Scanner Reviews

I don't know why USB cables such as these go for such high prices at Officemax, Target, etc. A regular 6ft USB 2.0 A/B cable at Target costs $10! At Officemax the "gold plated" 10ft USB 2.0 A/B cables are $27!!! Bestbuy was also expensive despite that they are a category killer in electronics.

This cable is great and has a lifetime warranty.

Bottomline: buy your stuff from Amazon.com, where you TRULY get the lowest price possible.

SUPPORT AMAZON.COM and get your stuff here!!

When I purchased this product I thought I was getting a USB version 1 cable. It turned out to be 2.0. Fortunately the package said it was backward compatible and it was.

The book that came with my printer stated I needed a USB cable with a length of no greater than 6 foot, shielded, etc. They should tell you this before you get the printer. Fortunately, the 10 foot cable connected and worked flawlessly. I always try to buy Belkin since they generally have top quality products and good support.

cheapest on amazon. found the same at officemax locallay for $30. what a joke.

Amazon is simply the best in price & service. returining has been been easier in my life.

On the go, I frequently need to print out documents, be it invoices, reciepts, e-mails, etc etc so I decided to purchase this product. Words cannot describe my feelings toward it, I use it soo much with the laptops I don't know how I lived without one before. Installation on Windows 2k, and ME was flawless, both using the Fast IrDA.

The printer is just the perfect size to slide in to my briefcase, and adds little weight. It's battery operation is really what caught my eye, it says you can print about 100 pages with a full charge, but I think its a bit less than that. However, the battery takes little time to charge.

I was not aware it would come with as much ink as it did, came with 2 color cartidges, 1 black (small), and 1 black (large), as well as two trays that they are held in. The Fast IrDA is such a fabulous thing, wireless printing all the way. I decided to purchase a USB cable, its much easier some times using the cable then the IrDA (Infared) port. The quality of the documents is fantastic, matching (and beating!) my desktop printers at home. The speed is good, considering this is a portable printer. The only real drawback is that it is a single sheet feed printer, unless you buy the paper loader, which I will surely do! This is THE BEST portable printer I've found on the market, it is well worth the money.

This is a small update, I've been using the printer for about 5 months now, and everything has gone smoothly. I purchased the auto-sheet feeder from Canon (directly, from their web site) and it performs just like a normal desktop printer would! I'm still loving it.

I needed a printer to go with my Notebook and this one filled the bill. It isn't cheap but you seem to get what you pay for. When at home, adding the Auto Sheet Feeder makes it as convenient as a stationary printer but with a smaller footprint. Highly recommend this one for the Notebook users.

I JUST BOUGHT THIS PRINTER FOR MY LAPTOP.
IT WAS VERY EASY TO INSTALL AND EASY TO WORK WITH. THE PRINTING IS GREAT, AND QUICK FOR A BUBBLE JET. THE COLOR IS VERY GOOD.

I didnt understand how to use the negative photo scanner and when I figured it out --- I LOVE IT!!! It is SO EASY, if you bought this and your not satisfied with the photo scanner, your doing it wrong; I was doing it wrong and when I figured it out -- I LOVE IT!!! My photo's are sharp and clear. I can edit, enhance the color, and the photo touch up is a breeze.

I can scan documents - everything and anything. Negative's, Positives, large negative format, medium negative format, 35mm negatives and regular photo's come out great also.

my friend charles has one he love's it ,I tried every every thing to get one every sales person sing's their praise of epson perfection 1200u but can not tell you how to get one.. even Epson home page tells me to take a # and will get back when in stock every broker on line says the same thing.. This is a salesman nightmare a product this good and not able to deliver

I must start by saying that Amazon is offering this scanner at a great price. Plus if you are buying a printer or other Epson products to go along with your scanner, go to Epson's website and check for any rebates over there. This scanner provides great quality scans. It comes ready with a transparency unit that allows you to scan 35mm negative or positive film, brownie size film (2.4x3.5in), 4x5 film, and slides. You're getting a high speed scanner that also has accurate optical character recognition (OCR). This means you can scan text and export it to your word processor. And if high tech devices give you trouble, you'll love this scanner's Start button for one-touch scanning! You're also getting 4 nice little programs: Adobe PhotoDeluxe (Adobe Photoshop LE would have been nicer), Broderbund The Print Shop PressWriter, NewSoft Presto! PageManager for Epson, and ArcSoft Photo Printer. I like PageManager a lot because with one click, it scans your document/picture and exports it to MS Word, or your email program or any program it lists! The only problem I had was installing the driver. Being an USB ready device, I thought it would be as easy as installing my other USB devices. I guess it all depends on the system you have. But if you do have any problems, Epson's response to mine was fairly quick. :) Now that everything is up and running, I'm more than happy with my purchase. I highly recommend this product. :)

I wish I could find one-new! I desparately would love to have one, but I'm afraid it's too late now to get a new one.

I searched hard for a great scanner I didn't have to much money to spend. I found this at only $...!!! Looked at the reviews, and confirmed that this is worth it. At this price, this is great scanning quality!

Later I noticed that in some magazine they rated scanner's like I thought this is the best quality at such a low price. This is easy to install. Has many color, and deminshion options. Haven't had any problem and had it for almost a year.

If you are looking for a low priced scanner this is perfect for you. If thinking of buying it online you should use amazon.com (like I did). To make sure something like this gets shipped right.

I bought this because of another review- it is totally great. I have't had any problems at all. It installed quickly and without any problems. The software that comes with it is also great. Quality is great. You get more than you pay for!!!

I played with the similar models from HP (3330), Canon, and Samsung at my local store. Brother seems most solid. Plus definitely has the best engineering pedigree. I think each model/year brother has gotten more robust. Don't trust the first efforts of the other companies.

In the office it's great. No jams, efficient ADF, fast and flawless laser printing, fast ADF copies too! Hope to get good toner performance based on others experience. Certainly they seem to be more fairly priced than the competetors drum/toner cartridges that all and unstated or mediocre capacities.

Very satisfied so far.

For our small office of 6 people, we have been looking for an office machine that is easy to operate, reliable, and cost-effective. The four contenders are HP 3330 MFP, Canon D680 imageClass, Brother MFC 9700, Brother MFC 8820D. They are all 4-in-1/5-in-1 machines(Fax, Laser printer, Scanner, Copier, Data/Fax modem) priced below US$800. Brother MFC 9700 is cheaper but comes with a 14.4k modem and only 8MB memory and a smaller flatbed; as the result it faxes and prints slower than MFC 8820D. The remaining three candidates all have excellent "pedigrees" and are well designed and built. However Brother MFC 8820D won at the end for the following outstanding reasons:

1. The 'D' in 8820D stands for Automatic duplex copying and printing: It prints on both sides of papers seamlessly and effortlessly. It is not necessary to remove the paper tray manually (a really tedious process in other machines). Duplex "fax receive" saves 30% to 50% in papers by printing faxes on both sides automatically. Now one can have some break from the cost of receiving junk faxes. This feature can be disabled if one-sided printing is desired

2. 32MB memory: This is more than enough for holding a lot of copies and faxes. Very good for large unattended jobs. The best part about this is again about cost. No immediate need to spend more money for upgrading the memory as is required for Canon D680 (measly 2 MB).

3. PC fax software for computer data/fax needs.

4. Expandability for network interface.

5. Digital paper count to indicate the no. of copies made and faxes received: good for cost management and safe guard against potential abuse of the machine by employees for personal uses.

6. Excellent ADF (automatic document feeder): we have not had any paper jam so far.

7. Very easy to program and operate: simple to use for beginners and sophisticated features for users who demand more advanced functions.

8. Last but not the least is the cheaper cost for its toner on a per page basis.

There are only two minor drawbacks for us:

1. MFC 8820D's ADF/scanner does not scan a page from edge to edge. However this is true of all machines in this price range. Canon D680 omits the least at both margins. HP 3330 is the worst.

2. Large footprint. We had to relocate it to a different room in the office where there is enough space instead of putting it at a more convenient place where there is easier access. Nevertheless it's not too bad considering that it replaces 4 separate machines all at once. Besides it forces us to walk down the hallway and get some exercies!! ;--]

I went through a slew of hp printers. I experienced lousy, "outsourced" technical support, and had two printers fail in the same year. This on the heels of my friends brand new color laser fiasco, which was three failures in one year (also HP). They used to be the best, with printers like the 4050n and other tireless workhorses, but I think other vendors are now making significant inroads, especially in this middle ground space. You'll find HP laser printers to be profoundly expensive for what they buy, with high print costs, and low ram. The 1300 is a fine example of where HP has gone wrong.

So, we took the plunge on this 8420 (we got the "one up" D model, which includes duplexing -- works like a charm, and at about 1c a page (as the cost of paper) it will pay for itself quickly).

The upsides:

1) Very cheap toner. Especially the high yield. 6k pages for 90 bucks, which is more than any other cartridge we could find (and you get get those cheaper than 90 some places)
2) Very convenient. You've no idea how awesome a 50 page sheetfed scanner with OCR actually is until you need it. ;-)
3) Comes with a full toner cartridge. My hp's came with 1/2 full "intro" ones.
4) Best-of-breed. For it's downsides (below), it really is the best you can buy for the money.
5) It doesn't jam.

The downsides are:

1) It's a little slow to copy
2) High end color scans are not that hot. A little flat. If you want high end color scans, drop 60 bucks and buy a Scanjet 5300c. The scanner is really designed for document processing, at which it excels.
3) It's a little pricey to buy in. The high end models are overpriced for what they buy (duplexing for ~100 bucks, network for another 100-150). Yikes.
4) The software is a little "clunky", but it works
5) The warranty pretty much stinks (1 year). If you can get an extended warranty, it's a [really] good idea. With so many components, all-in-ones have that much more of a chance to fail, and they do. ;-)

Remember, inkjet printers are sold practically at a loss by their manufacturers (especially cheaper ones). They are designed to make up their money in ink cartridges. This is important when you are comparing all-in-ones.

Despite it's minor downsides, I'd highly reccomend this ot a friend. If you need something to get your business off the ground like we did, and don't want to spend a fortune or worry about being in constant IT mode keeping everything configured and working smoothly, this is the way to go. Faxing is a breeze, scanning is easy (50 docs at a time is a LOT btw), and printing is very high quality.

We combined this with a cheap bubblejet, and now we have the best of all possible worlds. We reccomend this route!!!

Originally, I had very negative things to say about this product--namely problems with scanning chrome. Well, it took a couple of attempts over the past three years, but Nikon's support crew did a fantastic job once I convinced them of the problem, and they absorbed the entire cost of the repair (which was almost half the cost of the scanner).

In other words, Nikon stands behind its products. And you can't beat that. Buy it.

I've had this since it was first released and have found it to be a superb scanner.
As someone else has pointed out, there are occasional issues with slides, but from my experience that is a glitch in the NikonScan software and not the scanner itself. Using other scanning software (eg. Vuescan or Silverfast) has solved those issues for me.

The Coolscan IV is definitely worth the price for scanning negatives. I looked at flatbed scanners and cheaper film scanners previously, but in the end I bit the bullet and bought the Coolscan. I have no regrets about doing this. The resolution of the scanned negatives is amazing - I can see details that were not visible the original prints. What really makes the investment worthwhile is the Digital ICE technology, which "cleans up" dusty or imperfect negatives. I am in the process of converting my entire film library into digital images.

This brings me to the downsides of the scanner. It does not utilize USB 2.0, and the process of scanning negatives at high resolutions is very very slow. I basically have to devote 45 minutes to an hour to scan in a roll of film because I have turned on Digital ICE as well as the other touch-up features available on the scanner. However, this is by choice, so for people who don't want the highest resolutions, the process may be somewhat faster. The other problem is that the included software is very powerful but has a steep learning curve. I spent a lot of initial time tweaking the settings to find what produced the best images.

Overall, though, the gripes are minor since the quality of the images is so high. This has changed how I take pictures now. Since the resolution of the digital images is higher than any reasonably priced digital camera on the market, I am now shooting most pictures with a film camera and scanning the negatives. This provides the best of both worlds - a set of cheap prints as well as high-quality digital images. Now I just need to get another hard drive to hold all the images that I am scanning in...

The flat panel makes it possible to scan and copy odd sized shapes of paper, and create collages if needed to get the maximum number of images per sheet of paper.

We love having this Mac-friendly scanner, copier, and sharable color printer in the house. The performance of these functions over the first few weeks of use has beat my expecations. Trivial software installation and easily connected via USB to iMac (and shared via Airport to my Powerbook). Great looking unit (quality of plastics, design of paper trays, front panel controls, compact design). ... . Only problem was that the included printer share feature didn't resume sharing after waking up the iMac from sleep (fixed by installing Apple's free USB printer sharing software). Don't forget to order a standard USB peripheral cable (15' works even though the manual suggests 6' max), you may also want to try a pack of the excellent Epson Matte Heavyweight Paper which looks promising for framing digital photos.

Even with the follow-the-numbers setup poster, installing this machine was a bit more complicated than I would have liked. However, once it was installed, it has worked great. The color copying feature is outstanding, and being able to use it as a stand-alone copier is a plus (and was one of the selling points for me). It works great as a color printer; haven't played much with the scanning side yet but that will come. The control software is comprehensive and makes it easy to get the settings right. Even photos print crisply. All in all, a good combination of features. One caveat: I wouldn't want to use it for much more than a convenience copier (like making a copy of a receipt or something); I don't think it's intended for heavy use (like copying the club newsletter).

An outstanding CB radio for my Jeep. For under $40, there is no reason to purchase a higher priced model for your portable needs. I would suggest a magnetic roof top mount antenna for increased reception. However, the factory antenna is adequate for 3 to 5 mile reception on level terrain. This model accepts ear buds which greatly extends battery life because you are able to monitor at much lower volume. A must for travelers.

This product will go through sleet or snow. It has 15 mile range and is a great deal. I can't believe how cheap it was.

Mike Siegel

We ordered two of these Midland units through Amazon and LOVE them. We use them in tandem with friends on camping and road trips and have found them reliable, light, and providing great audio clarity plus weather reports. We also got rechargable batteries and a lapel mic unit (Radio Chack) which compliment the unit's versatility. Absolutely recommend it as a first-time buy or for a more seasoned user.

Overall I am happy with the T45 and recommend it. It is very straightforward to install and get started. It is not ideal if you don't have a dedicated phone line for fax, sometimes it fails to recognize incoming faxes, mainly from old style machines that don't constantly send a fax beep ahead of answer. Also setting the fax software is problematic, there is no obvious way of deleting a wrong entry into the phone book

I've had this for about 4 years now and is still working like a charm. I have used this for printing, copying, scaning, and faxing mainly. For these, it is perfect!

EASE OF USE IS A PLUS!

However, for printing graphics and picures it does not have very high quality in comparison to my Cannon S800, which is used soley for that purpose.
Ink cartridges are still high priced for the T45.

The T45 is a great unit for most users. While not equipped to handle the most sophisticated color graphics tasks in the world, it works well for what most of us need: printing letters, web pages, good quality color photos, etc. The T45 is easy to set up and it works well as a printer, low volume copier or fax (I have not really used the scanner mode.

The build quality, like most HP products, is good and it has been reliable for me for. The unit is pretty quiet in operation in contrast to some older HP ink jets or some other makers machines. One plus of this unit is that the B&W cartridge is a high capacity unit which minimizes the need to switch when printing large volumes of output, plus the per page cost is probably a bit lower too. Some of the units with more sophisticated color capabilities have much smaller B&W cartridges, something to think about if you mostly print / fax / copy B&W. I'd recommend it.

This is actually a very good scanner. It scans pretty quickly at 200 dpi/black-and-white OCR - it took me about an hour to scan in and OCR 400+ pages of class readings. I'm not exactly sure about the timing, since I wandered away every so often for a while. The duplex features are great - especially the option to remove blank pages. You can also change the threshold on what the software considers a blank page - it asks you to specify percent coverage, although they use a different term.

Complaints about this product that caused me to give it less than 5 stars:

1. As the last reviewer said, putting in the paper adjusters prevent the flap from closing.

2. It states on the DR-2080C's brochure (downloadable from Canon's website) that it is "Able to scan batches of mixed documents of different sizes, shapes, and weight." I took this to mean that you can drop differently-sized papers into the scanner, and it will scan it for you correctly and automatically, thus not requiring you to sit there and feed a stack of differently-sized papers one-by-one through the machine. I was mistaken however - the user manual says that you should sort your papers by different sizes and shapes before scanning them. When you do drop papers of different sizes in there, it will try to scan them, but the smaller sheets will be skewed and then incorrectly de-skewed.

3. Feeding stacks of paper into the scanner is a tad tricky - you have to wiggle it around a bit or the scanner will not be able to detect that any papers are in the ADF.

Canon also sells additional rollers so that you can replace them yourself without having to return the scanner to the manufacturer. If you use a Linux system, so long as you have a kernel that supports USB, a copy of VMWare (you can download a 30-day trial version for free) and a copy of Windows, the scanner works just fine.

This is a great scanner, and you can't beat the price. As others have already noted, it is better than some scanners costing thousands more. I love it's size, speed, and duplex scanning features. I do have some complaints though:

1. Installing the paper guides prevents the dust cover from being closed

2. The deskew and border removal functions don't always work as expected (they remove more than required, and you can't control how much to remove)

3. The bundled software is clunky and stupid (for example, you can't use the arrow or page up/page down keys to navigate through a scanned document). Ditto for the help files, although that seems to be true of most software from Japanese hardware makers; for heavens sakes, folks, hire some native English speakers! The software also has some bugs, e.g., it frequently has "file access errors" when trying to append pages to existing files. However, it is fairly easy to use, and is good enough for low volume scanning.

Some tips:

1. Don't adjust the paper guides too snugly against the paper; the automatic feeder requires some "wiggle room" to catch the paper.

2. Use the "Scan ahead" mode to speed up scanning.

3. If you're creating PDFs, get Adobe Acrobat (the full version, not the free reader) to manipulate your PDFs.

4. Set up custom paper sizes to quickly scan odd-sized documents like credit card statements, etc.

In spite of my complaints about the software, I'd highly recommend this scanner (in any case, my complaints are moot if you use some other scanning software). In the week since I got this scanner, I've scanned more than two thousand pages, scanning for a few hours every day (most of the time was spent organizing and ordering the documents). My big, ugly filing cabinet is almost empty...hurray!

You can get a cheaper scanner from Visioneer, but the ADF on that sucks. The DR-2080C uses an almost straight-through paper path, so very thin, very thick, or creased paper doesn't jam as much as with scanners that use a U-shaped path.

This unit is small and compact, yet has some very nice features. I especially like the duplexing feature allowing it to scan BOTH sides in the same pass, no flipping a stack of documents over. It works from within Adobe, and Microsoft Office Imaging.

It does have a drawback, however, the drivers are not Windows XP, and it can be a bit disconcerting installing them. I finished the installation with no adverse affects (that I noticed) to my 2 laptops, and a stand alone machine.

If you travel and need a high speed scanner, I highly recommend this unit.