 different paper types) / Automatically recognizes paper type by paper length
Interface: USB 2.0 (1.1 compatible)
1 Year Limited Warranty
Scanning Speed: 150dpi Color, 15 PPM, 300dpi color 5 PPM
Compatible with Mac OS X 10.2 and up.
MyMac.com Rating: 4.5 out of 5

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ScanSnap S510M Instant PDF Sheet-Fed Scanner Review

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(More customer reviews)I just received this scanner. I've been collecting a stack of documents to scan and finally ran out of excuses with its arrival. I settled in for a long evening of unpleasantness. I put the first batch of 6 pages into the hopper, pressed the Scan button expecting a sloooowww, painful grind. But....? Each sheet whipped through effortlessly! Both sides of the double sided sheets scanned on a single pass! Everything was oriented correctly and automatically and the legibility was excellent. How did they DO this? I'm used to scanning taking so long I continually forget what I'm doing before I'm done. This is a whole new experience. Suddenly, I'm seeing the real possiblity of reducing all my file cabinets to a few CDs in my lifetime. Wow.
This is about my 5th scanner (HP, Epson previously) but the very first one to take the agony out of scanning. And it's such a cute little machine. I never would have believed it could accomplish such a masterful job. It also handles legal sized documents - you fold the document in half, it scans both sides at once and marries them back together!
Thank heavens they brought this out for the Mac.

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The Fujitsu ScanSnap S510M Instant PDF Sheet-Fed Scanner for Macs lets you easily convert your paper archives into a searchable digital library of PDFs. With an easy one-touch PDF creation process, nothing could be simpler: The scanner will automatically distinguish between color documents and black and white ones, automatically recognize the size of each page, automatically straighten images, and automatically delete blank pages. Included are an automatic document feeder and the ability to scan in duplex mode, enabling the ScanSnap to scan at up to 18 pages per minute. The ScanShop uses a USB 2.0 (USB 1.1 compatible) interface for wide compatibility and fast data connection. The ScanSnap supports Mac OS X 10.2.8, 10.3, and 10.4 and includes a copy of Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional and a copy of ABBYY FineReader.
The scanner uses two color CCDs for scanning at an optical resolution of up to 600 dpi. The scanner-supported size range includes A4, A5, A6, B5, B6, business cards, letter, legal, and custom sizes from a minimum of 2 by 2 inches to a maximum of 8.5 by 14.17 inches. Even though it scans paper of all sizes, the scanner itself has a compact angular design that takes less space on your desktop than a letter-size piece of paper. The Fujitsu ScanSnap S510M is backed by a 1-year warranty.
What's in the Box ScanSnap S510M scanner, AC adapter, AC cable, USB cable, getting started, ScanSnap setup CD-ROM, software CD-ROM, carrier sheet, warranty registration card, and warranty summary card.

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