Low-end Scanners

The low-end scanner market continues to astonish us with the sheer quantity of flatbed models available at prices under $300. Some discontinued models, such as the Microtek E3, were on sale at sources such as www.pcwarehouse.com for an astonishing US$39. This intense price competition has taken its toll. Storm, once a vibrant player in the low-cost arena, has gone out of business (however, an unofficial support page at  www.tele-net.net/storm has updated drivers for various Storm peripherals) and other players, such as Visioneer and Umax, are or have recently been embroiled in lawsuits (Visioneer successfully sued Umax, forcing the latter company to relabel all of its Astra 1220 "36-bit" scanners to reflect the fact that they are really based upon 30-bit scanning hardware; the extra bits are achieved using what amounts to software trickery.) Perhaps not coincidentally, some HP ScanJet models make similarly dubious claims, as our tests reveal.

Generally, we recommend SCSI-based scanners, although if your computer (and OS) is USB-capable, a USB scanner can be a simple connection. We do not recommend parallel-port scanners.

We'll add to this report as 1999 progresses, but for now, we recommend making sure your scanner short list includes a look at SCSI models from Hewlett-Packard, Epson, Agfa, Microtek and UMAX.

Note, however, this report on the UMAX Astra 1220S from one of our readers:
"After buying this scanner my computer kept crashing stating it could not load or find VMM32.VXD. This problem persisted even after upgrading to Win 98. I finally found the answer on the UMAX website that thier software caused this problem on any Pentium II machine about 300 Mhz. If they new this problem was so wide spread they could have at least included a photo copy in the box telling you about this problem or put out a bulletin to the sales staff so they could tell thier customers or maybe even include the file on a floppy at the time of purchase. I think the fix file was about 30k."

It is perhaps also worth mentioning that our in-house scanner, an Epson Expression 636, began acting up recently. After using the scanner for an estimated hour per day for a year, scans began appearing with dark streaks and unusual colour casts; power-cycling the computer and scanner had no effect (in fact, cycling the scanner's power sometimes made the problem worse!). As you may have guessed, our scanner's light source was  kaput. This necessitates a replacement part and, generally, a trip to a service centre. The problems we encountered, it should be noted, are not unique to this Epson product, but can (and will, given enough time) affect any scanner based on fluorescent light illumination.

For further reading:

• Q&A reports
• More scanner reviews are available at http://www.envisions.com/pages/reviews.html