A birthday present that fitted the bill

I recently purchased a canon scanner for my husband's birthday. When trying to decide which model and make to buy I took into consideration the price, size, style and, more than anything, the specifications. We did also want something which was easy and quick to get up and running and was suitable for a novice. Up to now we have not been disappointed.

This scanner requires 64 MB of RAM but 128 MB is recommended. You need at least windows 98 to operate it. We are using windows XP. Ideally you should have 5MB of working space during installation and 90MB free space for the application files. Apparently the speed etc.is much improved if your computer exceeds minimum requirements.

The scanner is a sleek looking piece of equipment which has a grey/silver coloured exterior. The Scanner connects, via a USB(no electric socket connection needed) to your computer and is very quick and easy to install. If the USB is connected, as you turn on your computer, you hear the scanner start up. It is not noisy during operation but can be heard a little.

This Scanner can be laid flat or positioned on it's side, on a small, provided stand, operating equally well in either position. The only problem when scanning whilst it is on its side is that anything other than a single sheet of paper is prone to slipping out. You can do it, but you have to be more careful aligning the object for scanning. However due to the flexibility of positioning the scanner it does not intrude on your work area. Apparently this scanner can scan reasonably thick material but we have not tried this function yet. I have tried a paper back book and the cover scanned fine.

The help guides are downloaded during the installation process to your hard drive. I found once everything was up and running all languages had been installed but that you could easily delete the inappropriate ones. At the end of the installation process you can register the product on line. There is an easy to use quick start guide included in the packaging which is brief and simple. You can have the scanner up and running with very little reading, if so desired, by just trial and error. If you are wanting to get to grips with all the functions however the manual is thorough and fairly easy to understand. It is 120 pages long including the troubleshooting section etc.

You can scan via the software on the computer or just using the 4 buttons at the front of the scanner. These enable you to scan and save, print or email any document or picture. Using the manual functions on the computer enables you to control the settings etc more readily. The photos are saved by default in jpeg format whilst the text documents are PDF. When using the scanner wizard you can make quite a few adjustments to improve the quality.

Using your computer functions the quality of scanning is excellent. We have found that if you scan all your images individually that, as you close the Scanner, there is a window open with all the images giving you an option to save them or not. After saving we go to Photo Impact( which we use a lot) and then crop, rotate , resize etc. You can scan more than one image at a time if so desired.

My husband tried the scanner out on some old photos from the early seventies, which were small and had faded extremely badly. They had gone to just shades of brown and red. The resulting print off was fabulous. For us this was very much the desired use as, some sentimental old photos which we have tried to restore in the past, were nowhere near as successful. It also enabled us to get the images into the computer and forward them to family who live in other parts of the world now.

The other use my husband wanted this scanner for was, as he is putting all his old vinyl onto cd's, he wanted to incorporate appropriate images, where possible. The scanner has been really good for this.

Even in simple mode you can correct fading and backlight with a preview before you decide whether to scan or not. You can also multi-scan. We used to have a hand held scanner with our old computer which was great for some things but quite outdated. This is our first flatbed home scanner so it is difficult comparing speeds but I did feel that it was a bit slow. Maybe that's just me expecting too much, as we do in this techno age. However the result was well worth the wait and it was not mega slow. I can see us using it a great deal and feel that it was worth the slightly more expensive price tag, than the more basic scanners were. We paid £59.99 from a high street chain store.

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This Canon scanner measures 14 inches long by 10 inches with a depth of one inch. The base is a grey plastic and has a facility for locking , for carrying etc. It has four small rests if you want to lay it flat. The stand and control panel is black .The lid is silver coloured , ( with a small amount of black on it ) , with the trade mark . Inside there is a glass surface for placing your photos face down on. The hinged lid has a white stiff paper covering the inside.
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UPDATE
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I have now used this scanner a lot more and find that, once you have the knack, it is really quite quick and easy to use with great results.

I have scanned the cover of The Da Vinci Code for it's own review on ciao. You just put the full book in. I found that the scanner was best laid flat for this. Even though the lid is not fully closed it works brilliantly. The lid is hinged so it still lays flat.

Also re ciao review - I have also included a before, and after , of a photo from the early seventies. The after shot was scanned with fading and backlight correction and I think if you have a look that you'll agree it gives a great result.

A lot of my photos on my reviews over on Ciao have come from this scanner. Even the box of carrot cake(cake and all!).

This scanner is proving to be tough and useful.

Thanks for reading
(C) Eiley 2008