Visioneer One Touch 8700 USB

The Visioneer One Touch 8700 USB is the latest addition to our studio. Now as usual, it had to pass through a number of criteria put forward by the boss! So what were the critieria? He was after a cheap scanner (under £100) for use with the receptionists PC and simply for scanning in pictures for our new website. So we didn't buy this for use in the design department, in which case we would have opted for something much more expensive and more capable. ...
...beige boxes, so I suppose visioneer did a litte to differentiate by having a black box instead of a beige one! Nowadays however theres not a beige scanner in sight in most PC stores, the shelfs are full of all sorts of designs, and in all sorts of colours, I'm particulary fond of the latest blue HP and epson ones and the attractive silver canon models. Its got 7 large buttons on the front which are large and easy to locate.

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The Visioneer One Touch 8700 USB is the latest addition to our studio. Now as usual, it had to pass through a number of criteria put forward by the boss! So what were the critieria? He was after a cheap scanner (under £100) for use with the receptionists PC and simply for scanning in pictures for our new website. So we didn't buy this for use in the design department, in which case we would have opted for something much more expensive and more capable.

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AVAILABILITY
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We purchased this scanner from PC World, which in my opinion is THE place for computer equipment, if it isn't here you won't find it anywhere! I've also found it browsing on the internet and its likely that it will be available from other high street retailers, in particular Dixons which is owned by PC World

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PRICE
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The scanner was £59.99, now in relation to other scanners this seems quite reasonable. You can pick up scanners for as littel as £30 now, but their specs are minimal compared to this model. There are also much more expensive scanners, for example the latest epson ones, some of which are as much as £200!

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DESIGN
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The design is quite impressive considering this model has been on the market about two years now. Now if you imagine the scanner market two years ago, it was basically a range of beige boxes, so I suppose visioneer did a litte to differentiate by having a black box instead of a beige one! Nowadays however theres not a beige scanner in sight in most PC stores, the shelfs are full of all sorts of designs, and in all sorts of colours, I'm particulary fond of the latest blue HP and epson ones and the attractive silver canon models. Its got 7 large buttons on the front which are large and easy to locate.

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EASE OF USE
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One advantage I found about this was that it was extremely easy to use. You can control everything from the seven main buttons on the scanner, providing that you have installed the software correctly, once you press the button on the scanner it will automatically start up all the software on the computer. From then on you can scan in images to file, save them to the computer, email them and what not. Its also got a really clever feature called document type recognition, where you scan scan in text and edit it in a word document.

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SOFTWARE AND INSTALLATION
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The scanner was really easy to install. Its plug and play, so simply plug the USB cable into the scanner and the other end into the computer and most modern computer will automatically recognise the new hardware. If not then the software CD is very useful, it installs all the neccessary software and drivers. We had it all set up within fifteen minutes and had scanned our first document within twenty minutes.

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SPEED
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The scanner is medioca in its speed. Its not really slow like some of the earlier models but neither is it superfast like the latest models. It also depends what setting you have the scanner on, for example it can scan black and white or colour and at different qualities;
Typical Preview scan - 10 seconds
Low Res black and white scan - 15 seconds
Low Res colour scan - 25 seconds
High Res black and white scan - 50 secs
High Res Colour Scan - 60 secs

Those figures are each for a typical A4 sized document. Photographs obviously take less time as they are smaller, expect to half the times given above, roughly.

The scanner is USB so is generally much quicker than Parallel scanners, although must modern scanners are USB anyway.

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QUALITY
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We were actually suprised with what £60 could buy us. We expected a typical 1200 dpi x 1200 dpi. The resolution is actually 1200 dpi x 4800 dpi (substantially better!) Such resolutions mean it could actually compete with some of the better scanners in our studio! The photographs are really good quality, and because of the high resolutions one has the ability to enlarge the photgraphs on screen substantially without hindering the quality. Its great for enlarging horizontal photographs up to A4 size and providing you've got a good printer to go with it you'll be able to get some great prints. The colour sensitivty is really good too, to the extent that the photographs look as good on screen as they do in the original photograph/ document.

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OVERALL
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Overall, the Visioneer One Touch 8700 USB has proved a great scanner for our general scanning needs. Okay, its not as capable as the latest ultra cool fantabulous designs but its certainly above standard, able to scan at 4800 dpi x 1200 dpi much better than the average scanner. And at this very low price you really can't go wrong, I'd recommend this as the ideal scanning solution, for small businesses and also for home use. You won't be unimpressed by the quality or the value for money from this scanner. Great visions from visioneer!
 

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