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Member since:05.12.2005
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I bought this scanner nearly a year ago when I moved away to university. I was looking for something cheap but that would be able to cope with scanning both text and images at high enough resolution to be workable once in my computer. It does both well.
I believe it cost me just over £20 from ebay (excluding postage) and after having a brief look tonight, the price doesn't seem to have changed too much since then. It's quick and easy to install with on-screen instructions and paper instructions all the way.
The scanner connects to the computer, and gets its power via USB. A cable came with my scanner, but some reviews around claim it does not come included so I'd say to check the details from your particular retailer. It is a nice convenience that only a single cable is needed to work this scanner as the hunting for cable time is reduced!
Also included in my scanning package was a software disk with the scanner driver and some software programs for photo edditing (ArcSoft PhotoBase
and ArcSoft PhotoStudio) but personally I don't like theses programs so I have the scanner connected to Paint Shop Pro instead. One slightly annoying feature (or maybe I just haven't got the settings quite right) is that Paint Shop Pro will open a new window for each scanned item, rather than keeping them all in one window. The scanning part works through the CanoScan Toolbox, which seems to looks the same for all models, but I found this was not the case as I had to install a different version to use an older (I think) Canon scanner (the CanoScan LiDE 25).
This scanner has three buttons on the front to allow for one touch scanning. These buttons are 'Scan', which saves straight to a file and opens in your desired photo editor, 'Copy', which I think just sends a copy to the printer (but I'm not too sure as I haven't used this feature) and 'Email', linking the scanned image straight to your email program, without allowing for any editing of the image.
There are also settings to allow for multiple scans on the same pass, and auto crop of the image. Neither of these features works flawlessly, but auto crop has come in useful. The multiple scan feature often seems to pick up random areas as different scans, and saves them to different files, and the area you actually wanted to scan is now in several pieces. Auto crop has a habit of sometimes cutting too close to the edge of the object being scanned and cutting off each edge, often losing part of the image or text that was being scanned.
A neat feature of this scanner is its ability to scan on its side - or it would be neat if I would make it work successfully, but it's a nice idea! It's said that single sheets work best this way, anything more and it falls out or the scanner lid flops open. The scanner comes with a stand that clips into the back to support the unit. The stand does mean that the scanner can take up very little space on a desk - put it against a wall, on its side and it's only taking up slightly more of an inch of space.
One of my main uses of this scanner is to scan pages of library books that are either too heavy to carry home, just to read a few pages, or ones that can't be taken from the library (and scanning is much cheaper and more efficient than paying to photocopy!) As such I have carried it back and forth with my laptop several times and it seems none the worse for wear. Sometimes the scanner has to reset itself after being carried around, but this takes less than a minute and is not much of a hardship.
Something that is, on the other hand, is the noise this scanner gives off. For such a small piece of kit it gives off a lot of noise. As such I've received many a glare from other library users, so have taken to using side rooms for scanning so as not to disturb others.
Also on the topic of library books … this scanner works better than many other scanners with thick items. The lid is what is called an 'exclusive' Z-lid by Canon, meaning it can lift high but still lay flat because there is a hinged piece under the lid. The max possible thickness (to still keep the lid closed/flat) is just over an inch.
When scanning pages of text into jpeg files, this scanner does a good job of making it readable. I have also used it to scan pictures and diagrams (both from text books and hand-drawn) and have achieved good results. Possibly the only time I have failed to get a good result after several tries was when trying to scan a pencil sketch off of graph paper - in the end I just went over it in black pen! There is also an OCR (Optical Character Recognition) feature, which can take the text straight into a word processing application. I haven't used this much as I often need the page to look like the book does, rather than just pure text.
(I will admit that this next part means very little too me and is pretty much copy and paste from the technical specs!) The scanner scans at a resolution of up to 1200 x 2400 dpi and with up to 48-bitdepth, allowing a possible 281 trillion possible colors! It measures 25.6 cm x 38.3 cm x 3.4 cm and weighs 1.5kg
This isn't the fastest or quietest scanner around, but it does what it says it should - scan! - to a reasonable quality at not-too-high a price. Not all it's features work first time, but the more you use it, the more you get the hang of what it is likely to do with the thing you're scanning.
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Advantages: No External Power Supply, Great Images, Very Easy To Use Disadvantages: Not Especially Quick, A Little On The Noisy Side, No Transparency Adapter
Advantages: No External Power Supply, Great Images, Very Easy To Use Disadvantages: Not Especially Quick, A Little On The Noisy Side, No Transparency Adapter
Jun 17th, 2006
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