Hm, where to start? I bought this scanner for an unusual purpose. I collect coins and medals and have found that, strangely enough, a flatbed scanner is one of the best ways to get an image on the web.

I've used other HP scanners in the past, in fact I killed my previous one after almost non-stop use for over two years. Before you panic I probably put 10 years of average use on that scanner before it gave up out of self-defense! But it is the software that HP ships as a matter of course with their scanners that should make you look twice.

I bought the 6300Cxi the last week of May, 2000 from buy.com. It was a good experience and I'll write about them later. Out of the box (on a Windows 98 machine) it took me less than 10 minutes to start scanning. Toss in the CD, install the PrecisionScan Pro software. Plug in the power, the USB cable (can't mess up with either, they only fit one way), restart the PC and you're running. Just follow the pictures on the big poster sized sheet and don't let your 'expert' friend, neighbor or brother-in-law make it complicated.

I use an older version of PhotoShop so I can't really speak about the software from Adobe that comes as part of the package. But the PrecisionScan Pro software is great! The interface is easy to use and yet it has many sophisticated features to use as you get more experienced. One that I particularly enjoy is the built-in OCR (optical character recognition). The idea behind this is to scan a document with text and presto! it turns into text you can edit with Word or other programs. I've tried this in the past but ended up retyping everything anyway. Not so with this version; I scanned a document that I needed on my website, over 2,000 words, and ended up correcting maybe a dozen or so. Since Word caught the spelling mistakes I saved hours of typing (I hunt'n'peck).

The joke of this product is the slide adapter. Yes, it works. But if you have a ton of slides you're probably better off getting a scanner that is built specifically for the purpose. For the couple dozen slides I've got, it's fine.

The picture quality is absolutely fantastic. I know there are other scanners out there that do great jobs, but the combination of world-class scans and world-class software made the extra I paid for it (about $320) well worth it. Highly recommended!





Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 320
Interface: USB