Great value, easy to use!
Written: Jul 18 '01
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Ease of Use: |
 |
|
|
Pros: Very inexpensive (at least for now), excellent bundled software and simple operation
Cons: A little noisy
The Bottom Line: Simple to use, excellent bundled software and a very very good value!
|
|
|
| mbuechler's Full Review: Visioneer PrimaScan Colorado 2400p Flatbed Scanner |
After my trusty scanner became obsolete (incompatible with Windows ME/2000) I needed to replace it with another. While walking through Circuit City on my lunch break the other day, I found this scanner on sale for under 10 bucks! (with rebate of course) This scanner is currently available at Staples and Circuit City only (and Radio Shack in Canada), but is available online thorough various retailers.
I figured I couldn't possibly go wrong, so I purchased it. After getting it home and setting it up on a Windows NT machine for testing, I realized that the included software package was quite amazing. The Pagis Pro software that comes with the scanner is one of the most full-featured packages I've ever used. You can scan to virtually any Windows application that you need to - directly. No saving the file, converting the file to the appropriate format, and then opening the file with the associated application. While the software is very nice, it's a bit of a disk hog with over 150 Megs of hard drive space required! After the software install and computer re-boot, the software performs diagnostic testing which takes a few minutes (you can cancel out, but there are warnings aplenty about NOT canceling the diagnostic test). Once done, the scanner is ready for action.
The construction of the scanner is typical for scanners in the $50 to $150 dollar range. There are no controls, switches, buttons, etc. of any kind on the scanner. You simply plug in the power adapter, connect it up to your computer (via the parallel port) and install the software - done. Everything worked beautifully, no conflicts, no errors, nothing. I must say that after my experience with other scanners, this was a breath of fresh air.
The scanner isn't particularly fast, but it does a good job. Colors and color balance seem to be photo quality and the bundled software gets you up and running very quickly. The install takes a little while though, at 150 Megs what do you expect? (Man, I though MS Office was a hog) You can trim the install down slightly, but not much, so be sure you've got enough disk space for this baby.
I haven't tried the printer pass-though connection (to connect the printer and scanner up to the same machine) so I can't comment on that, but everything else checks out so I imagine that it works as expected.
In short, an excellent value at $50, but an absolute must have for under $10. :-) If I have any further comments once I get it installed on Windows 2000, I'll report back.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 9.96
Interface: Parallel
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
mbuechler
|
|
Member: Matthew Buechler
Location: Cincinnati, OH
Reviews written: 33
Trusted by: 7 members
About Me:
I don't feel like writing anything right now.
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.