The Basics
Feb 08 '02
The Bottom Line Take some time to read what is there for features and then enjoy your new scanner.
Flatbed scanners are the best all-purpose scanner for general home use. There are a few things you should know when buying a scanner.
DPI
Or dots per Inch. It is the number of dots in every inch of scanning your scanner will produce. The common way for scanners to specify this is the number of lines of wide and height per inch. The common sizes for home use are 600 by 1200, 1200 by 1200, and if you can find it 2400 by 1200. If you are doing photo work then the higher the better. If text then 600 by 1200 scanners are wonderful
Bits of color
This specifies the number of colors that your scanner can read. For example 42bit scanners can read 4 trillion colors
At this time current scanners have 30 bits, 36 bits, 42 bits, and 48 bits. I suggest that you buy a scanner with as high as possible but at the minimum of 36 bits because 30 bit scanners can have trouble with lighting issues on a picture.
OCR
or Optical Character Recognition. This is how you can convert your clean sheet of text into a text document on the computer. This software scans the image and tries to recognize letters. There are differing qualities of OCR. I suggest you research the OCR software that the scanners come with before buying or buying a better OCR software package separate from the scanner if you are going to do a lot of text scanning with the scanner.
Color of scanner background
Behind the material to scan there is a background that usually is white. Not always, at my local Wal-Mart the 50 dollar Mustek scanners have a black background. This causes a black edge to be around all copied images. This looks terrible when doing direct copies, and can cause a darker picture as black absorbs light more than white does. I do not know of an application where a black background is useful, if anyone knows please give me an email to say why.
Connection to the computer
The classic connection is the parallel port, this is the big printer connector in the back of almost all computers. This is the slowest scanner. If you can avoid this one.
The next is the SCSI connector. This is a little faster, but it isn't in most computers. It is more common to Machitosh computers than IBM.
The third is the USB port. I recommend this one if possible. Your scanning will be faster than the others.
Anyway you go it will still take some time, but USB is best for home users.
To wrap it up:
The above is the bulk of what is useful. Other things include the size of sheet it is capable of scanning, quick buttons on the scanner that are setup to allow quick operations such as copying to printer, and adapters for transparencies.
Beyond this I suggest you buy a scanner separate from like a Printer/Scanner all-in-one where the printer and scanner are in one device. Some of these are nice, but some have severe setup problems you don't want too. I've had my own situation with a Lexmark x73 that I have written a review about if you would like to know of possible problems in such units.
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