[tycheung]

Hi,

Just wondering where I could find reviews/user experiences with scanners ~$100 or less. I just received an Epson 1250 from Amazon, which is OK, but I am a bit concerned with its overall reliability. Scans seem OK - slight dithering effect but I am going to scale down anyway, so that should be too much of a problem, but the major issues are:

- some dust & spots underneath the glass plate,

-occasional weird grinding noises when the scanning head reaches the end of the scanner, as if the motor driving it was "overextending" itself, i.e. going a bit too far, which I hope doesn't mean it's stripping its gears...


-Twain driver and/or scanner freezing Photoshop 7 (update - quitting & relaunching Photoshop between each scan seems to prevent this)

Granted, I am using the Trial 3 drivers under OS X 10.2, so maybe these are software bugs that get ironed out over time, but I would like to know what is the general experience of the Epson 1250 in the field, and if there is a scanner that works more smoothly out there, with comparable image quality (so I can exchange...).

Thanks,

Tyler

[zigzag]

Try www.pcworld.com and www.pcmagazine.com

They usually have the most current reviews, although they don't evaluate Mac compatibility. You can also try www.macworld.com and www.macaddict.com

Epsons are consistently rated highly, especially for Mac compatibility, and I'm very happy with my 1200U, so you may have just gotten a lemon. I read once that it's a good idea to buy scanners locally because they can get misaligned in shipping, but I don't know if that's still true.

The lower-priced Canons (that use LIDE technology) are also very good but not as fast as the Epsons.

If you want good scanner software, check out www.hamrick.com