New Scanner for Me

[GilesGuthrie]

Couple of things happened to me recently...

1. My trusty UMAX Astra 1220S scanner gave up the ghost.
2. I won a little money on the Grand National (a famous horse race)

With this in mind, it's probably not worth trying to fix the Astra, and definitely not worth trying to have it fixed, so I'm looking at getting a new one. These are the models I'm thinking of, and their prices. I'd be interested to hear anything from anyone who has knowledge of any of these...



Epson Perfection 1260 £70.50
HP ScanJet 3530C 1200dpi Flatbed Scanner £75.00
Visioneer One Touch 8700 £76.37
Canon CanoScan Lide 30 £76.37
Umax Astra 4500 A4 USB MAC/PC £76.37

 

[Cobraking]

Canon CanoScan Lide 30 £76.37 i think will be better

Canon Unique LIDE Technology
34mm thickness, the world's slimmest scanner with metallic blue color
1200 X 2400 dpi high optical resolution
48-bit color depth
Multi-Scan mode that lets you scan up to ten photographs at once and produces separate files for each photo
QARE Version 2.0 technology removes dust detected on the photos during scanning
3 EZ buttons provide convenient operations including scan, copy and email attachment
Play music function that you can choose a particular music and default to play while scanning
Unique vertical operation - space saving
Advanced "Z-Lid" cover for scanning thick books and magazines
Power supply Via USB: no AC adapter needed.
Low energy consumption: 2.5W
USB 2.0 full speed & USB 1.1 interface: compatible with Windows® 98 / 2000 / Me / XP and Macintosh
Both Chinese and English OCR included
Scangear Toolbox4.0, Arcsoft PhotoStudio, PhotoBase included


Type Flatbed (stationary document type)
Scanning element CIS (Contact Image Sensor)
Light source Three-color LEDs
Optical resolution 1200 x 2400 dpi
Interface USB 2.0 Full speed, USB 1.1
Scanning gradation Color 48-bit input/24-bit output
Grayscale 16-bit input/8-bit output
Scanning speed*1 Color 112 seconds (A4/600 dpi), 450 seconds (A4/1200dpi)
Grayscale 40 seconds (A4/600 dpi), 50 seconds(A4/1200dpi)
B & W 40 seconds (A4/600 dpi), 150 seconds (A4/1200dpi)
Preview (A4) 15 seconds
Selectable resolution*2 Windows 25 - 9600 dpi
Macintosh
Maximum size A4/LTR, 216mm x 297mm (8.5" x 11.7")
Supporting OS Windows Windows® 98/ME/2000/XP
Macintosh Macintosh OS 8.6 - X (Classic mode only)
Software (Win) TWAIN ScanGear CS-U
Utility ScanGear Toolbox CS
Photo Imaging ArcSoft PhotoStudio 5, ArcSoft PhotoBase 3
OCR ScanSoft OmniPage SE (Eng),
TH-OCR BUNDLE 2000 (Chi)
Software (Mac) TWAIN Canon Plug-in Module CS-U
Utility ScanGear Toolbox CS
Photo Imaging ArcSoft PhotoStudio 5, ArcSoft PhotoBase 3
OCR ScanSoft OmniPage SE
Power supply Via USB (No AC adapter required.)*3
Maximum Power consumption 2.5W
Operating range 5 - 30°C (41 - 95°F), 10 - 90%RH
Dimensions (W x L x H) 256mm x 383mm x 34mm (10.1" x 15.1" x 1.3")
Weight Approx. 1.5kg
*1 Scan time only; data transfer time not included.

Your Welcome Giles

 

[Cobraking]

i almost forogt the pic

 

[Cobraking]

Well Giles what were u thinking about?? ( for a scanner)

 

[Solid Fro]

I would go with the HP. Their software is bloated, but their driver support for 2000/XP is excellent. I have a HP PSC 750 which has a scanner integrated into it. I just plug the USB cable in, XP recognized it, and I was ready to print. At 1200 dpi, the image is extremely sharp and it takes less than 5 minutes to scan a full color image.

 

[rjensen11]

Definatley get a flatbed over a combo machine. Combos are not as good because you can't scan as many things such as book pages, really large pages, magazines, etc.

 

[GilesGuthrie]

Originally posted by cobraking13
Well Giles what were u thinking about?? ( for a scanner)

Well I was leaning towards the UMAX, because (demise aside) it was a good unit.

Oh, and Viper Zero, five minutes is an age. The UMAX unit in the list is capable of a preview scan in 6 seconds, and a full scan in a minute.

I'm quite impressed with the HP scanners, although I agree with you on their software bloat. I'm also not happy with the monitoring software they install, because it's fine when you want to use the scanner, but all other times it's a waste of processor time.

 

[Solid Fro]

Well, maybe my scanner is slow. At 1200 dpi, it takes about 5 minutes. At lower resolutions, it's fairly quick, about a minute.

 

[Shannon]

I have a Canon CanoScan LiDE 20. I like it because all I can either scan, copy or email a photo by simply hitting the one of the buttons on the front of the scanner.

 

[TVRKing]

I've got a Canon N67OU. I've had no problems with it, and it's quite fast.

Only cost me £49.99 from PCWorld.

 

[GilesGuthrie]

Well after a lot of thought, the three main contenders came out on top. They were
UMAX Astra 4500 (Good product, brand loyalty)
HP ScanJet 3530C (Seen this working, v.good, have HP Printer, so "Copy" function would be flawless)
Canon CanoScan LiDE30 (Very good reviews)

After a lot of soul searching, I dropped the UMAX (USB1.1 only), and the HP (Actually not THAT good, expensive, bloated software) and I have ordered the Canon Canoscan LiDE30.

Should be here in a few days, I'll update you all when it is. Thanks for the comments folks.