Scanner

Review by Randle Blankenship:

Bought this scanner to replace my failed Epson Perfection 1650. I like its compact size and quietness, and find the operating speed close to that of the 1650. The software is ok, and scanner operation is as convenient as that of the 1650, but there is less flexibility to allow altering color satuation, hue, etc. I found image sharpness disappointingly soft, and color saturation less than that of the original photo being copied. The overall effect is a somewhat faded, hazy image. Tried downloading and installing a fresh driver, but that didn’t change this characteristic. After selecting USE SCANNER DRIVER on the operating panel, I was able to make selections that improved the image quality somewhat, but it is still not up to the performance of my previous scanner. Turning off the softening mask makes very little improvement. For me this scanner does not live up to previous glowing user reviews that helped decide this purchase.

Review by Jan Klier:

I needed a scanner to scan an occasional document, receipt, or magazine page. Image quality needed to be decent and other than that I wanted a device that just did the job and didn’t need a lot of hand-holding.

So far I’m satisfied to impressed. Take it out of the box, plug in the USB cable (big plus it doesn’t add yet another power adapter to my setup), Windows Vista automatically detects and installs the driver and you’re ready to go. I didn’t even look at the software CD which comes with the scanner for the first week. The OS integrated driver is sufficient for the generic scans.

It’s nice and small and lightweight, has a small locking slider for the lid on the bottom. So when I’m not scanning I simply unplug the USB port and it’s easily stored on the shelf and not taking up valuable space.

The scan speed and image quality is good enough for my needs. I’m sure some folks may have a more detailed critique, but that wasn’t what I’m looking for.

After eventually installing the software that came with it, the copy button on the front works fine. Push it and the software will scan and then send the result to the printer. Not a high volume copying solution, but if one makes a copy at home once in a blue moon and hates the trip to Kinko’s this fits in well.

So if you’re looking for a simple and reasonably priced scanning solution for occasional work, this is a great choice.

Review by Stephen Gibson:

I also bought this to scan slides — however, while the slides are the standard slide size in terms of the holder, the slide film itself is square instead of rectangular like most modern slides (mine are about 1.44″ x 1.44″). For some reason, the default size of the cropping the 8800F uses when you select 35mm slides is not user-changeable. I wrote the company and got a standard answer back that basically said “we’re not changing the software to make you happy”. I think they misunderstood me, but whatever…

Fortunately, I found the answer quite by accident. It turns out that in order to make the scanner work for my situation (and maybe yours), I simply had to uncheck the “Switches On/Off the Thumbnails View Mode” button and that allowed me to manually create the right size crops. It also means I can use the 35mm strip holder instead of the 35mm slide holder and leave the old slides in their metal slide magazine holders, saving me even more time.

After figuring that out, I’m happy to say this scanner exceeds my expectations and makes me a happy camper now that I can no longer use my Konica Dimage Scan Dual IV with my Vista-based PC. The hardware is very sturdy and speed is great. 1200 DPI scans take less than a minute each.

If you want more information on how to manually set-up to scan older slides, leave me your email as a comment to this review.

Hope that helps.

Steve

Review by T. Meerloo:

OUT OF THE BOX: The complete machine is much smaller and lighter than my previous scanner, with the same scan field dimensions. It comes with a USB connection and a separate power “brick” between wall socket and scanner. Three scan guides are included; a combo of 2 side-by-side 35 mm film strips (for 5 frames each) with latches that flatten curved strips, a guide for 4 standard size slides and a 120mm film strip holder. These guides fit into a specific place on the scan surface, so that they line up under the lid-mounted light source, which is covered by a removable shield. The lid is quite light, but it needs opening to almost straight up for it stay open without support. The thin latches on the 35mm film strip guide are very flimsy, and I already snapped one when trying to load curved negative strips. Software with scanner drivers etc., an advanced image editing program, as well as versions of Adobe Photoshop Elements (5.0 for windows, 4.0 for mac) are included.

SOFTWARE: I haven’t tried all the included software yet, as I prefer to work in other programs for archiving and retouching images. Having said that, using one of the programs to drive the scanner (MP Navigator) I think that there are some unnecessary steps and windows between scanning and saving. Working from a mac, setup was easy and scanning using the scanner interface is very intuitive. Everything runs relatively smooth, but there are occasional software crashes, and I cannot queue a lot of images before the program’s buffer is full (even with an excess of RAM). Automatic detection of the images within slide frames or negative strips is very accurate, but this can be switched off, as another reviewer noted, and you can select your own area of interest or a whole film-strip.

SETTINGS: There are numerous choices to make before you scan, such as Unsharp Mask and Remove Dirt & Scratches, which has different levels to choose from, as do “Grain Correction” and “Backlight Correction”. While I generally see a beneficial effect of the Unsharp Mask (again; I work at high dpi settings), I notice that turning the dirt and scratch removal on only makes a mess of the affected areas, while leaving some specs or smudges completely untouched. I tend to turn the choices for removal of dirt & scratches and grain correction completely off. I am running the scanner completely from the scanner software and am not using the panel of buttons on the scanner lid, but it appears that these can be user-configured. Hidden in the preferences is also a setting to enable 48/16 bit output, but I haven’t played with that yet.

RESOLUTION: As noted by other reviewers, at higher resolution settings scanning can take quite some time, but I actually like this when it gets to a point of 30 minutes (for example for 8 negatives at 3200 dpi), so that I can work on something else instead of tending to the scanner every few minutes. For a preview scan and scanning prints at lower dpi settings this scanner is reasonably fast.

FILE FORMAT & COMPRESSION: When I was running my initial tests to figure out optimal settings (optimal between image resolution needed and memory demand desired) I ran into some unexpected findings. For instance, I see a dramatic improvement in retention of details when I save scanned images as JPEG format rather than in full size TIFF. The compression actually seems to greatly improve contrast and sharpness, while taking up a lot less space! There are 3 levels of JPEG quality; High, Standard and Low (with inverse amounts of compression), but so far I have not noticed any (!) difference in final details when I choose “standard” over “high” quality, and again; the files take up less space in standard setting. A clear difference may be seen at lower dpi settings.

RESULTS: The proof of any scanner is in the final scanned image and judging by that standard this CanoScan performs really well. Scanned prints are easy, because their physical dimensions don’t require a high dpi setting. For color or negative film, some colors come out perfect, while others need a little tweaking afterwards, but overall this scanner performs great. I have posted a few images of color slides scanned with the CanoScan 8800F where I compare certain scan or save settings.

IN SHORT:

Pros: High quality scanner with lots of professional options for a low price. Abundant choices in resolution and other settings. Produces amazingly detailed images from prints, negatives and slides.

Cons: Mostly related to software (only tested on a mac); small buffer for scanned images, occasional software crashes, some needles clutter in amount of windows and pop-ups (some, but not all can be turned off). Flimsy latches for 35mm filmstrip guide.

In spite of some software shortcomings the end results are fantastic for a scanner at this price, and I rate this scanner around four-and-a-half stars.

This is a review of the Canon CanoScan 8800F.

Review by Tezza:

I decided to replace my old “all in one” printer which I was using as a scanner and a photocopying with the Canon LIDE200. I liked the specification: 4800×4800 dpi and a claimed 11 second scan rate.

The first thing I noticed as I was unpacking the scanner from the box was a mysterious WARNING about unlocking the lid of the scanner. The scanner was packed with the lid unlocked (as I found out later), and the instructions mentioned to keep the lid locked for travel or extensive handling. Fair enough, but it made me wonder if I had already done something bad to my scanner (I hadn’t).

I then installed the software. I expected big things from Canon here, because generally they are pretty smart about software. The software, in terms of use, is much better than the software I had for scanning with my old scanner. The scanner has an “easy” setting that basically just scans at 300DPI without a fuss. If you want to scan at full resolution, you have to open the “driver” that exposes a page with all the bells and whistles to let you really fine tune your scan and set the highest resolutions.

All this was fair enough, however I found a few minor disturbing problems with the software. Firstly, once you’ve opened the “driver”, it’s not intuitive to figure out how to get back to the “no brainer” mode. Also, when you want to save your scan, it always seems to default to the scanning library it sets up. If you override it, it doesn’t stay “changed”. This is a slight pain. I always wonder who they hire to test and give feedback, because I always feel like I’m pointing out what should be the “obvious” to large companies like Canon (actually I really love Canon – so take no offense!).

As far as scanning speed is concerned, the scanner does indeed scan a 300 dpi page in about 11 seconds (that’s pretty fast folks). However, the estimate does not include the 3 seconds the software takes to respond to the command to begin scanning (I’m running a duo core processor – no slouch) and the few seconds it takes to save the image. All in all, speed is impressive.

Now on to document quality. I tried scanning a few brochures and to be honest, at 300 DPI I wasn’t super impressed with the result. So I went into the “driver” at set the scanning at maximum resolution (4800 x 4800). You get a pretty good result at that resolution, but by no means was I blown away. Perhaps more “tweaks” of the driver is needed. I noticed that the scanner attempts to “improve” the picture (which it does) but some of the detail of the text was a little off (brochure had images and text). I wondered if the lid of the scanner was making really good contact. Next time I will add a few pages of plain white paper behind the image and see if it makes a difference.

I tried scanning a printed document, and compared it to a printed document I scanned using my old scanner. I scanned the image to a PDF and low and behold, a major, major improvement (at 300 DPI).

So, I gave the scanner four “stars”. Why not five? Well, the software is much easier to use than my old scanner, but still not without a few minor “quirks”. This is a great scanner for scanning documents. How well it will actually scan and reproduce a photo is still in question, and perhaps I need to learn how to use the driver software better. I don’t think I could scan an original photo without seeing some degradation in quality.

I’d be interested to hear other people’s experiences regarding copying photos. I hope I’m wrong in my assessment, because I really expected a 4800×4800 scanner to reproduce “dead on” copies of a photo.

Review by book worm:

This scanner is a replacement for my Epson Perfection 2450 Photo, which Epson chose to not support in the Vista 64-bit platform. As usual, with no new driver, another perfectly fine and useful scanner dies due to an operating system upgrade. As my scanning at present is more document based, I decided to try this less expensive option and give Canon a chance.

On first glance, it seems my research has paid off. This scanner was quick and easy to install out of the box. The directions were straightforward and useful. One is first instructed to run the setup CD, then remove and unlock the scanner, and finally to plug in the USB. I did not have the problem of the second reviewer: my lock button was in the lock position when I received it, and was even taped over for security.

The scanner has a small footprint and sleek style, compared to my previous model.

The software is easy to use, although it sometimes seems that too many screens are involved. I believe there are options to streamline this to some extent.

My first function was a one-button copy. My sheet music copied as well as the average commercial copier. (Quality was also much better than a B & W copy on my Epson Stylus CX4800 all-in-one.) The pencil marks, however, were very light on the copy, and barely readable. Original highlighting on the piece was gone.

I then performed a one-button scan of the same music. It took about 16 seconds, including software linking. This time the music detail was also excellent and pencil marks were very readable. After the scan, I sent it to the printer where the music quality remained, pencil marking remained strong, and highlighting was preserved.

One note regarding one-button functions: as the second reviewer noted, after choosing a one-button function a CanoScan-generated option list appears requiring the user to “Select program to launch for this action”. On my computer there are four options, and I must choose MP Navigator EX from the list. I thought that after the first time I chose the launch program that it would be remembered. It wasn’t, so I searched every screen and the user guide, and have not found a way to alter this. It is a definite nuisance that I hope Canon will fix with an update soon.

When scanning, one must place the object upside down on platen to receive a vertical product. In general, the platen is roomy, allowing all but about 1mm on each side left to right of useable space. From cursory scans, it appears there is very little surface area that will not be useable on this scanner (unlike my Epson), which equates to less fidgeting with the original on placement.

Unlike the previous reviewer, once I changed my default file location for saves, all my auto scans saved to that location.

I also haven’t found the buttons to be hard to press, or to move the scanner (I have a glass desktop). I do find that after you press the button there is a small lag time before the scan operation begins, so it’s easy to think you didn’t really press it hard enough.

There is no light on the scanner, as it is always on when the computer is, since it is powered by the USB, not a power cord.

I scanned an 8×10 professional color portrait on auto scan, with the following results:

- it saved to my correct location, with a subfolder created by current date (a changeable option)

- the end file size was 1533 kb (auto mode scans at 300 dpi)

- only 1-2 mm of the photo was cut off by auto cropping…a very acceptable result

- the detail and quality seemed excellent on the screen

In general, cropping has been very precise on photos and documents.

I did scan a book to test the shadow reduction feature and was disappointed. Not only was there still a shadow, but the text was unreadable at the center. I did successive scans, pressing harder on the spine first with the scanner lid, and then under the lid with my hand, with little overall improvement. Later, I found on option in the software to “turn on” the shadow adjustment, so I tried the scan again with no improvement. Perhaps there is more to be discovered still with the software to implement this feature properly…

As I haven’t had a new scanner for a number of years, I decided to try the OCR function, hoping that perhaps the industry had made strides in this regard. It was sorely lacking, making profuse spelling errors, handling italics and small caps fonts poorly. Overall, still a dysfunctional function.

My one pause for concern that caused me to give this scanner only four stars is a glitch that occurred with the scanner’s hardware interface. After successfully scanning for 1-2 hours straight without any system flaws, I left the computer for an hour or so. Upon coming back and trying a one-button function I received a ScanGear Error: “Cannot communicate with scanner, Cable may be disconnected or scanner may be turned off. Check status, scanner driver will be closed.” I closed and reopened software, and restarted the computer. No improvement. The scanner did not show up on Device Manager. Finally I removed and replaced the USB connection to the computer and the scanner was again recognized. There was no function made by a user; however, perhaps a screen saver coming on or the computer going into sleep mode may have initiated this error. I am hoping this is not a repetitive problem.

I waited several weeks to purchase this scanner, and the first review was slow to come. I finally decided to purchase and provide a review for others–a risk these days, especially with Vista 64. Overall, I think this will be a good product. It is certainly fast–much faster than my Epson–and a step saver for anyone with consecutive documents to scan.

Review by Nathan Jones:

I purchased a NeatDesk scanner awhile ago to answer a growing need at home for more robust scanning. I’m one of those people that needs to have everything neatly filed away even though I will probably never see it again. I also religiously enter all my personal receipts and track my personal finances in detail. This seemed the perfect product to answer both needs.

I was used to the Fujitsu ScanSnap S510 that I have at work, but in addition to an arm they also wanted a leg. The price of the NeatDesk is substantially less (about 40% for what I paid), and the promotional material for the scanning software was really sexy. So I clicked buy.

After a few days, my conclusion is that although it could be an outstanding product with a couple of tweaks, it’s just not ready for primetime. This may be the case of a small company working on tight margins with a product that got too big too fast. It remains to be seen whether or not they can keep up with their new-found popularity.

Here’s the dirt:

Hardware:

Good Stuff

- Attractive design.

- You can click the hardware “Scan” button all day, but you don’t have to file your scans until you want to.

Bad Stuff

- No adjustable paper guide. Unless you hold it as it’s sucked in, every single document is crooked.

- Not enough paper support. Creased documents (like a bill) flop back and aren’t grabbed properly.

- I found the slot for receipts and documents to not match any receipt or document I had… Nice slot for business cards though.

- The output tray is not attached to the scanner body. Huh?

- It came with the grim spectre of having to clean and calibrate your scanner. You don’t have to clean or calibrate the ScanSnap, although the ScanSnap does include “consumables”, so maybe it’s a tie.

Software:

Good Stuff

- Recognizes dates, subtotal, sales tax, and credit card used. This alone almost makes the product an overall winner and definitely put it on top for scanning receipts.

- As mentioned above, you don’t have to file away your scans until you want to.

- Extremely fast search.

- It’s pretty–yeah, that’s important.

Bad Stuff

- Always takes the scan from the front but from the sheet in the back, which may be more intuitive for the beginner, but also means that a stack of double-sided sheets will go into the software backwards (page 2, 1, 4, 3, etc.) so you’ll have to sort your document before and after scanning. Maybe I just haven’t figured this one out, but it does seem like they emphasis multiple single-page documents vs. one multiple-page document.

* UPDATE: I figured out that you have to put the document in face up and everything is scanned in from the last page to the front. Your physical document will come out sorted, and the software will reverse the order of the scanned pages for you so the electronic document is correct.

- Does not auto-rotate to fix crooked problem caused by not having adjustable paper guides.

- Does not do auto-color detection–it’s either all black-and-white or all color and you must choose. Those “Scan” and “PDF” buttons on the front are great, but you have to go into the Quick Scan application to set up how everything will be scanned first, defeating the convenience.

- Viewing the documents that are in the library is difficult. Should have a simple hand-tool for dragging and allow multiple documents to be open at one time.

- Moving data around the library is laborious.

- Software installs SQL Server Express, which takes up system resources and at least for me causes the program to not want to start up (try again message a couple of times before starting). Sure the search results come back very quickly, but at what cost? As a developer, I actually already had SQL Server Express installed, but it went ahead and installed another instance… Not very nice.

- Lots of opportunities to categorize data, but searching for the categories is difficult. For example, to see what you marked for follow up click “Advanced Search”, click “Looking at…” and select “Action Type”, click “Selected in the List”, click and check box that says “Follow Up”. It’s more work finding out what’s marked “follow up” than to actually follow up.

- The heavy emphasis is on recording receipts for expenses that will be reimbursed by your employer or be tax deductible. So what happens when I have a pay stub for consulting work? I have to file it as a document where I can’t tag it’s dollar amount, can’t tag it as 1099 income, and it can’t be exported to Quicken. That’s one of the main reasons I got the scanner.

- Categories for receipts are very limited. Need a split? You’ll have to do it yourself when you get to Quicken if you can remember what the receipt was for. Sales tax is always exported as an over-generalized “State Tax”.

How it Could (Easily) be Made Great

- Package in or sell another paper guide that is adjustable. You can use the same snap-in style that is used for the receipt/business card guide.

- Add one inch to the pull-out paper support.

- Update the software to take scans from the face down position first on double-sided scans. Take the scan from the face down position only in single-sided scans.

* UPDATE: Even though this way seems more intuitive to me, the way the software does it is okay (see update above).

- Add in auto-color detection and auto-rotate so that scans always come out right. If Neat Co can do awesome text-detection, they could do this.

Conclusion

Seems to be an innovative company so I’ll keep it in anticipation of at least the software updates.

Review by R. Toro:

I went to the store looking for the Neat Receipts scanner, and I came across this new product. I could not be more happy for buying it! I had 4 years worth of credit card and bank statements piled up in boxes, and with this scanner system I was able to scan them and organize them on my computer in less than a day (I’m talking hundreds of pages).

I have absolutely no complaints on this (other than the price, which is high, but it is a new product and it will come down).

The scanner can read 2 sided documents and scan both sides, in color! And it does it fast.

It also reads receipts and business cards and extracts the information from them (such as what store the receipt is from, how much total was, how much tax was, date of transaction, etc…) The best part about this feature is that it lets you edit the information (sometimes necessary if the receipt was very worn or wrinkled.

The software is extremely easy to use and very powerful. A great feature about the scanner/software is that you can load a bunch of pages and start scanning them. While they scan you can work on filing other documents. Once the pages are scanned they go into a sort of “inbox” where they wait for you to look at them and decide where to file them.

The two sided, color scanning is great and very fast. Another convenient feature the program has is the ability to combine several pages into one document. All you do is click on the different pages while holding down control and click combine … and you have one file for a multi page document!

All the files you scan into the program are searchable, so you can enter a search term and it will bring up all the documents (or receipts or business cards, depending on which section you are searching in). Very handy to search back on when you bought something…

Another great feature for those that do not receive paper statements is the pdf import feature! If you get your statements from online, you can still import the file into the program (as if you had scanned it in yourself) and have the searchable capabilites of the other files.

Keep in mind, this is probably not a good scanner to scan pictures with, but for a document scanner, it is fast, and very good. I just hope it lasts the wear and tear I’m subjecting it to right now. I am very thankful that this product has helped me get rid of all of my paper clutter!!!

Review by W. B. Halper:

Where the scientist ended up with his head spliced onto a fly’s body and was flying around saying “Help Me, Help Me”? That’s the V500 Office scanner. The base of the scanner is the V500 Photo scanner. The top comes from something else. They work together, but aesthetically they don’t exactly match…they aren’t even made out of the same color of plastic.

When you first open the box, you find a complete V500 Photo scanner and a separate Automatic Document Feeder. All of the setup instructions refer to the base unit. The sheet is labeled V500 Office, but the ADF unit isn’t illustrated or mentioned. (Step One: Unpack; Step two: Install Software; Step Three: Connect and turn on; Step Four: Scan a photo…etc…) When you’ve finished, you end up with a very nice photo scanner and the feeder still in its plastic bag. (The instructions are up on the Epson website…to install the feeder, you turn off and open the top of the scanner, unplug the wire connecting the top to the base, lift the top vertically and it will separate from the bottom. Two pegs on the feeder fit into matching holes in the base. Fold it down, plug the power/control wire into connector on the base and fit the horseshoe shaped wire into the tilted input tray. Turn it back on and you should be in business. The software is intelligent enough to detect the presence of the ADF unit and adjust accordingly.) Installation, though, is something that’s only done once…what’s really important is how well the scanner works. So, let’s go through the various parts…

Scanner Body – As I mentioned, the main body of the scanner is from the V500 Photo Scanner. Because it’s designed to scan negatives as well as pictures, it has a fairly high optical resolution and a decent, although not spectacular dynamic range (D=3.4, if you’re into the actual spec. The D value is a measure of how well a scanner can capture shadow and highlight detail…the higher the value the better. The V700 measures at D=4.0. Professional grade scanners can be substantially higher, while I’ve seen inexpensive units spec’ed as low as 1.8.) When using the glass platen, you can scan up to a standard 8.5″x11″ letter-size paper. Legal size pages can be scanned using the document feeder.

Automatic Document Feeder – The ADF holds roughly 30 sheets of paper for scanning. It’s strictly a single sided scanner. You’ll need to run the paper through twice if you need to scan both sides of a document and then merge the two files together. I’ve had some serious problems with the feeder. It’s common for it to pick up the top sheet off the stack, but then not feed it through the scanner. It also appears that the ADF has some other “unusual” features…this question, for example, is on the Epson website FAQ:

Q: The automatic document feeder pulls two sheets of paper when I click Preview. Can I make it pull only one sheet?

A: No.

It seems like the firmware needs a bit of updating. When it was working right, the ADF worked well. The scanning speed is dependent on the resolution and the speed of the computer that it’s connected to. The linearity seems pretty good, with my scans of graph paper showing only a few hiccups.

V500 Photo Scanner Lid – The photo scanner lid comes with holders for both slides and various sizes of negatives. The normal white reflective surface can be removed and replaced with one of the negative holders. This allows the built-in light source to shine through the negatives. You can scan two strips of 35mm film, 120 or 220 film and larger negatives. If somebody has an archive of old 4×5 view camera negatives, this will convert them to digital form, but, frankly, for that kind of work, you should use a scanner with a better dynamic range. You NEVER want to send photos through the ADF, they’re too likely to get scratched or mangled.

Software – Epson’s software package includes the Epson scanner driver and Abby FineReader 6.0 (the current version direct from Abby is 10.0). The scanner driver has three levels of complexity – Home, Office, and Professional. The Office level provides enough flexibility for almost every application and I always leave it there. I suspect that the other two levels are the result of some misguided marketing guy’s attempt to address different market segments. Files can be created as .JPG, PDF and a couple of other formats. For document scanning, I always use PDF. For photos, I use the lossless TIFF format to preserve as much of the original detail as possible. The Abby software works well in converting the scanned images into searchable PDF files, but won’t take an external PDF and make it searchable or convert it to a Word document…you have to purchase the new version to add those functions.

Service – Nothing works forever, but, after two weeks, I was not happy when the document feeder stopped properly feeding pages. Today, I called the Epson service center to see if they had any suggestions to get it to work properly. The tech was very polite and after being put on hold twice and asked the usual troubleshooting questions, I was told that this was an “extremely unusual” hardware failure. He put me on hold a third time and after 29minutes and 22 seconds, the call disconnected. I called back and another support technician looked up the notes. He told me that I needed to take the scanner to an authorized service depot for repair. They wouldn’t ship me another unit or issue an RMA number. I could ship it there, but at my expense. I was also told that this is the way that Epson handles all scanner repairs. I could understand that if the scanner was a year old or otherwise out of warranty, but for something that’s only two weeks old??? Not exactly the most customer-centric way of doing things.

So…my conclusion…

This scanner is a bit of a misfit. There are better scanners more suited for an office environment. Both the Epson WorkForce Pro GT-S50 and the Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500 are faster, have duplex scanning and are designed for heavy duty use (I’ve run 50K+ sheets through my Fujitsu S510 (an earlier model) and 20K+ sheets through my GT-S50. I replaced the rollers on the Fujitsu and it runs like new.) Both are also about 0 more expensive. As a practical matter, most offices don’t need the photo scanning features that the V500 Office provides. For home use, you need a printer anyway, so I’d go with a multi-function machine with a built-in scanner and document feeder. I’m currently evaluating the Epson Artisan 810. It’s small and works well. The Canon PIXMA MX860 or Canon MX700 are also a good units that I’ve been using at home. If you want to add negative/photo scanning, the V500 Photo, without the document feeder, is 0+ less than the V500 Office. The V500 Office’s features, taken by themselves, warrant a four star rating…but you can’t look at it by itself. A computer, scanner and printer need to be evaluated as a system. And when you add it all together and mix in the service problems, it’s dropped down to the two star level.

Review by Vesta Irene:

This is the same machine as the Epson Perfection V500 Photo Scanner which I reviewed last year, but with a document feeder. I didn’t think I’d ever need to feed a stack of documents into a scanner, but once in our home, my husband, who is a writer, all of a sudden decided he needed to get all his earlier (pre computer) work onto his hard drive. And he has a lot of that. This machine has been scanning and scanning and scanning and like that bunny with the drum or that watch that keeps on ticking, this machine just keeps right on working. If you have a of documents you want scanned, this is the way to go.

Below is my review of the Epson Perfection V500 Photo Scanner. It all applies to this machine.

I wanted a scanner that would do slides because I’ve got a lot of them my husband and I took four decades ago. We have no way to view them, other than to hold them up to a light, not very satisfactory. So, I was really looking forward to this.

When it came I was surprised at the size of it. This is a behemoth. I sort of pictured something much smaller, like those little photo scanners you see in the electronic section of Target. And you had to plug it into the wall, my Cannon scanner gets its power from the USB connection. Still, it was in my living room and I had those slides, so I lugged it upstairs, put in on my desk, put the CD into my computer, followed the simple directions and in no time I was good to go.

I put a photo in, pushed the button and the scanner went to town. Unlike my Cannon scanner and the HP scanner my husband has, this scanner does not work through a Photoshop plug in. That’s good, because there are no onscreen clicks I have to do to scan a photo. I just put it in, close the lid, hit a button on the scanner and voila!

I’m going to stop here and say that this machine makes some weird and kind of loud noises when it works. At first I thought it was broken, but no, that’s just the language it speaks.

I had the preferences set to 300 dpi and the machine did the job in about a tenth the time of our other two scanners. That was impressive. Next I loaded in four slides. To do that I had to put in the plastic slide tray and slide out the underside of the top of the scanner, so light can pass through the slides. The machine takes four slides at a time.

It takes a couple minutes for it to do the slides, but the output is fantastic. This beast is big, but it does the job and it does it very well, even if it groans its way through the work. I am very, very impressed.

Reviewed by Vesta Irene