Visioneer 5800USB Flatbed Scanner Review

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(More customer reviews)There is no Tech Support for the 5800/5820 scanners. They are the most worthless pieces of junk ever to be assembled. I would not buy this crap if it was being sold for a dollar. The Windows XP drivers are corrupt and Tech support does not answer their phones. When they actually do answer the phone they put you on hold for hours. Most likely because they have an unending stream of furious customers.

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Capture memorable moments with Visioneer's OneTouch 5800 USB flatbed scanner. With its 48-bit true color capability, the OneTouch 5800 USB recognizes over 281 trillion colors, capturing the finest nuances and details of your images.Just press a OneTouch button to scan and send an image to the destination of your choice. While intelligent default button settings give perfect results on common scanning tasks, the OneTouch preferences utility makes it simple to customize the buttons. OneTouch 5800 USB has 3 convenience buttons for scanning, copying and emailing your favorite photos or documents to family and friends.

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Epson Perfection 1670 Photo Scanner Review

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(More customer reviews)In interests of full disclosure, I was only interested in using the scanner to scan family slides, and I returned the scanner after one week.
On the positive side, installation was a breeze in Windows XP. Epson includes a high-speed USB 2.0 cable, which was a nice extra, as most companies skimp here. I was also intrigued by the "touch up old faded photos" software. I have had great experiences with Epson scanners before: in the past I have found Epson scanners to be among the fastest and most accurate, and they have, in the past, included the best OCR software free. I was disappointed that this scanner included ABBYY's OCR software, which is inferior to the OCR software Epson included with last year's scanners. (See CNET's reviews of OCR software.)
After hooking up, I scanned a photo using the included software and automatic settings. The scan went well. I was a little surprised that the automatic settings default to 300 dpi scanning (whether for photos or slides), but higher settings produce images so large in (initially uncompressed) megabytes as to slow down my relatively new Dell computer with 128 meg RAM. Scanning the photo went quickly.
Things did not go as well with the slide scanning. While the software is quite easy to manage, whether in automatic or manual settings, a few annoyances interfere with what could otherwise be quite a successful suite. First off, the scanning software uses overlapping windows for such (simultaneous) windows as the preview window, the scanned pictures window, and the manual settings window, but none of these have separate tabs or "buttons" in the Windows XP taskbar, so it is difficult to move each out of the way to find the other ones. I'm unsure how they even accomplished this, as I've never used a program in XP that didn't produce a button on the taskbar corresponding to an open window. At first this was an annoyance, but after three days, it was crazy infuriating, as it makes it difficult not only to deal with the scanner windows themselves which keep hiding each other, but it also makes very cumbersome to multitask with any other programs. When the scanner is scanning, its software window sometimes will not hide, and then when you do hide it, you can't bring it to the fore again without minimizing the other programs' windows, or it will bring to the fore the wrong window. How Epson can commission an expertly performing software application, but have it without corresponding window-tabs, is typical of today's rush-to-the-market user-unfriendly software. I suppose it doesn't matter when scanning the occasional piece, but it certainly ain't fun when you're scanning the family photo album.
But the final straw was that after hours of scanning various slides at different resolutions, I could not produce a scan that was not SLIGHTLY blurry. Since some of my slides were taken by professional photographers and look crystal clear on the wall, I scuttled my project and returned the scanner. Why spend a week converting the family slides for permanent sharing and archiving, and getting a blurry scan? I have read that this is a common problem with inexpensive scanners: I suspect that if you take the slide out of its white cardboard frame, so it can lay perfectly flat, they might be in focus, but I don't want to ruin my slides. Seems to me that if they can put an autofocus mechanism in extremely cheap cameras, they could have figured out a way to autofocus the slides in this slide-scanning scanner.

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The Perfection 1670 from Epson is a flatbed color photo scanner with a number of useful features and a reasonable price tag. With a 1,600 x 1,200 dpi maximum optical resolution and 48-bit color depth (16-bit grayscale), the 1670 delivers crisp, accurate, and true-to-life images perfect for a wide variety of home and home office uses.
Scanning speeds are as fast as 7.68 msec/line at 1,600 dpi and 5.12 msec/line at 600 dpi, while one-touch scan, copy, scan to e-mail, and scan to Web buttons help you automate these frequently utilized features. The included 35 mm transparency adapter accommodates both negatives and slides (up to three negatives or two slides), while the 8.5-by-11.7-inch scanning bed supports originals up to letter size.
Easy Photo Fix Technology Designed with photo and slide restoration in mind, the 1670 comes bundled with a variety of software applications designed to help you get the most out of your scans. Titles include Epson Scan with Easy Photo Fix Technology, ArcSoft PhotoImpression, Epson Smart Panel, ABBYY FineReader Sprint OCR, and NewSoft Presto! BizCard.
Weighing just 6.8 pounds, the 1670 has a small 10.8-by-16.5-inch footprint and connects to your computer via its USB port. The 1670 utilizes a white cold cathode fluorescent lamp and Epson's MatrixCCD line sensor and consumes 17 W of power. PC and Mac compatible, the 1670 also comes backed with a one-year limited warranty on both parts and labor.
What's in the Box Epson Perfection 1670 Photo Scanner; 35mm transparency adapter (built into scanner lid); 35mm film holder for slides and film strips; CD-ROM with Epson Scan Software, Creativity and Productivity Software, and Electronic Reference Guide; USB 2.0/1.1 cable; AC adapter and power cable; scanner setup poster; warranty information

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Microtek ScanMaker S400 Flatbed Scanner Review

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(More customer reviews)This scanner is good and bad at the same time. It is horribly slow, but I'm using the pictures I'm scanning for a slideshow of pictures throughout my life at my Bar Mitzvah party, and the quality of the pictures are very good.
Be warned, scanning negatives on this scanner requires very high resoulution (but I think that this is the way with all scanners I'm not sure), and it takes a VERY VERY long time to scan. It took ten to twenty minutes depending on the settings for ONE PICTURE. They turned out in good quality, but I was highly dissatisfied with the time it took.
Overall, this scanner is pretty good. But if you are a person that needs pics in a hurry, this is not for you. But if you are creating a slideshow (like me) and have time for it, this scanner is a very good choice.

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The ScanMaker s400 brings high-resolution scanning, with its 9600 x 4800-dpi resolution letting you create poster-sized files of your film or photo with remarkable sharpness and detail previously only available in much higher-priced scanners. And with Microtek's exclusive ColoRescue, color restoration is as easy as a click of a button. The ScanMaker s400 also comes with the new LightLid 35 Plus accessory for scanning 35mm slides and filmstrips. Rounding out the scanner is a Hi-Speed USB interface, eight easy-to-use buttons, as well as imaging and document-scanning options.

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SVP FS1700 Black Digital Film Scanner w/ 2.4" Build-in LCD ~"World's Smallest Film Scanner"~ Review

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(More customer reviews)I have been waiting years for an affordable way to scan my parents 2000+ slides. The slides have been sitting in a big box in my house for years. The projector bulb on the 1960s era slide projector is burned out so we haven't seen the slides in 10+ years. I doubted the quality of such an inexpensive scanner, but once I tried it, it gave good results. One caveat, I have some slides that are in aluminum frames (my dad used to develop his own slides) and they wouldn't work in the scanner, since the frame for scanning is designed for paper slides. But I was able to remove the slides and scan them in the film frame.
The scanning was really easy. Press a button to preview and another button to scan. It takes an SD memory card (or connects to a computer), so I stuck in an SD card, and scanned while I watched TV. Scanning each slide literally took less than 2 seconds.
Tips:
There were several trays of slides that didn't get saved to the SD card, it may have been that the memory card was not inserted properly. So I had to rescan those. I would scan 5 or 6 trays, then copy them to my computer. That way if a batch was bad, I only had to rescan those 5 or 6 trays. But I scanned 2000 slides and this only happened once, so I think it was just user error.
Since I was scanning thousands of slides, separated into trays of 30 slides (some had less than 30) I found a couple of blank slides and would write the tray number on it with a black Sharpie and scan that as a divider, so I could easily sort the scanned slides into folders.
Once you delete the old scans from the SD card, the new scans will start being named/numbered from the beginning again (Scan001, Scan002, etc.) so you have to be careful when copying them to your computer so you don't overwrite the old scans. So once I copied the slides to my computer, I would divide them into folders and rename them. (You can do this in batches easily in Windows, or on a Mac with an AppleScript: Replace Text in Item Names).

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Kodak Scan Station 500 Duplex Scanner (8738056) Review

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(More customer reviews)We have used a Scan Station 100 Plus for a few years, and when we wanted an additional unit ordered the Scan Station 500 (ss500) instead. A very preliminary review, but what you are buying here is a world class paper feeder, attached to a pc with a touch screen, that does OCR and outputs ready to use, searchable PDF files.Another reviewer mentioned that directories cannot be browsed, this is not an oversight. The design goal (for better or worse) is something that an administrator can deploy on a corporate network without compromising network security. What's cool is that 10 people can walk up and drop scans directly into 10 different directories, and that the confidential/protected directories for the CEO are available on walk up, but not compromised to other users. The strength and limitation of this unit is that it is designed for enterprise use, with a high priority on security, HIPPA, PCI DSS, etc.
Set up has a little bit of the "IT Sys Admin" feel, and absolutely requires a PC. Once configured, the basic interface is an ethernet connection to shared storage, and/or a USB key.The ss500 office-user fast at OCR (not industrial speed). Image quality is very good (for a sheet fed scanner). The latest upgrade to the software rotates documents so that they are saved as PDFs with the top at the top even if fed up-side-down.

RAM: I'd love to be able to upgrade its 1gb RAM to 3gb. (Uses XP.) I'm using the attached flatbed, which is a nice extra and produces much higher resolution scans.
EXTERNAL KEYBOARD: Kodak doesn't say this for some reason, but you can attach a USB keyboard to this. The touch screen is fine, but being able to type a file name with a real keyboard is *much* faster. If all goes well, I may come back an give this a 5, but for now 4 stars.
COMPARISION WITH SCAN SNAP: I Have also used/own a ScanSnap S510. The Scan Snap a great unit, but because it is directly attached via USB to a single workstation, and requires drivers and special software be loaded onto that workstation, a USB-direct-attached scanner really becomes essentially tethered to a single workstation. (And for the Scan Snap) Adobe Acrobat gets activated to *that* workstation, and over-writes any existing acrobat installation -- it overwrote my Acrobat Professional with the less expensive, less powerful Acrobat Standard. The paper feed on the Kodak is also much better, bigger, heavier, and more serviceable. Jams are such a annoyance that they justify a large part of the price difference - sheet feeding on the Scan Snap is very good; sheet feeding on the Kodak is really great.
MACINTOSH: If you have more than one user, or need scans for both Mac and PC, then getting your scan output as a PDF file on a network drive and/or USB key means that scans can very quickly get used by any computer.
COST: The cost of a network scanner is 5 times the cost of a USB attached scanner. If you are a one-person operation or office, then the business case is harder to make. On the other hand, if what ends up happening is that you dedicate a workstation to the scanner anyhow, the Kodak makes huge sense. It a refined, flexible, and secure approach to a shared scanning.

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Canon CanoScan 3000F Scanner Review

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(More customer reviews)When scanning photos this scanner is everything I require.
The scanning software is easy to use with a good range of options.
However, when it comes to scanning slides it is most disappointing as they always come out dark.
To compensate I try tweaking the brightness and contrast settings in the software but the colors in the dark areas are never true. You can play around with the image in a photo-editing program but they are always disappointing and never get near the quality of color and clarity that you get when projected onto a screen.
If you want a scanner that scans slides then go for something else, and if all you need to scan is photos and documents then you don't need this scanner.
Beware of reviews that appear to parrot the sales blurb.

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CANOSCAN 3000F FBSCAN-9600DPI 48BIT USB 2.0

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Lexmark Prospect Pro205 Wireless Multifunction Inkjet Printer Review

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(More customer reviews)This is one of a few inkjet all-in-one's packaged with XL ink cartridges (official yield rated at 600 pages for color, 510 for black), auto 2-sided printing and document feeder, wi-fi connectivity, and comes with an un-matched 5 year warranty (1 year initial, 4 additional years after registration) for less than $150. You might want to look at the Pro705 which can be similar in price. You will have to stay with Lexmark's "Pro" printers to get the 5 year warranty, everything else in their line is 3 years or less. The Pro205 has 64MB built-in, with a max print speed in draft mode of 33 PPM in black, 30 PPM in color, which is about average.
The packaging of the product is top-notch. The unit was thoroughly taped (at least 10 separate pieces) to protect the unit during transit, and the printed documentation was fancy although I never needed to read it. Of course, the highlight is the aforementioned XL ink cartridges, and the package also comprised of a USB cable, phone lines, and an installation CD which includes OCR software. The installation itself was a breeze, and the video animation was helpful. The construction of the unit has thoughtful touches: a spring-loaded button opens the document feeder casing to clear jams, and the glass to copy/scan documents has clear arrows telling you where to position the document. The unit is made in China, and the ink cartridges in Singapore. Cold start up time is about 39 seconds, wi-fi connectivity about 15 seconds longer if it works (more on that later). Warm start up time is about 6 seconds.
As for print quality, on premium inkjet paper, I'm very impressed. I printed out maps from Bing 3D using "Best" quality setting, and friends could not believe how sharp the prints were (you could see tennis court boundary lines). The cost of the "Best" setting is high ink usage - you can see the ink drain quickly using the software's ink monitoring graphics, but that's probably true for all inkjets. On regular paper, the color quality was not so impressive even using the "Best" option, with pictures lacking vibrance and loosing color accuracy compared to premium paper. The drop-off in photo quality is I think mostly due to the paper. Black text is so-so on either paper - obviously not laser-sharp, probably about average among other inkjets.
My wi-fi connection was sporadic at best even though the wi-fi status light shows green, although I'm not sure if this is because I am using Windows Vista 64-bit on my primary laptop (yes, I downloaded the 64-bit drivers from Lexmark's site). I usually resort to sticking in the USB cable for 100% reliability and faster data transfer. My other laptop running Windows XP had no problems with the wifi connection.
Regarding paper handling, if you're planning on printing on paper thicker than standard, this unit really struggled. Using Avery 4x6 card inkjet paper, which is thicker than standard paper, the unit would either jam, print in the wrong location, or not feed in at all and the unit would start printing on nothing (you can hear the print heading moving and printing). I would have hoped on the latter situation that a sensor would know there is nothing to print on, but no. After printing about 50 sheets on thick paper, the rubber rollers started to peel out particles, like a rubber eraser on a pencil. Occasionally on regular paper, the automatic duplex printing would jam as the paper is reeled backwards, but most of the time this worked.
I am very impressed with Lexmark's customer service. That's a good thing. Why I'm calling customer service right after I bought the unit is not. Any document I scanned or copied would have a thick vertical black stripe across the entire page. The customer service rep had no idea besides clean the glass, reset the printer to default settings, and reboot. But he was nice and polite, and Lexmark had a new unit shipped and arrived in record time - 2 days (maybe it helps that they shipped from Los Angeles and I'm in San Diego). My confidence is slightly shaken, but the new unit does not have this problem and works perfectly so far, except of course the intermittent wi-fi connectivity.
Due to the excellent color print quality, features, packaging, customer service, and stellar warranty at this price point, I'm willing to give the Pro205 4 stars.

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Be more productive with the Lexmark Prospect Pro205 Wireless All-in-One with Fax.The Prospect Pro205 is a wireless All-in-One with full-feature fax and a convenient 35 page automatic document feeder to easily copy and scan multi-page documents.802.11 b/g network compatibility gives you the freedom to print from virtually anywhere within the home and the flexibility to print from various computers.Installation is fast and easy – requiring approximately 10 minutes, while WiFi Protected Setup allows you to sync the printer to a WPS-enabled router with the touch of a button.The Prospect Pro205 also features a 2.4" color LCD to easily view and enhance photos.The Eco Mode feature includes an energy-saving feature and automatic two-sided printing, which can cut paper consumption in half.Print fast with document speeds up to 33ppm and 4"x6" photo printing in as little as 24 seconds.This robust All-in-One ships with XL high-yield ink cartridges which use Lexmark's own Vizix ink technology to produce clear and consistent results.The Vizix ink system uses individual cartridges which can be replaced one color at a time.The Prospect Pro205 also ships with Business Card Scanning software which lets you scan up to eight cards at once, parcel the information, and synchronize it with many popular contact management solutions. All of this functionality is backed by an industry leading 5-year warranty and lifetime, priority phone support!

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