Scanner Reviews

The ASTRAs are alright scanners, as is this one. But don't be fooled into thinking it will work with a Mac by the description. UMAX has announced they will never support OSX for these scanners. So You have to run a clunky scanner utility in os9 to get it to work and switch back and forth between OS's This is my third UMAX scanner, and my last one.

I have used this scanner for over a year and have been very pleased with it. I have not have any problems with it installed of two different operating systems (Win 98 SE and Win 2000). The OCR software that came with the unit is much better than anything HP has placed with their units. The owners manual would be the only thing that is lacking. Must scanners have a very bad owner's manual which gives you no information on how to use a scanner correctly. The ability to adjust the quality, size, and resolution of the image prior to the final scan saves you a lot ot time. I have installed at least 50 Umax scanners and have not had anywhere near as much trouble with them as I have experienced with units from other companies.

I am a student in the CGI/3D and graphics fields. As a beginner I want to learn as much as I can and not have to forfeit my savings to do that. This scanner was the perfect answer. I have sent pics to websites, I can scan photos, magazine articles, negatives, etc. An added feature is being able to make copies. It's just like having a xerox machine-no more trips to Staples/Kinko's, when I need a quick copy of an item. My one complaint is that I've had it about 5 months and I still haven't recv'd the rebate.

This item caused me many headaches. Scanner works about once out of every 50 times I try to scan. The other 49 times it states that a cable is not connected but it is. Quality of photo, when I finally got a scan was poor. I would skip this and save yourself the headaches.

the software is awful. the picture quality is even worst..unless you like faded glazed over pictures...don't buy this one..one star is one too many for this bogus item.

i have a 1200 ub scanner i love it ,but i just upgraded to a windows xp the disc for my scanner is for windows 98 how can i install it

The scanner I received had obviously been used. Worse yet it was ship unlocked (there is a lock on the bottom to keep the scanner in alignment during shipping). Tech Depot was good about taking it back and even sent a UPS label to return it. At the moment the scanner is in transit, hopefully I won't have any difficulties with the credit back to my credit card

When this scanner works it does a fair job. Prepare to listen to LOTS of noise and lots of scans with nothing but a black strip in the center of the output.
More importantly it is now obsolete and out of production.
I had to reinstall Windows XP and was never able to get the scanner to work again. The Visioneer technical support is no help either. It tells you to call a toll number and then you also pay 2 dollars a minute on top of the toll charge. The web site has updates, none of which help.
Check with Microsoft to see what WIA drivers XP has to use for scanners and you will NOT see Visioneer on the list.
Stay away from Visioneer and it's out of production models.

I bought one from aol shop direct brand new lost the PaperPort Deluxe Driver Disk.I payed more than I want to say because everybody will want me to buy prime farm ground on the bottom of the Mississippi River.The prices on Amazon are great.
It is not much of a review butI never had the chance to use it much.I hope I don't get in trouble for saying this,but I buy something and they would try to sell me the samething five more times in the same year.

This seemed to be a very attractive model, especially when compared with HP products. The unit itself is impressive for personal (non-business) needs.

After installing the software on a laptop running XP per Microtek's instructions, scanned files did not open. Using the Microtek.com tech support site, I e-mailed the company for a solution. Within 24 hours I had received a reply with detailed instructions to rectify the Scan Wizard 5 bugs. These instructions did not remedy the problem. A second e-mail was forwarded to Microtek asking for further assistance.

The reply: I needed to call (not toll-free) and to speak with a "consultant" regarding this "complicated issue". For the priviledge of correcting the bugs in Microtek's software, I would be charged [money] for up to 30 minutes plus [money]/minute thereafter. This ... response to milk me for a product I had less than a week caused me to come up with a solution to the tech issues: return the scanner for a full refund.

Recommendaton: Avoid Microtek at all costs. The company is interested in your money only. Canon, Epson and Visioneer are three nice alternatives.

Purchased Microtek ScanMaker 4850 in spite of reading all of the not so favorable reviews. I should have taken the reviews "very" seriously. I wasted alot of time installing and uninstalling the software because it just would not responding to my OPS, XP...Dell Computer, 512MB. Take the reviews seriously and don't waste your time!!!!

I received this as a gift from my husband for Xmas '02 to replace my Visioneer flatbed that had started to scan in funny colors. Let me say that I really loved my Visioneer. First of all, the scanner installed pretty easily, no problems there. But... when I reboot XP, it takes 60 seconds just to boot the scanner before most of my other programs can load. Also, you have to manually open the ScanMaker 5 program and click the scanner control button and then close out of the program to get the light to go off. I wouldn't ever buy another one of these. I've also had a big problem with lint inside the machine under the glass, causing big problems with clean scans. I've tried about everything I can think of and still have the problem. I've even cleaned the glass on both sides with alcohol and newspaper! What a rip off. My advice is to stay far away from Microtek products.

I've had this "scanner" for about 3 years now. Let's put it this way: I had time to go watch an episode of Friends while this thing completed a 300dpi scan. It has given me nothing but trouble from the beginning, and the other reviews are correct in that there is no support for any new OS's (Win 2000, XP, etc.) short of purchasing new drivers from the manufacturer. Umax is a bunch of daft cretins if they actually think anyone will waste their money on such inferior support. I was fortunate enough to find a pirated copy of their updated drivers (it came from overseas and was in a different language) so I could use the scanner with XP. Surprisingly it worked but that didn't stop the errors and incredible slowness this machine is notorious for. I wish Amazon would add negative stars to their scale.
I hope other potential customers will steer clear of it and find another model, even another company. You'll be much happier.

Scanner works well with Windows 98. However, is now obsolete with Win-XP unless I purchase an updated driver from UMAX. I am not happy with this hidden cost.

When I owned this scanner I thought the image quality was top noch. Colors were acurate. Details and sharpness were good.I was using on a Win98 machine. However, it was very slow and I kept having to reinstall the twain drivers because they would get corrupt causing green or black scans. It was much worse when I switched to WinME. Then when I upgraded to WinXP I just got rid of it. I have not been to happy with what I replaced it with, the Epson perfection 1660, so I'm currently looking for another scanner.

This scanner is garbage. Why?

- Umax claims that it can scan negatives & slides. It does a horrible job, as it does not have the true resolution to scan media so small, and the color/contrast is awful when scanning these transparent media.

- Umax claims (now) that this scanner will work with Windows XP with new drivers. It does not. It may work once in a while, but frequently crashes/locks up the scanner software and becomes useless.

- Umax support is awful. They charge you for updated drivers, when they finally get around to updating them. Then you find out that the new drivers are still broken.

- Not only should you not buy this scanner, you should NEVER buy a Umax scanner. Period.

Used to work ok in win 98 but when I upgraded to XP it's nearly useless (considering how expensive it is!)

It only works if you unplug the transparency cover and UMAX won't upgrade the drivers for XP. I bought it for slides and it wasn;t even great at those - bad colour reproduction. I have to fix almost every image with photophop.

I advsise against this and will not be buying any more umax products.

Worked well with Windows 98, though a bit slow on my old AMD K6 2-233 clunker. Copy and Print buttons on scanner are nice features.

Tried to move scanner to new Windows XP box. Found I need to purchase (cannot download) VistaScan 3.55 or something-rather for $9, and download an XP driver. See UMAX site for more info. Maybe it is just time for me to upgrade to a better scanner.

A few months ago I purchased this model for use on my AMD processor equipped PC. I run win98SE and have used other USB devices with no trouble. Well, this scanner did not function at all. Tech support was no help. Then I read in the FAQ section of Visioneer's web site that their products do not work with VIA chipsets (most often used with AMD processors). So if you have an amd equipped machine think twice about buying Visioneer. By the way I later purchased an Epson 1200U and it works great!

I bought this and installed the hardware/software. Then PC freezes up after use of scanner for 30 seconds or so. Sometimes it freezes even without using scanner. Tried latest driver on their web, no help. Turns out they have driver to solve freeze problem for some other version of their scanners, but not for this. Promptly returned.

I am disturbed by the current practice of software/hardware industry for shipping a product without thorough QA. I am extremely happy with the current practice of electronic dealers for letting buyers refund their money without much probing.

Do not recommend if you have NT 4.0 (even though the box says it is supported). I have Service Pack 6 and SQL Server 7 installed, not sure if that's the reason. No time to find out.

Bryan

This is the first new scanner I bought in a long time. So you can see why I would be impressed with anything. I use it also as a fax machine. It is quick and has great resolution for pictures.

Now for the down side. I can not use the pass through parallel port because the printer (Canon BJ610) and the scanner keep getting each other's signals. So I tried the scanner on lpr2. The Visioneer people just laughed and said " lp1 or nothing". I told them that I got new One-Touch software CD but no scanner drivers. They said that the old ones would work and that if you misplaced the original CD that was tough.

So if it works for you out of the box and you don't expect to upgrade before buying a newer scanner this is great for the price.

I purchased my multipass and it was supposed to have a color scanner (the book even said so), but when I called them about it they told me that it was a generic book and that mine was not supposed to have a color scanner. The book doesn't list any other machine except for my Canon Multipass C3500. Then my warning light wouldn't always come one when it was supposed to to tell me that I needed to replace the ink cartridge. And to top it off, my print head needs to be replaced. The reason I say don't buy Canon is because I have seen many of their printers up for sale (not just this particular kind) and every time I ask what is wrong the tell me they need a new print head. I've run into many people on the web with the same problem. If only I knew then what I know now.

Like a lot people, I went for something that could do a lot for little money. I knew the risks of buying a machine that can seemingly do everything. Well, I know nothing is a cure-all but I was hopeful.

1. I couldn't use the product for 3 months because of driver problems. I got defective software that included the driver setup. It took 8 weeks for them to send it to me. Took me another month to get it set up.

2. I finally got to use it and then almost immediately started having feed problems with the copy and fax feeders. I had to start manually loading each page of the fax I was sending. If I miscalculated the timing I would wind up sending half of a fax because the machine wouldn't accept subsequent pages.

3. The scanner is VERY poor. I wouldn't even consider it a real scanner. Lots of skipping occurred because this is the same feeder for the faxing and copying I don't think the rollers were built to have that much action. They should have put sturdier rollers/feeders on the machine knowing it was going to be used for so much. If I were using three different machines (i.e. a dedicated copier, fax and scanner) my volume would not be considered that high for each machine. But using the same feeder for all three functions is more than this product can handle unfortunately.

4. I don't like the fact that it doesn't tell me when it's going to run out of ink. Unless, I missed that particular function. But as far as I can tell you just RUN OUT. NO warning. I've learned to "buy ahead" and I used to think it "convenient" that they sold the black ink jet cartridges in pairs, but now I think it's a plot. Canon knows the cartridges have low capacity and/or the machines are greedy.

5. This last problem--the final straw. I came home last weekend after being gone for 5 weeks and "suddenly" the printer feeder isn't working and the function keys are going nuts (possible power surge problem to be fair but everything else is fine and I have a very good power surge protecting hardware). Anyway, called for repair and realized it's two months past my 3 year warranty.

surprise, surprise

These problems weren't constant but seemed to come up at THE most inconvenient times. Good when it worked but it just wasn't consistent enough to be considered a great, reliable product.

Would suggest buying for a college student not a home office--it's reasonably priced enough and should last through most of your student's college career. Also, a college student will have back up computer resources around campus in case of a last minute breakdown.

Its always good to see that a model is still available 3 years later. We have been using this in a light-med duty office for that long. It has really good features for a home office, color copies that look great. Relatively little problems for the three years until now, that it says its out of ink but its a new cartridge. Head cleaning hasn't done the trick. It does eat ink cartridges so be aware!

Color cast is always off; editing software is clunky; levels adjustment is incredibly clumsy; scanner is prone to crashing (all the time); scanner won't calibrate properly for film strips. I have wasted an unbelievable amount of time trying to scan with this machine, and then fixing the scanned products, and am incredibly frustrated. I'm using the more advanced version than this - the PF 3600 Pro, but it sounds like it has the same problems. My advice is to troll the Internet and mags for solid reviews, and spend your scanner money accordingly ... or wait 2 more years for the manufacturers to get us off their bleeding edge.

I only have a few things to say about the scanner and the company. Pacific Image as a company is terrible! They have no support and they don't care. This is the poorest example of a scanner I've ever used. Please take my advise and look eleswhere.

Reading some of the below reviews, I am reminded with I use a Mac: things usually work. The PF1800 is actually a good, not outstanding, scanner. I am scanning all my Dad's slides in and it produces good, easy to use results. I use about 1200 to 3000 dpi and it works well with manageable file sizes. Previously I was using an Epson flatbed scanner w/ slide attachment which as much slower and could not reliably reproduce quality scans. The PF1800 does though although not perfectly: it has trouble with darker slides which come out very grainy despite various manipulations. Also its CyberView 35 driver in Mac OS X (Panther) is not glitch free: it often mysteriously retrieves an old scan while posting a NEW slide and freezes up occasionally. But it's MUCH cheaper than the rest and it DOES WORK. I've done about a thousand slides with it so far... I should know. Also check out Costco.com for a better price. Happy scanning!

You cannot download drivers from your website. Instead they want to force you to buy a CD of their drivers.

Never never never buy from UMAX. Send them a signal lound and clear. Their company is paid for by the customer. They need to get the message that the customer does not serve their needs! They serve the needs of the customer.

What's in the wolrd that they charge for driver software. They are on the way to get to chapter 11. Poor quality.

I inherited this scanner from my father a few years ago when I was in college. At the time I had a Dell running Windows 98. Then I upgraded my system and am now running Windows XP Pro. The original driver didn't work, although XP had a generic driver that would let the scanner work with limited options.

All I did was search for "umax 1220u driver" on Google and I was easily able to find sites offering the Umax driver that will work with Windows XP, for free.

The scanner and the VistaMax software it comes with still work great! Sure it's not as fancy or small as newer scanners on the market but it does what I need it to do and it was extremely inexpensive. Free!