If Mustek gets any cheaper, they'll be giving them away!
Written: Nov 18 '00
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Incredibly cheap!
Cons: Takes a long time to warm up!
|
|
|
| tony_miller's Full Review: Mustek TwainScan 600 III EP Plus Flatbed Scanner |
I looked at several HP and other high-dollar scanners before I found the Mustek 600 III EP scanner at about one-third the price. Three and a half years ago, I bought it for about $120 and since then the prices have steadily decreased until they are practically giving them away now. I worried about the "you get what you pay for" philosophy until I got it installed and scanned my first pictures. When I saw the quality of these images I was satisfied that I had gotten a great deal on a quality scanner.
High resolution 24-bit color.
At least Mustek calls it "high resolution". This scanner can actually produce 300 by 600 dpi images. There are many scanners on the market with much higher resolution, but they also come at much higher prices. It does recognize the full 16.7 million colors. Even though I just made it sound like the company's claim of "high resolution" is a politician's campaign promise, I actually scan at 200 dpi or less most of the time and I believe that the 300 by 600 dpi capability of this scanner is more than enough for most home users.
Parallel Port Installation.
This is a parallel port scanner. You simply plug it into your printer port, then plug the printer into the other parallel plug on the back of the scanner. I thought at first that I would not like that setup, but it has worked great. The scanner is always on any time the computer is on so there is no problem with communication with the printer. The parallel port installation is a huge advantage if you have an older computer. I first installed my scanner on a Pentium 150 computer which had no USB port. Every computer has a printer port, which means that you can easily run this simple scanner.
Image Editing Software.
The scanner comes with iPhoto Plus 4 image editing software which allows you to scan images and do basic image enhancements. It can also be used to create greeting cards, announcements, calendars, and brochures. I actually don't use the software, because the scanner works so well with Paint Shop Pro, which I have used for image manipulation for several years. My wife is addicted to the Print Master Gold software and frequently uses this software to acquire images with the scanner. The bottom line here is that the scanner comes with free software, but any quality image editing software comes with a TWAIN program that can be used to drive the scanner.
OCR software.
The scanner also includes the TextBridge software that can be used to scan text into several formats that can be edited with word processing programs. I have never had a need to do this, so I haven't tried the software.
Reliable and durable.
This has been a very reliable scanner. We have used it for three and a half years with no problems whatsoever. During this time, we have moved three times and installed the scanner on three different computers and it has performed admirably. A two-year warranty is standard, but I never needed to use it because the scanner has been so problem-free.
System requirements.
The Mustek scanner works with Windows 3.1/95/98 or Windows NT 4.0. It requires only 8 MB of RAM (though I would recommend much more if you plan to scan at higher resolutions). If you install the included software, you will need 8 MB of free hard drive space. And, of course, you will need a parallel port. This scanner will work well with everything from today's top-of-line computers to almost the most archaic machine still in service.
The Mustek homepage.
Even though I've never called and talked to live person, I'd have to rate customer service very high based on the Mustek web site. When I bought a new computer, I couldn't find my drivers disk, so I went to the web site. They have an easy to find section on the site with drivers to every piece of equipment that the company makes. I downloaded the driver and bada-bing - I was ready to scan again. The site is very useful and easy to navigate.
The downside.
There has to be a downside to just about everything. The one feature of this scanner that really annoys me is the 45 second warm up time. When you tell the scanner to pre-scan an image, it goes through its 45 second warm up. Then if you immediately give it the scan command it goes through the warm up a second time. I can't figure out why it needs to warm up again when it just scanned two seconds ago. There is an option to skip the warm up, but you have to manually choose that option every time you scan an image.
Summary.
If you are a professional graphic artist, this probably isn't the scanner for you, but for the average home user it can't be beat. The prices seem to get lower every day. Mustek now sells the 1200 III EP which can scan 36-bit color for $49.99 and the 600 III EP, virtually identical to my 600 III EP, for only $19.99! How can you go wrong with a $20 scanner? I'd say run out and buy one today.
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
tony_miller
|
|
Member: Tony Miller
Location: Monterey, CA
Reviews written: 26
Trusted by: 28 members
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.