Too expensive for an A3 scanner???
 Jun 1st, 2005
Advantages:
Great resolution options, speed and ease of use
Disadvantages:
Price may put people off
Recommendable:
Yes
Detailed rating:
Speed
Colour sensitivity
Resolution
Ease of Installation
Value For Money
more
  andyw22
About me:
Hi, aiming to provide honest and reliable opinions. New to this so all feedback is welcome, thanks, ...
Member since:26.05.2005
Reviews:3
Review rated by 9 Ciao members on average: very helpful 
This review received a counterstatement by a party concerned
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We were looking at buying a good quality scanner for some time and two main criteria had to be met by the purchase. Firstly, my job often requires me to don my graphic design hat in order to create marketing and promotional literature for various people, products and campaigns. And to date I don't think I have produced some work where pictures have not been featured. Is this relevant to a scanner review I hear you ask.......... well yes, as I often need to convert printed photographs into a digital format when creating the aforementioned literature.
Secondly, the product design side of my job requires me to scan A3 technical drawings, so they can be emailed to customers and suppliers all over the world. With these two criterions established we felt they were met comfortably by the Epson GT15000. I was a bit taken back by the shear size of the thing when it arrived, in its box and packaging it only just fits through the width of the average door frame! Having removed the scanner from its box we were left with a glorified piece of plastic, considerably smaller than the box it came in but of still fairly large proportions. The exact scanner dimensions are as follows:
- Standard (w x d x h): 656 x 458 x 158mm
- Weight: Approximately 13 kg Aesthetically it's not going to win any design awards, but then it isn't the ugliest thing in the world either (thanks to Wayne Rooney there....) It is what it is, and the slightly dressed up plastic box does its job.
The
scanner is easy to install, both physically and on the computer, aided by the very helpful and concise manual/setup guide. In fact this is crucial to read; otherwise you wouldn't know to remove the transportation lock which disables the scanner. The scanner comes with a range of connection options, USB 1.1, USB 2.0 Hi-Speed, SCSI-2 and IEEE 1394. The latter to be used in conjunction with the optional IEEE 1394 Scanner I/F Card. In order to start the scanning software, the scanner must be switched on. A good feature here is that the scanner utilises a High-Bright Xenon Lamp for instant use and virtually zero warm up. When loaded you are presented with a simple menu that can be altered in complexity depending on which mode you wish to use the scanner in, home (most basic), Office or Professional (most advanced) The latter of which allows for alterations such as exposure, histogram adjustment and tone correction. Generally when you have played with as little or as many settings as you like to get your desired image in preview mode, hit scan and the picture is saved to your specified destination.
One thing I find particularly useful is the range provided in the resolution options, from as low as 50 dpi to as high as 9600 dpi. Which even I haven't justified using as the quality given by anything up to 1200 is superb, produces smaller files and is less likely to crash the workstation (which 9600 dpi did numerous times when experimenting, but that is due to the limitations of my computer and in no way a negative reflection on the scanner) The Speed is particularly impressive on the GT15000. Capable of:
- 1.3 msec/line Monochrome (Draft mode):
- 3.8 msec/line Colour (Draft mode) To put it in plainer English, I don't think anyone will have an issue with the speed of this scanner, obviously the higher the quality of the scan selected, the longer you will be waiting but even on the highest 9600 setting you will only be waiting a few minutes.
As you may note by my original criteria, this purchase was not intended to be used in the office for general scanning purposes, i.e., letters, invoices, quotes etc. It is far too highly specified and priced for these tasks and also too big. A cheaper A4 scanner will easily cater for these jobs and save you lots of money. And that's the thing with this scanner, it carries a fairly high price tag due to the fact that it is afterall an A3 sized scanner. If you want this jump up in size from A4 to A3 then be expected to pay for it, as most A3 scanners require a healthy investment! The GT15000 can cope with general office scanning tasks, aided by the optional Automatic Document Feeder capable of handling 100 sheets of 80gsm weighted paper, but in my opinion as an experienced user this would be a waste. So in conclusion I would say that you need to accurately establish what your scanning requirements are and see if this high quality piece of hardware matched them, otherwise it could be a costly mistake. If you want high quality for larger sized documents then the GT15000 is in my opinion perfect for the job and may be of interest, if not then save money elsewhere.
Full Specification included below: SCANNER TYPE: A3 Flatbed Colour Scanner
DOCUMENT SIZE: 297 x 432mm (11.7 x 17.0 inches)
RESOLUTION Main Scan: 600 dpi (optical resolution)
Sub Scan: 1,200 dpi
OUTPUT RESOLUTION :50 dpi to 4,800 dpi (in 1 dpi steps)
(9,600 dpi scanning is achieved by 4800 dpi x 200%)
Zoom 50 to 200% (in 1% steps)
EFFECTIVE PIXELS: Grayscale: 16-bit (4,096 grey scale levels) internal, 8-bit (256 grey scale levels) external
Colour: 48-bit (4,275.2 million colours) internal, 24-bit (16.7 million colours) external
SCANNING SPEED: Monochrome (Draft mode): 1.3 msec/line
Colour (Draft mode): 3.8 msec/line
LINE ART: Fixed Threshold, TET (Text Enhanced Technology)
DIGITAL HALFTONING: Error Diffusion (A, B, C), Dither (A, B, C, D)
User Defined Dither (A, B)
SUPPORTED PLATFORMS: USB 2.0 HI-SPEED: Windows® 2000 Professional/Windows® XP Home Edition/Professional
USB 1.1: Windows® 98/Me/2000 Professional/Windows® XP Home Edition/Professional
SCSI I/F: Windows® 98/Me/2000 Professional/Windows® XP Home Edition/Professional/Windows® NT4.0 Workstation
IEEE 1394 I/F: Windows® Me/2000 Professional/Windows® XP Home Edition/Professional (Optional IEEE1394 card is necessary)
INTERFACES: USB 2.0 Hi-Speed x 1pce
SCSI (50-pin high-density connector) x 2pce
Extended I/F slot x 1pce
ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS: Temperature Operating: 5° to 35°, Storage: -25° to 60°
Humidity Operating: 10 to 80%, no condensation
ELECTRICAL SPECIFICATIONS: Voltage Rated Voltage: AC 100 - 120 V/AC 220 - 240 V
Input Voltage: AC 100 - 120 V ± 10 %/AC 220 - 240 V ± 10 %
FREQUENCY: Input Frequency Range: 49.5 - 60.5 Hz
POWER CONSUMPTION: Operation: Ave. 60 W (scanner only), Ave 65 W (with ADF)
DIMENSIONS: Standard (w x d x h): 656 x 458 x 158mm
Weight: Approximately 13 kg
AUTO DOCUMENT FEEDER Type: Order of paper feeding is 1 to N
Method: Face up load, face down eject
Document Size: Portrait: A3 (ledger) to A5
Landscape: A4 (letter) to A6
Load & Eject Capacity: 100 sheets (80 g/m2)
Corresponding Paper Weight: Thickness: 50-127 g/m2
NETWORK IMAGE EXPRESS CARD Network Interface: RJ45 - 10Base-T/100Base-TX Automatic selection
Supported Protocols: TCP/IP
Supported Driver Software: Epson Scan
Client Operating Systems: Windows® 98/Me, Windows® NT4.0/2000/XP
DIMENSIONS Size: 95 x 160 x 21mm
Weight: 200 g
WARRANTY Standard 1 year repair or replace
Optional extension to 3 years
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07.04.2007 10:09
Very good but can you explain some of the technical stuff at the bottom I don't quite understand it all.
01.06.2005 17:13
excellent review & welcome!
01.06.2005 17:11
Hello, Welcome to Ciaos, nice review. Daz