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legohead said
on 10/17/2008 Get an Epson and you'll have a good scan. The problem is no matter what flatbed you get, they just are too slow for large jobs. Flatbeds are meant for casual scanning, not hundreds of photos. You won't do much better with a cheap all-in-one. Besides, if the paper-path is in a U configuration as is typical, it likely will scratch the photo.
The fact is for the same $100+ you pay for a slow flatbed, a company like http://www.TheDigitalConvert.com will scan over 500 photos, do some editing, burn them to 2 DVDs, upload them to the web etc. It's really a waste of time and money to play around with one of those flatbeds.
rongorongo said
on 9/10/2007 These guidelines are so far out of date that the advice will confuse- or scare anyone buying a new scanner in 2007! My advise: a cheap Epson PHOTO scanner from the Epson clearance center is all that an average snapshooter needs to input printed photos or color negatives. Serious photographers should buy an Epson scanner with the highest Dmax affordable. For a "home office" situation where document scanning is necessary get an all-in-one HP. Epson printers are problematic for anyone but the most serious fine art printmakers. Epson scanners are not problematic and the fidelity of even a cheap one leaves all the other manufacturers in the dust!
sboals said
on 5/5/2007 Good article on scanner features at www.scanguru.com
Anonymous said
on 11/22/2005 The warning not to buy a scanner that has greater resolution than your printer or display device (because the extra money will be wasted) assumes that printers will never get better. This is a very short-sighted approach. I don't want to scan my old photos again when the printer technology improves just because I scanned them at a lower resolution the first time. Also, those old photos will keep fading. They may not be around to scan a second time. Buy the best, highest resolution scanner you can afford.
Anonymous said
on 11/22/2005 Many problems related to parallel scanners are related to driver conflicts of the printer/scanner and Win95 way of controlling the printerport (lpt.vxd) Upgrading to Win98 and getting the latest drivers is a pro.
Anonymous said
on 11/22/2005 If all you want from a scanner is to zap photos to send onto friends, don't waste money on a high resolution model. Even the inexpensive models scan at a higher resolution than most casual users will ever utilize.
Anonymous said
on 11/22/2005 If you are planning on buying a cheap scanner with a pass-through parallel interface,
you might want to reconsider and spend a bit more for a USB or SCSI scanner. I've heard of too many conflict problems using parallel scanners with printers.