Part of learning to design web pages is naturally the ability to put your own pictures on the site. I know, this is a really simple observation, but most people make computer related topics so difficult to understand that normal people who do not have a CMOS chip in their head get frustrated and just quit trying to understand.

Well, in case you have no idea what a scanner is (hey, I am trying to be fair to people who don't understand, so don't flame me if you think this is a stupid thing to explain), it is pretty much like a copy machine, but instead of scanning the page and printing it out on paper it puts the digital signal into your computer and makes an image of it. Then you can save it on your hard drive and presto, you can now email your pictures or put them on a web site, or do whatever you want to do with the pictures.

One of the most important things you want to look at when you are buying a scanner is it's maximum resolution. In normal people terms, this means the highest quality picture it will scan. The higher the resolution of the picture is, the higher the quality is, and therefore the better the picture looks. It is pretty much as easy as that. The only thing to remember is that the higher the resolution is, the larger the file is going to be, so if you are using it for email or for a web site where your space on the site is limited, you may not want to use the highest resolution settings because the file will be huge.

OK, as far as this scanner in particular goes, it is a really great scanner for average home users. The resolution goes up to like 1200x1200 (I believe that is right if I remember correctly, but I never use it on the highest setting so I could be wrong) which is more than home users will ever need, but it is nice to know that it is possible to get pictures that are this high quality.

Installing the scanner is extremely easy. It has a Parallel port connector, which is the same connection as traditional printers, so you have to have the computer turned off to actually plug the scanner in, as opposed to USB scanners which technically can be plugged in while the computer is running. The scanner has an in and an out plug on the back, so you can plug the scanner into the computer and plug the printer into the scanner, thus daisy-chaining the devices and using only the one parallel port that most computers have.

Personally I think this is better than USB, because most average users do not realize the problems that USB can create. If the installation does not work exactly right the first time, Windows might possibly install a ghost device for that device which does not show up in Normal Mode but can keep the device from working properly. Usually to fix this problem you can boot the computer into Safe Mode and the extra ghost devices appear there and you can remove them with no problems, but that is a real pain for users who do not realize this. But since this scanner is a parallel scanner it does not have this problem.

There are always things that can go wrong with the installation of new hardware, but in my experience on my computer, and then again when I upgraded the hard drive on that computer and needed to install the drivers on the new Hard Drive, all you have to do is shut down the computer, plug in the scanner, start the computer, walk through the Add New Hardware Wizard that comes on the screen (pointing it to the CDROM that came with the scanner for the drivers), and it installs and works with absolutely no problems whatsoever. It is that simple.

Using the scanner is also easy, as it has a 1-touch button on the device. It is nearly impossible for me to make this sound difficult - you press the button, it starts the software, you put the picture or whatever you want to scan into the scanner, press the scan button in the software, and it scans it. The software is extremely easy to use, and that is just about all there is to it.

Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 70
Interface: Parallel