I've just got this scanner and I'm extremely pleased with my new toy. I chose this model as it was in the right price range and had the specification I wanted, oh and it's also one of those teeny sexy ones! After shopping around online and offline I found that the model was hard to get and the best price was at PC World (£145). A few days later they had a delivery and put one aside for me, but that’s a whole other opinion!
~~~~ Technical Specification ~~~~ For all you technical junkies here's the spec.
Colour depth ~ 42 bit Optical Resolution ~ 1200 x 2400 dpi Scanning Element ~ CIS using LIDE technology Interface ~ USB Maximum Document Size ~ A4 Weight ~ 1.5kg External Dimensions ~ 10.1 x 14.7 x 1.3in
As you can see it's really small and has an impressive spec to give higher quality when scanning images. The USB cable means you don't need to find yet another power socket as the power is taken from the PC via the USB port. The scanner also has a "Zfold lid" which allows you to scan books easily. This scanner is compatible with both PC's and Macs.
~~~~ LIDE ~~~~ LIDE stands for LED InDirect Exposure and is Canons scanning technology. It allows scanners to gain higher colour fidelity and less distortion in image processing achieving an image quality that is superior to CCD scanners in the same class. This technology also allows Canon to achieve low prices, greater reliability and that sexy little footprint. There are less moving parts and therefore less power consumption. Canon say this technology is regarded by industry experts as the next-generation of image sensor technology. I don't know about that but I do know that my scanner is giving me much better quality than the HP ones we have at work.
~~~~ Installation ~~~~ This scanner is really easy to install. When you remove it from the box it needs the lock switch pushed to the unlock position (you can lock it again if you want to move it about). You plug in the USB cable to the back of the scanner and the USB port on your PC and turn on the PC. As you need Windows 98 or above to use a USB port your computer will run the "Add New Hardware Wizard" as you boot up. Here you need to pop in the CD and tell the computer where to find the driver as it is hidden in a subdirectory. Once the driver has been installed Windows will start as normal. You then need to install the software once your computer is running.
~~~~ Software ~~~~ Other than the driver you will need to install software which will use up 138mb of your hard drive. You could choose not to install some of the software if you don't think you will use it. To go into all of the software in depth would really be a whole bunch of opinions so I'll just give you a short list before a full description of the important one.
ScanGear Toolbox Cs ~ See Next Section ArcSoft PhotoStudio 2000 ~ A digital image editing program, can stitch images together, convert file formats and create albums. ArcSoft PhotoBase ~ A multimedia management program Caere OmniPage Pro ~ An Optical Character Recognition program which converts scanned documents into text that can be edited with a word processor Adobe Acrobat Reader ~ The reader program for electronic manuals, can be used to read the manuals of the other software!
~~~~ ScanGear Toolbox CS ~~~~ This is the software that you "may" use every time you wish to scan something. It has 9 buttons which do the following.
Fax ~ Scans your image and transmits it directly to a fax machine via your fax modem Mail ~ Scans your image and attaches it to an email message using your email program Copy ~ Scans your image and sends it straight to your printer Save ~ Scans your image and saves it to a file Custom 1 ~ Scans your image and opens it in PhotoStudio 2000 Custom 2 ~ Scans your image and opens it in Omnipage Pro Custom 3 ~ Scans your image and opens it in PhotoBase Settings ~ Displays the settings which you can change Help ~ Provides help on the ScanGear Toolbox
Using the settings button you can change which applications are used with each of the custom buttons. This allows you to scan an image directly into your favorite image editing program. I did this immediately and found that if I had the settings set to the maximum DPI it scanned a file which was too large for my editing program to handle. I would suggest that when using the scanner, if your image editing program has the capability of running a scanner you would be better off using that rather than the ScanGear Toolbox.
~~~~ Scanning ~~~~ Once you've connected the scanner and loaded all the software you will be itching to get scanning. With this scanner you place the top left corner of your document/image at the bottom left corner of the scanner (face down of course!). This is different to all the other scanners I have used where you place the document/image top left corner at the scanners top left corner. I scanned my first image upside down, still no problem as there was a rotate option. Once you have placed your document in the scanner and shut the lid press the button on the front of the scanner and the ScanGear Toolbox opens up on your PC. To scan your image select the option button you require and a window pops up with all your scanning options. Select Preview or Scan to view your image/document.
If you require true one touch scanning you can use the settings options in the ScanGear Toolbox to specify which software should be used when you press the scanners button.
~~~~ Quality ~~~~ The quality on this scanner is brilliant. I've just spent the whole weekend bunging pictures through mine and was impressed with every result. The scanned images were all clear and true to the originals the only editing I needed to do was to compensate for the poor quality of the original image (over exposure, faded etc). I'll be uploading some of these images to my web sites shortly and I'll update this to let you know when.
~~~~ The Bottom Line ~~~~ This scanner is really great. It is easy to install and operate whilst giving you excellent quality on your scanned documents/images. The small footprint (Just about 1inch bigger all round than an A4 sheet, and only 34mm high) means that the unit is very unobtrusive on your desk. Oh and it’s a lovely grey metallic colour which looks dead smart on your desktop!
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