Highest Quality (Agfa Snapscan 1212p)

Member Name: cjkace

Product:	Agfa Snapscan 1212p
Date:	08/12/00 (1081 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Affordable, fast scans, good quality, crisp colours, easy installation, choice of drivers

Disadvantages: Advanced driver can be overwhelming, parallel port connection

This scanner is one of the best invetsments in my computer that I have ever made. I've seen too many cheap scanners that produce very poor scans, so I looked for a mid-range scanner price under £100 and eventually chose this one.

It's a parallel port scanner, so it plugs into the printer port on your PC. It has two ports on the rear of the scanner, one from the PC and the other connects a printer so you can still use your old printer even with the scanner plugged in ( although you can't use both at the same time).

Installation was almost foolproof, with easy concise instructions. It tells you about setting the parallel port mode in the bios (it needs to be EPP/ECP), and then offers to either install the basic or advanced scanner drivers.

For everyday use and quick scans, the basic drivers are excellent. It asks what you are scanning from (photo, magazine, newspaper etc), asks what resolution you would like (DPI or dots per inch), then you preview the scan.

I put a 7 x 5 photo in, previewed and scanned in under 5 minutes at 600 DPI. I was stunned at the quality. I've seen scanners that supposedly offered twice the resolution and the scans came out all wishy-washy. These were crisp. The colours were excellent and well defined.

The advanced driver offers more features, but can be a pain to use. It does offer more, especially if you have a damaged or discoloured photo, but is probably too difficult to use for the novice user.

Summing up, the AGFA Snapscan 1212P offers top-quality in this price range and as far as I am aware the only difference between the 1212P and the 1212U is the connection.

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