In the past scanners have caused me a relatively high degree of computer hardware angst. Maybe you've experienced the drill yourself - drivers that don't install correctly causing conflicts, really bad user interfaces, scanned images that are full of noise, power cord adapters that are so big they can be used to drive nails, scanner sizes too big to fit on the desk, and don't even talk to me about slow scanning speeds. I had given up scanning anything at all. Over a year ago we donated all of the scanners we owned. I was in the process of setting up a copy stand area to digitally photograph old prints because it would be so much faster than scanning them and the quality of the images would be far better if captured with my Nikon D70 DSLR.
And then I spoke with Dave Cross at the Mac Design Conference that I attended this week. He told me that he was getting great scans from a little $79 Canon scanner that he'd recently bought. He said the scanner was fast and, incredibly to me, didn't need a power cord(!!), that it was powered through the USB. This I had to try this for myself.
So I headed down to the local CompUSA store and bought the last Canon $79 scanner that they had in the store.
And sure enough, check out the contents of the box and see what's not there-
That's right, what's missing? The power cord.
And the unit works in a vertical orientation to save room on the desk-
It's not plug and play, the drivers do have to be installed, but on my XP operating system that went flawlessly. I restarted my laptop, plugged in the USB, XP recognized my scanner in a few seconds, then I scanned my first document:
I was able to import/acquire this scan right into Photoshop CS, no problem.
A couple of details about this scanner-
There is a lock switch on the bottom of the unit.
And here's a close up of the clamp that holds the scanner vertically.
vadkins
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