Cheap efficient, good quality scanner (Agfa Snapscan E20)

Member Name: mark_carpenter

Product:	Agfa Snapscan E20
Date:	23/10/01 (1281 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Efficient, Good scanning software

Disadvantages: Poor and outdated extra software

I'm new to the world of scanners, but am very impressed by the quality of the Agfa Snapscan e20.

Setting up is very quick, connect the power cable and the USB cable, then plug it into a free USB slot on the PC. Install the Scanwise software from the CD and then all you have to do is double-click the icon on the desktop and it's ready for use.

The ScanWise software is well programmed and it looks good. Make sure you download the latest version 2.0 from www.agfa.co.uk as it has more features.

To use it is simple, click "Preview" to get a quick preview of what you have in the scanner and to set the area you wish to scan. Then you can set the various colour options, but i prefer to leave them and edit the image later in a program like Paintshop Pro. Then you simply press "Scan" and select a file to save to if that's what you've selected to do.

The other software ReadIris and Printoffice are in a word, outdated. But i never really worried about them as there are much better programs out there for doing what these programs do.

I bought mine for about £30 in a sale and overall i've very impressed with it.

Any downsides? Well the glass on my scanner seems to have some imperfections on the inside, which are very noticable during scans. Luckily i'm quite handy with a paint program so i can edit those out along with scratches etc on photos.

Summary: