At the time of purchasing this scanner, I was looking for a scanner to scan artwork on to the computer (my husband draws cartoons!).
This scanner comes with plenty of software, although I'm not sure all of it is relevant. It comes with Paper Port, Text Bridge and Ulead.
Once you've loaded on the copious amounts of software that seem to be with the scanner, it becomes a little difficult to navigate the scanner. Normally you would expect to choose the scanner from the programme menu and then select where you want the scanned image to go. This seems very difficult to do, I could not scan directly into Adobe Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro. It seems that you have to acces the scanner by either opening the lid or using it though the little bar on the right of the screen (where the clock is), then you can choose where you want the scanned image to go, this gives you a limited choice, you can use one of the programs that came scanner (which can make it very difficult to edit properly), or other basic programs, it is not happy to scan to more advanced editing programs.
However with all the physical scaning problems, the scanner it's self is very good, it's very fast, the quality of the picture is very good and it's relatively quiet.
However, having spent over £30 on this scanner, I was very dissapointed to find that when my old laptop expired and I had to purchase a new one with Windows Vista, it was not supported. I had only had the scanner for 4 months, and had hardly any use out of it.
It also seems that the helpdesk support for scanners from Xerox is non existant. I searched the web for a new update of the driver, and I kept going around in circles, with the ending conclusion that the updated driver didn't exist yet.
I then preceed to phone Xerox to ask about this, when you call Xerox with the number on the box, you get a recorded message which asks you to enter your serial number, I did this and the recorded message kept telling me this product didn't exist. After about 5 minutes of this I was put through to a Customer Serive advisor, who then told me Xerox no longer delt with the Scanners, this was out sourced to another company (I don't remember the name, sorry). I phoned this other company (on an expensive number) and the guy told me that they were aware that the Xerox 4800 didn't have a Vista compatible driver and that I should keep checking the Xerox website as they were working on one and it should be there in about 4 weeks.
Well, 5 months down the line, the driver still isn't on website, and I have little faith that it will be before I get fed up with waiting and purchase a new one!
So would I recommend this scanner, yes if you have no intention of ever upgrading your PC to Windows Vista, otherwise steer well clear!
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Aug 9th, 2007
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