Scanner Technology and Imaging Technologies have improved vastly in past few years. About 3 years back scanners were luxury, now-a-days its a necessity, its an indispensable peripheral. Several types of scanners are available, Handheld, Drum & Flatbed Scanners. Handheld scanners are not popular because of its low scanning capabilities, on the contrary Drum scanners are used in Printing houses for its High Quality scanning capabilities. Flatbed scanners are the usual one we see in our home and office and the review will be more dedicated towards Flatbed Scanners.
The process of scanning is similar to photocopying, though the technology is a bit more sophisticated. In scanning, an additional hardware is user to convert the resultant image into a digital format that a computer can read. The main components of a scanner are the Light Source, the Sensor and the Interface.
On the basis of Optical Technology Scanners can be put into two categories Multi-pass Scanners & Optical Scanners.
Multi-pass Scanners:
The Optical Imaging Head in these scanners is composed of RGB(Red, Green & Blue) light source. The source illuminate the light source and are sensed by CCD, a light sensitive electronic component that converts the corresponding digital values that can be understood by computer.
Optical Scanners:
These have a single coherent white light source that is sensed by CCD. This system uses two method. The first involves rapidly rotating RGB components of reflected light and is sensed by CCD, here the color is fabricated to the chip directly. In the second method, a prismatic beam splits the white light and three individual CCDs sense RGB. The second is newer technology and provides High Quality.
Points To Ponder:
Before buying a Scanner there are 4 Points that should decide on the scanner you buy, Interface, Scan Quality, Speed and Setup. Other than these there are factors like your Budget, Usage requirements, Bundled Software and Required Size of scanner that I obviously can’t write about.
Interface:
Scanner Interface can be classified into: USB, SCSI and Parallel Port. Each interface provides different data transfer speed. Among these, SCSI is the fastest and the costliest with supported speed of 20Mbps. USB provides a speed of approximately 12Mbps and the commonly found Parallel Port supports up to 1.5 Mbps(when set on EPP or ECP).
Scan Quality:
Going by the present market the anything below Max. Resolution of 600x1200 dpi is waste of your precious money. Almost all the scanner you will look for employs Single-Pass Technology, so don’t look out for Multi-pass, you won’t find it and even if you do it will definitely put a hole in your pocket. Ask for a Scanned image, Check for Blurring and Cloudiness. The most difficult areas for a scanner to interpret are very dark and very bright area, so do check for those.
Speed:
Generally any scanner which does a complete A4 size page in text document(at 100 dpi), within a minute is considered as fast, and the one which does a color photo(at 300 dpi), in less than 100secs is what you should look for. Do test it at 24-bit, don’t go in for a 32-bit, never useful.
Setup:
Now then, now-a-days, Windows System does recognize most of the hardware, so you don’t have to worry about it. But for people like me who use Linux for daily work, Hardware Drivers are a concern, so better check a few websites for the availability of your Scanners driver, it does come handy. Other than that look for the one with a Manual and a service center in your town.
These points are only the few you should consider, but there are many more. But once you ask the sales person about these 4-Points, rest assured, the’Smart’ Sales man will tell all that you want and don’t want, about your scanner.
Note: After getting last two reviews ’Recommended Rating’, for reasons unknown, I would definitely like to know Your Rating criteria.