UMAX Powerlook 1100~ A Fantastic Scanner
Written: Mar 31 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Beautiful scanned images, crisp and clear readable text
Cons: no FireWire card came with unit (additional cost)
The Bottom Line: The Powerlook made fantastic scans of negatives and photos, this would be essential to anyone looking for the best results, who would want to spend the money!
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| charlenep's Full Review: Umax PowerLook 1100 PrePress Flatbed Scanner |
Many of my friends have scanners, all different types with different options. Mike, a friend of mine, recently purchased this UMAX Powerlook. I was quite surprised that he actually did. He had been in the market for one for awhile now, but I really thought he wouldn't put out the big bucks for one. Well he did. I spent a few hours at his house installing this powerhouse, to see the difference in paying a lot for a scanner compared to some of the cheaper units under $300.
The first few things we learned about the scanner, is that the Powerlook 1100 has adjustable 24- or 36- bit depth settings and can handle documents up to 8.5 x 11.7 inches and 8.5 x 10-inch transparencies.
The option settings let you scan several images at once with each having their own setup. This is a very nice feature, especially when handling more than one scan job.
Installation
Installation was a breeze. The connection between the scanner and your PC is by using a FireWire/IEEE 1394 port. The bad side is the scanner didn't come with the FireWire card, so we had to go and pick one up. We ran out to the local PC shop about an hour from here, Mike knows them well, he got a card for $45. With easy installation we were ready for the next step.
The UMAX Powerlook 1100 weighs in at approximately 24.95 pounds. This model also came with adapters made of hard plastic transparency, one being the largest of 4- x 5-inch image.
Scanning the first image took about 30 seconds. We were amazed. Next we used a large picture he pulled out of the frame on the wall. At 150-dpi the photo scanned in the 30 seconds. When set to 1200-dpi it scanned at 5:45. Not bad at all. The picture color quality was beautiful. With 30 shades of gray recognized and all, the picture had vibrant hues; very rich color and the skin tones were excellent. Black and white were very crisp, and the text part was very clear. Now I performed the same scan on the same picture from my Prism at home, and it was no where equal to the quality we got while performing this scan on the Powerlook 1100.
While scanning negatives we received the same perfect outstanding quality scans as with the photo images. The negatives were very vivid and clear.
Mike was very satisfied with his purchased, and I was truly amazed at the quality of output one can get from this scanner. Paying the big bucks for a better quality machine, with great software does make the difference. This scanner was his choice due to the fact he has a lot of presentations that he makes in his business and this piece of equipment will be a great addition to his home office. Needless to say I will be there with all my scans! I am now no longer wanting to use my prism, since it never gave such the quality of image that his new machine did. LOL!
Software included:
OmniPage LE OCR (optical character recognition) | Adobe Photoshop 5.0 LE (use this for image manipulation, Adobe offers the ability to do a lot with many options) | MagiScan 4.4 | Binuscan PhotoPerfect RGB (red-green-blue) 4.4 - (this software allows the ability to match and correct color for your scanned images)
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 899.00
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