Scanner advice

[gad5264]

I have a chance to buy this scanner for $40 from a guy I work with. He got it with a system he bought for his daughter but then ended up getting an all in one unit. I already have a decent printer at home but was wondering about this scanner for home use.

http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/def...spx?EDC=555911

[Russianwolf]

Got a Canon all-in-one ($180 with tax) this weekend too. Biggest advantage over the one you listed in the scanner part is it has a document feeder, so multipager scanns are alot easier.

Another thing to keep in mind is space. You can't set anything on top of the scanner, so it has to live on top of something or take up more desktop space.

I will say that I really like this Canon. Individual ink slots, and the color printing is alot better than the HP we replaced.

[LCHIEN]

specs say "USB" everywhere but no mention of USB 2.
If its not USB 2, a scanner can make a lot of data, it'll be real slow.

[Ed62]

The specs on it are not very impressive by today's standards. But for $40.00, it might be worth buying, depending on what you will use it for. When you look at the resolution, you should look at the optical resolution, not the interpolated resolution, which is always higher, but does not add any more detail.

Ed

[maxparot]

It's worth no more than $40 but if you shop around you may be able to find something with better specs for the same money. It is a typical system add on to make a deal seem more appealing. There are a number of scanners in that price range with higher resolution. Look for a 4800 x 4800 or 9600 x 9600.

[tuttlejr]

Garage/Yard/Tag sales are a great source for scanners. Real cheap. Also check out Craigslist in your area. Seems many people are getting the all in one machines.

[cwsmith]

For $40 it's a good buy in my opinion. I've been using scanners since the early 90's and have a Visioneer 4400 which I purchased in 1999. After the rebate, I think it was only something like $70. This was my second Visioneer (the first was a parallel port unit) and I bought it because it was USB. The model you referred to should be a USB2 since that has been the standard for the last several years. In 2003, the company bought me a rather expensive HP scanner which was around $1200, as I recall. My Visioneer 4400 was faster, sharper, and had a much better color rendition with distinctly wider latitude.

So while the Visioneer isn't the best scanner in the world, it is often way ahead of scanners costing more. Whatever you do, make sure you get the Paperport software that comes with the Visioneer. It's one of the best general use programs on the market. Easy to use and quite intuitive.

Regarding scanners in general, unless you intend to do a lot of enlarging of images, the very high resolution simply isn't useful. Of course everyone has there own point of view on this, but from my professional usage, I rarely need to scan anything at super resolution. At 300 dpi, you'll capture every "fly spec" on a piece of paper. Of course if you're going to blow it up 200%, than you'd scan it at 600 dpi. But I've done tests scanning old photographes (100 year old archive stuff), and I've found no improvement above 300 dpi. (From a publishing point of view, 300 dpi is almost National Geographic quality).

Biggest thing with a scanner is the range of color tones and the sharpness of the image. My 4400 is still going strong, and I've probably scanned a couple of thousand images since it's purchase. All of my paper records are scanned as a matter of routine and I maintain are fairly good size digital database for one of my other hobbies. I also use the scanner as a tool in my illustration work.

Bottom line is I don't think you'd go wrong with the Visioneer, but if you have doubts, check out the "all-in-one" products (fac, copier, scanner) and go from there.

CWS