The only 48bit scanner in the store.
Written: Jun 08 '01 (Updated Jan 03 '02)
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Pros: Good Quality scans, 48bit color depth, 19200dpi enhanced resolution.
Cons: Average speed and noise.
The Bottom Line: It was cheap, and for the price it's an excellent value.
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| Kisai's Full Review: AcerScan Prisa 640U Flatbed Scanner |
I bought the Acer ScanPrisa 640U months ago from Costco. It didn’t say if it supported Windows 2000 on the box, but I bought it anyways. It was the only scanner that advertised 48bit color (that’s 16bit R G B channels, most of the other scanners only had 36bit which is 12bit R G B channels.)
I took it home, unpacked it, looked at the documentation briefly and then wondered where the locking mechanism was. I didn’t want to break the scanner by turning it on with the head locked. It turns out that is a piece of plastic that you have to pull out so you can unlock the head… but I wasn’t very obvious which piece to pull. I eventually just pulled out the piece that was giving, and then noticed that the lock SLIDES, so the piece I pulled out was obstructing the locking mechanism. So it was the correct piece.
Then I hooked it up to my computer. Windows 2000 found it immediately when I turned it on. I downloaded the latest driver from the Acer website and installed that, without even looking at the supplied disc.
I tested it in my favorite software Jasc Paint Shop Pro, and it it didn’t come up right away. What did I do wrong? The software was still set for my digital camera. So I switched it over to the MiraScan driver instead (The Acer’s TWAIN driver.) Now it finds it.
The scanner can take 8.5” x 11” paper (Letter size) and has metric measurements in addition to the US measurements.
I tested it with several sources; they all came out quite good. The motor that moves the scanning head is rather noisy compared to some other scanners. However this scanner doesn’t have a loud high-pitch noise that other scanners usually have. Scanning speed was average. It was much faster than parallel port scanners, but scanning at anything over 300dpi takes about 2 minutes to scan.
Color reproduction is good, but not “super wow” quality. This is a garbage-in garbage-out thing however. It will make any flaws in your scanned material look worse (specifically dust, hair and scratches on photos) than what it really is. Most scanners do the same thing.
The scanning driver has some features already that eliminate a few finishing steps. It has selection tools to select a portion to scan (and skip parts that aren’t going to be scanned.) It has a built in histogram (levels) with an instant preview (without having to scan again), curve(gamma/color levels again), color balance, brightness, color adjustment, Invert, mirror, rotate. Then there is the AUTO function that tries to determine what to use automatically. It has auto-crop, auto-descreen and auto-type. (Auto-descreen involves another scan pass)
There is a filter and descreen option. Descreen lets you set a lines-per-inch of which to descreen. Newspaper (85lpi), Magazine (133lpi) and Art Magazine (175 lpi) are the presets, with a custom option which lets you set it between 50 and 200. You can also turn descreen off. There is a blur and sharpness filter in the scanner driver as well. The last filter is “unsharp mask” which lets you set a percent of which to mask the image. (I don’t use the filters myself.)
The scanner driver lets you set the scanning mode to Color RGB, Grayscale and Line art modes. The speed settings are preset to High Speed, High resolution and High-resolution 48bit. You can set the DPI anywhere from 30dpi to 19200dpi. However the space estimate for 19200dpi is 206GB, yes GB not MB. That’s for a entire page. You can also zoom anywhere from 40% to 3200%. However you can’t combine the dpi and zoom settings equally. You can not scan at 19200dpi and 3200% zoom (Wouldn’t this be like scanning electron microscope level?) But you can scan at 3200% zoom up to 600dpi, in which the maximum zoom level is cut in half for every dpi level doubled after that.
The scanner itself is only a 600dpi scanner. The enhanced mode (greater than 600dpi) is really a digital zoom after that.
It however is a single-pass scanner, which means that you only have to wait once. The preview scan is fast, taking about 12 seconds.
When I packed up the scanner to move it across the province, I packed it back up into it’s box, putting the lock switch back in place like it was when I opened it.(the plastic piece I pulled out is gone still.)
When I unpacked it again, I forgot about the locking switch on the bottom and hooked it up, with the scanner giving a “GRRRRRRRRRRrrrrRRRRRRRRRRRRR” noise, in which I quickly turned it off and then unlocked the head. It didn’t break from that, but it’s not something I want to forget about again.
It does bother me that the scanner didn’t check to see if it was obstructed, instead of trying to move the head when it was turned on.
This scanner doesn’t seem to have an auto power on/off feature, however the lid and chassis itself blocks the visible light from the scanner. So when I left it on for a week I didn’t know if it turned itself off or what. At any rate, it’s not something you can control.
The software and manual both indicate to a slide/negative feature, however the scanner did not come with anything for doing these types of scans. You can however remove the lid of the scanner, which indicates that such a feature could possibly be added. The lid just pulls out, so you can also stick something that’s oversized on the scanner and scan the visible part.
The scanning bed has about an inch and a half of space on the long sides, which means that you can’t ‘edge scan’ a book. If you need to scan something from a book, you’ll have to break the spine to get the entire page. However, since the lid is removable, you can put just about anything on top of the canner, or put the scanner on top of the item to be scanned.
I replaced the USB cable it came with the scanner. I used a aftermarket USB cable that is about 15 feet long. The scanner and the computer still talked to each other like they had the 3-foot cable. So there are no problems with the USB cable being replaced.
The scanner itself is a powered scanner, which means that it has it’s own power cube/brick and will be independently powered from the computer. So if you turn off your computer, the scanner will still be on if you didn’t turn the scanner off also.
I have not encountered any problems with this scanner, so I don’t think I’ll need a new one for a long while.
This scanner works in Windows 2000 and XP
Any questions or comments can be directed at Kisai_Z@yahoo.com
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 60
Interface: USB
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Kisai
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Location: Vancouver, BC, Canada
Reviews written: 44
Trusted by: 4 members
About Me:
Computer Technician
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