Scanner Reviews

This is a great scanner. Unfortunately my computer crashed over the summer and I was upable to find the installation disk. When I called the company to see about getting another disk, they suggested that I buy the Microtek 3740 instead. They were absolutely no help.

I originally bought this because I had gotten a new computer and my old scanner wouldn't work with the new operating system. It turns out that I should have bought this scanner first. It was about half the price and worked 1000 times better. The scanner program that is comes with is very easy to use and the set-up and installation for the scanner uses pictures and words to show you step by step what to do. This is a great scanner and I'm so glad that I bought it.

I bought an ES-10 a couple of years ago. It's good at the job, but, when I upgraded to XP it would not work. Olympus say it does not support NT or XP for the ES-10 and has no plans to. I now have to run a dual boot system (XP and ME) just so that I can use this one piece of hardware.

Now that XP has gone to the home market to replace 95, 98, SE and ME etc, Olympus ought to write a driver and not leave it's customer's in the lurch.

I had been looking for a way to take the boxes of slides I shot in my twenties and get them into digital form where I was more likely to actually look at them. And of course I also wanted to share them with the few people on earth who are actually interested in seeing my old slides.

When I looked at dedicated slide scanners like those from Nikon, it quickly became clear that these were professional devices that produced huge images for quality reproduction. They were also on the wrong side of $1000. General purpose flatbed scanners, on the other hand, weren't good enough to create a decent screen or printing image from such a tiny source.

The Olympus ES-10, at $400, is just about right. Not only does it produce good-looking images from slides, it can also accept negative strips like the kind you get back from the processor. From these it can make full-screen positives or larger images for printing with a good-quality inkjet.

The scanner comes in two variation, parallel and SCSI. I chose the SCSI because I figured it was faster and because I already have about three devices trying to share a single parallel port. You need your own SCSI adapter, as none is supplied. Also, the SCSI cable that comes with the scanner is suitable only for a Macintosh. If you are using it with a Windows PC, as I am, you will need to get a cable to match your SCSI card.

The software supplied with the scanner can be run stand-alone, to produce .bmp files (the only kind natively supported) or as a TWAIN device so that you can scan your slides directly into any number of image editors like the Adobe Photo Deluxe 3.0 that comes bundled. The TWAIN solution works out to be more convenient, since you don't end up with .bmp files that you are not likely to use again. Using TWAIN, Photo Deluxe or your own image editor can likely output to .jpg, .gif .tif and many other formats.

The scanner is very easy to set up and use. Easier than a flatbed in many ways. The only additonal consideration is focus, since there is no rigid bed to hold the original in a flat plane.

The TWAIN software lets you make basic resolution, cropping, exposure and color balance adjustments to the preview image. Then you press the scan button and you're done.

All in all, I'm very pleased. The images are clear, and it's good to see them again after all these years.

65% of its use is as a copier, 20% as a printer and 15% as a fax machine. So far, it has perfomed as I expected. We have 3 Brother laserprinters in the office. Brother has always proven to be an excellent workhorse and this is no exception. Also, Brother provides great tech support for both Windows and Mac systems. I have no loyalty to Brother. But as long as their products have proven themselves, they stay near the top of my list.

Software installed without any problems on both Windows XP Pro and OS X. Haven't used the scanning abilities and I doubt we will (so I can't comment on its capabilities). But as a copier, fax and printer, it has worked great. The ADF is a pleasure (no jams after 3,000+ copies) and the copier itself is fast. This copier DOES have a page counter, but it can't be reset. So if you have an unknown amount of papers to put in the ADF and need 20 sets, you can determine the amount of copies made.

Toner life is an expected 6,700 pages and I suspect we'll get close to 6,300 before needing replacement (always seem to get 5% less then the expectd yield on text imaging). The unit did come with a smaller yielding toner cartridge (3,500 impressions), but we had the higher yielding in the office and used that first.

If there is one thing I wasn't expecting is the noise it makes. Not that it is any louder then the Canon 780 in our other office. Having various Brother printers throughout the office, this unit is a bit louder then I expected. Also, it is built well, but not as solid as the Canon 780. But comparing the two is like comparing a Buick to a Cadillac. Both good and reliable cars, just one make is slightly better constructed then the other. All in all, this is a great unit and worthy of serious consideration.

I got this product because I was going to take a Multimeda course at my school, and this was one of the chepest good ones out there. It took a little but to get used to, but in the end it scanned the pictures fast,and was very easy. The software that came with it was great.

This cartridge works awesome in the BJC-3000. It scans beatifully and helps save space!

I found this was a wonderful scanner. My only complaint is I paid about [amount] more than the SE model for the extra software and discovered all were obsolete and not the full versions. The OCR software was useless, and if you read the Amazon reivews you will find there is a better package from another company.
I did not purchase the fireware adapter but will soon since to speed things up. My advice is buy the SE model instead, and purchase the software on your own.
Epson scanners are great!

The printer is a gem. Slow in relation to the old workhorse (which I hated to retire) the HP III, but on-the-whole, no slower than most other color printers.

The only real problem I have had is that there was no User's Guide with the machine. Finding one has proven difficult. It is not on the install CD, and I am waiting for an answer to an e-mail note to the vendor.

One document included in those that arrived with the printer speaks of an HP Photo Cartridge and Print Cartridge Storage container, but even the HP website does not recognize the part number.

Aside from what I believe is inadequate documentation, if you are trying to get rid of all those clunky, large, old, single function machines, this is clearly the way to go. Less space and greater functionality are implied in the description. This is a multi-function device that works.

The printing resolution is excellent. I can hardly tell the difference in quality from the laser printer in both B/W and color. All the functions work just great if you consider the price tag. This is almost identical to its sibling PSC500. Only downside is that if you use MS Publishing 2000, can't use the built-in slot to print out the envelopes because of the limited printing option to choose. It's MS's fault. You can still work around it by importing it to MS Words. For this reason I give 4 stars, but would give 5 stars for the unit itself. And, I wish I can copy something in color to B/W. Wouldn't mind paying few bucks extra for it.

If you'd still like proof that the average human mind doesn't think in any manner resembling a computer's processor chip (even those computers we love that help us "think different!"), attempt to comprehend the challenge in how a computer "reads" a sheet of paper.

You and I read an article in the newspaper, skip over to a eye-catching advertisement, pull out our wallets and exchange business cards, and all the time, we have learned to scan the item of interest, pick out those words that are important, discard the rest as unnecessary, and go about our busy lives.

But not a computer. A computer lives for those details. And those same details can mire a processor down.

Which in a way is why the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software engine used by ReadIRIS Pro 9.0 is a delight to work with. The people behind the software have helped to link the scanned data into basic patterns and formats ever so much more useful to the daily lives of the user (me, in this case!)

I initially looked into this review by getting my hands on the Business Card Reader (BCR) device, in this version, roman number II, so that I might make my life easier by managing the growing pile of business cards that I collect, and have collected over the past decade, and expect to continue to collect well into the future.

There is something wonderful indeed about business cards, especially in how succinct the summary of a person's relevance. But I digress away from attempting to deal with this growing pile of cards.

Card files don't seem to work for me. But I have enjoyed manually inputting some of my more frequent contacts into Address Books (both Apple's version and Microsoft's Entourage version.) So it seemed an obvious step to begin to input the business cards using a Business Card Reader!

I will warn you -- skip the software that comes "standard" with the current Business Card Reader II. An upgrade is promised, but in the meantime, consider using another ReadIRIS product -- Pro 9.0 (in my case, I tried the corporate edition).

ReadIRIS Pro is a joy to work with. The install was smooth and easy. The software engine (with all files and reference information) installed in less than 80 megabytes. I thought that quite good, especially with how the software promised to handle so many different fonts and language styles.

I tested the software with both a Hewlett Packard scanner and the BCR device. Switching between the two was very quick. I can see how the OCR software could pay for itself due to some of the vast amount of reference materials still unconverted to digital format (the software outputs in text, rich-text, html and pdf formats). Keep in mind however to put aside some time to proof your new documents against the old. If you have a set of material which needs OCR review, one of ReadIRIS Pro 9.0's benefit's shines -- the work you do to input corrections into a dictionary format can help similar documents in basic recognition of font and language skill.

In order to get back to my original project of dealing with my card piles, I was able to get cards read into Entourage's address book in an average of 3 minutes per card. I'm not too quick at typing, but I might have entered them only slightly faster just by doing it all manually. But -- I haven't done this over time. And, I was sort of mesmerized by watching the scanner process my business card stack. That is the fast part. The other portion of the three minute average was spent looking over the scanned data (automatically exported from ReadIRIS Pro 9.0 into Entourage) and "proofing". I was very impressed by the quantity of correct data, even with "pretty" photograph enhanced business cards.

My business card organization project will be ongoing. But now I have a much better tool set.

I definitely recommend the Iris Business Card Reader, but I also recommend contacting the company to see when the enclosed version of software is upgraded, since I didn't benefit from the full corporate version of the software at the listed price.

I purchased my Microtek ScanMaker X6 and just recieved it. After taking about twenty minutes to install the USB version on my PowerBook, I installed the drivers, and it worked wonderfully. To get the best scans out of this machine, it requires that you use higher DPI. I found that using ScanWizard through Photoshop much more accurate than using the ScanMaker program. Overall, this product produces EXCELLENT images (And I'm a picky photographer). Great deal!