This product review is strictly the opinion of the reviewer, who is not necessarily a Farba Research employee.
Product: Epson Perfection 1200S Category: flatbed scanner Manufacturer: Seiko Epson Corporation Vendor Website: http://www.epson.com/ Rating: superb quality scans; fast Reviewer: E. Nicholas Cupery Review Date: 01 October 2000
Introduction
This is a great scanner! It does 1200 dpi (true optical dots per inch, in both directions) scans at a perfectly acceptable speed. It comes with a genuine Adaptec SCSI card (PCI) and a SCSI cable, and it cost me less than $250.
Pros
- superb quality scans
- very reasonable speed
- very reasonable price
- good quality construction
- has a physical copy pushbutton
- has two SCSI ports (HD50) for SCSI chaining
- includes SCSI card and cable (6-ft)
- has selectable SCSI termination (switch on the back)
- accepts an optional reasonably-priced transparency adapter
- TWAIN compliant
- excellent telephone tech support
Cons
- no bundled copy utility
- TWAIN driver is slow to load
Caveats
- the SCSI card's external connector is a DB25, not an HD50
Discussion
This is a very fine quality 8.5" x 11" scanner from a major player. The only two complaints I can think of are really not consequential. The TWAIN driver is indeed slow to load (about 2 full seconds on a 466 MHz Celeron -- I suspect this driver was written in some bloated OOP language with a crayon {grin}), but I'll be fixing that one day soon by upgrading my processor anyway. There is no copy utility program included, but if one were I might well find myself upgrading to a copy of Photocopier Pro anyway.When I say that this is a very fine quality scanner, I mean that I can scan a 4 x 6 inch color photo and then print it at 8.5 x 11 inches (with a half inch border all around) on my Epson Stylus Photo 870 color inkjet printer and the result will be comparable to what one would get from traditional photography. What more could I ask for at such a reasonable price?
Conclusion
I have concluded that this is all the flatbed scanner I am likely to ever need. Unless I someday discover a need to scan documents larger than 8.5 by 11 inches. Yes, there are higher-resolution scanners, but this one is plenty high enough. Yes, there are faster scanners, but this one is plenty fast enough. There are presumably more expensive flatbed scanners with higher quality output, but I cannot imagine such a need.
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