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Computer Science,
Christianity,
Briti sh History,
Cycling,
Languages,
Star Trek
Member since:19.08.2001
Reviews:9
This scanner instantly looks appealing because it is so compact. But do not be fooled into thinking it can perform anywhere near as good as the Epson Perfection 1240U !
Firstly, most conventional scanners use a white light that reflects colours off your photo/documents onto a mirror, which then focuses the light into the lens. The Canoscan however uses a newer and smaller technology of red green and blue LEDs.
Although this technology is smaller, it recognises colours far too gaudily, with poor realism. There is also a problem with this technology recognising sharpness, and hence uses a software interpolation to sharpen the scan afterwards. Unfortunately, this sharpens the noise and distortions too, leaving you with lots of moiré (white dots).
Initially, I thought there must be a problem with my scanner because of this poor quality, so I called Canon and they sent a Canon Technical Support Engineer around. He looked at the scanning and agreed that it was too poor quality and that the scanner must be malfunctioning. It turned out though that the scanner was functioning within normal parameters. What does this tell you?
The scanner does however have a USB, as most modern scanner should, leaving out the parallel interface. The driver is also the best I have seen, with options to press a button on the scanner and then select your application. There is also a basic and advanced mode.
The software bundled with the scanner is also great - it comes with Omnipage Optical Character Recognition, which is better than the more common Textbridge.
The speed is not the fastest, but it is not the worst either. And it is fairly quiet. The resolution of the scanner is only 600x1200 dpi, but for this price it is an acceptable compromise.
Overall - do not buy this scanner for photo-quality scans. Its quality is adequate for documents and optical character recognition, or even for making web graphics. But for photos it is well under par.
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Good Op, thanks for the info :)
I have an excellent Canon i850 printer (which I have reviewed on Ciao) and I have been looking for a decent Canon scanner to partner with it.
Cheers,
Dave.
Muhamed 09.10.2001 18:57
This is not true and you know it. This scanner is certanly NOT photo unrealistic. I can send you hundreds of scans made with it that can show how incredibly good this scanner is. You probably have Epson and need good reason for paying 2 times more for just a little bit better performance. 600x resolution is not a drawback if you don't need more.
pookypop 24.08.2001 15:56
Thanks for the good advice - I think I'll stick to my web-cam until I actually need a scanner though! Great op, Pooky
Advantages: Superb quality scans, fast, reliable, ultra-easy to install and operate, USB a genial idea! Disadvantages: So light as to be almost flimsy?
PaulCatterall 11.03.2001 ·
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Canon CanoScan N650U
Aug 19th, 2001
(Aug 20th, 2001)
very helpful by (89%):
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