Scanner recommendations for photos

[Adcadet]

My wife wants a new scanner. Our old printer/scanner (HP PSC750) no longer scans, and while the printer still works it's clearly not the best. My wife's is now our family's historian, and she has hundreds of color photos (no negatives) she wants to scan. We hope not to spend more than a few hundred dollars. USB2 seems the obvious connector of choice. Any recommendations?

Since we don't want to keep the old HP PSC750 around due to space concerns, we may also get a cheapo printer. We have access to nice laser printers at work/school, and most of our printing is just B&W draft stuff for short-term use like reviewing our budget, but I occasionally like being able to print in color. Any recommended cheap printers?

 

[sechs]

Reasonable scanners can be had for quite cheap. The last one that I bought was mainly based upon portability and not quality, but the quality is quite good nonetheless. Are there some particular features that you'd like?

If you occasionally like being able to print in colour, post the address of the nearest Kinkos on the fridge. I bought a monochrome laser seven years ago, and when it runs out of toner, I'll replace it with another one. Lasers of reasonable quality are really quite cheap now, and I see no reason to blow money on ink just for an occassion.

 

[Adcadet]

My wife has no specific feature requests. She'll mostly be using the scanner for photos, both B&W and color.

Wow, I didn't realize there were so many laser printers for <$200. Samsung, Lexmark, HP, Brother, Dell. Is there any model or brand people particularly like? I suppose that if I take reasonably good care of the printer (i.e.-don't drop it) a laser will save me boat loads in ink costs down the line.

 

[Sol]

I always recommend a monochrome laser and a trip to big-W or the like for printing in colour. I quite like the canons, their cheap and they're basically exactly the same as the old near-indestructible hp laser printers. I think Tannin sells mostly xerox lasers which are probably a fair bit more durable but a bit more expensive.

For scanners I pretty much always recommend cannon. They're a safe bet, good quality and nice results, and they can cost as little or as much as you want to pay.

 

[Tannin]

I'm with Sol. I rather suspect that mono laser printers are now down to that fine art of manufacturing knowledge such that you can buy just about anything and it will be just fine. But I usually sell Xerox or Kyocera or someimes Canon. For scanners, always Canon. There may be (probably are) others just as good - scanners have been around for quite a while too - but I know that if I sell Canon I won't get any problems and my customer will be happy. That's all I want.

 

[Tannin]

PS: one day soon, when I get a spare week, I'm going to buy a really good photographic colour printer, Epson or Canon, A3 or bigger. But I'll not do it right away as I don't have the time to figure out how to use it properly, let alone buggerise about with frames and stuff. Early next year, maybe.

 

[Bozo]

Don't you still need to buy 'toner' for laser printers? Expensive?

Bozo :joker:

 

[Explorer]

The following info is mainly directed to those planning on keeping their new flatbed scanner and laser printer for several years:

I haven't kept track of the inexpensive flatbed scanner market in a while, but Epson was (and probably still is) the best manufacturer about NOT making their flatbed scanners obsolete on purpose. As new operating systems come out, Epson tends to update their support -- even for fairly old scanners.

Just quickly looking through what they offer, it looks like the Epson 4490 is the hot one of the bunch. It as a DMax of 3.4 (good dynamic range), Digital ICE (automatic dust-busting), and even 64-bit Windows support. Street price: US$170.


http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/consumer/consDetail.jsp?BV_UseBVCookie=yes&oid=53540925



As for laser printers, I would avoid the least expensive laser printers, as it seems they have terrible cooling capabilities. As long as you perform small print jobs (under 10 sheets), one of those low-end laser printers will survive that sort of action. However, if you push one too hard, expect it to fry. Also, the toner supply is always rather meager in low-end laser printers. You could find yourself buying $35 or $45 toner cartridges a lot more often than the larger $50 toner cartridges typically in found in laser printers costing $100 to $150 or more.

 

[sechs]

Don't you still need to buy 'toner' for laser printers? Expensive?

Like I said, I bought a printer about seven years ago. When it runs out of toner, I will replace it.

FYI, it's a Xerox.

 

[sechs]

I haven't kept track of the inexpensive flatbed scanner market in a while, but Epson was (and probably still is) the best manufacturer about NOT making their flatbed scanners obsolete on purpose. As new operating systems come out, Epson tends to update their support -- even for fairly old scanners.

I've found that Windows XP is magically done away with the need for manufacturer support for nearly all scanners. You can get basic use (which is all just about anybody needs) without any special software. It's one thing they've gotten right.

It's also dispensed with crappy software packages included with scanners.

 

[MaxBurn]

Pardon me for digging up this old thread but I think its right where I want to discuss. I also decided against a all in one device and I will suck some more life out of my Color Laserjet 5, the thing is literally a tank and seems to print OK for what I need (not much) but could use a drum (some artifacts on prints) but oh well, its totally cheap color.

This leaves me with needing a scanner. I pretty much narrowed it down to whats available locally with features I seem to get along with:

Epson 4490 or a Canon 8600

It looks like as far as the scanner is concerned they are about the same, is there a quality difference anyone knows about?

OCR software: The Epson offers ABBYY FineReader Sprint and the Canon offers ScanSoft OmniPage SE. I am not familiar with either and neither publisher lists information about these basic bundled versions on their web page that I can find. Does one of those suck?

I am not sure how my last wish is accomplished but I would really like to be able to scan and dump straight to a PDF easily. Mainly this needs to be medium to low quality to archive expense receipts. I assume one of the adobe packages accomplishes this?


Canon Software Included: ScanGear CS (Windows/Mac); ArcSoft, PhotoStudio (Windows/Mac); ScanSoft OmniPage SE (Windows/Mac); CanoScan Toolbox CS (Windows/Mac); Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0 (Windows/Mac); NewSoft Presto PageManager (Windows)

Epson Software Included: Epson Scan with Easy Photo Fix, Epson creativity suite, Adobe Photoshop Elements, ABBYY FineReader Sprint, NewSoft Presto! BizCard

 

[mubs]

I've had an Epson 2480 Photo for a couple of years and am very happy with the scanner and the bundled sw.

The bundled Abby FineReader Sprint OCR sw works well enough for my ocassional need to use OCR.

The bundled Epson Scan sw lets you directly create a PDF file (scanner hw --> PDF). You can adjust quality from low to medium to high. I use this a lot to archive bits of paper like receipts, warranty cards, news clips, etc. I also use it to make copies (I don't have a copier and it saves me a trip to a copy center). It works quite well. The trick is to use all the settings (some are buried) to set it up the way you want.

In my experience, the suck quotient of the Epson sw is quite low.

 

[MaxBurn]

Well thats good to hear, thanks. I also checked and they have a twain driver for XPx64bit on their site. I am hoping I have no problem with all the software itself but I will check the box to see what that says, I bet it will be fine.

 

[MaxBurn]

Happy to report technology is getting better all the time. Must have been four years sense the last scanner I had which was a basket case. The Epson 4490 software turned out to be fairly easy to use, didn't see the PDF option that I wanted right off the bat under the automatic mode or the home user mode but a little rooting around in the professional mode and it was easy to dump all my expense receipts directly to a multi page PDF. I think I will be digging up all my old pictures soon now too.

 

[Santilli]

I'm with Splash. Epson 3170, and the software is fine. Also using Omnipage Pro 9.2? Works fine. Canon 1220U as well.
Using Samsung M2150 for a laser printer, and, it's pretty reasonable.

Refilling kaser ink cartridges can cut your expenses considerably. Our Xerox printer is over 50000 sheets, nearing 75k on the HP 4000N. The HP printer maybe the best money I've ever spent for any computer part.

GS

 

[Stereodude]

I have a Epson Perfection 3170 Photo scanner that was ~$64 or so from Epson (refurbished). Works great!