Corking bit of kit (Agfa Snapscan Touch)

Member Name: Babylion

Product:	Agfa Snapscan Touch
Date:	25/11/01 (576 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great price, Good free software, Easy set up

Disadvantages: none

I've had my Snapscan Touch for a little while now, and I've been very pleased with it. The interchangeable handles are a bit gimmicky, but look great!

NB - This unit should NOT be confused with the Snapscan standard range. The 'Touch' version is higher spec.

It scans fairly quickly, and the ScanWise software that comes with it is very very easy to operate. There are even some user-customisable buttons on the unit itself so you can scan direct to fax, to email and to text file.

My only quibble is that the OCR software which came in the box is deeply unsteady. If you have started up ScanWise first (which launches itself if you've pressed the 'preview' button on the unit, the Caere OCR software regularly crashes if you try to start it afterwards.

However, there is a way round this. Start the Caere package FIRST, select 'acquire image', and then ScanWise will boot itself up and you're away. Hasn't crashed once using this method.

And once you get going with it, the OCR software is EXCELLENT. Caere is a market-leading package and comes free in the box. I've used it on all sorts of things including CD cover notes, and it handles them with ease, even pale writing on a dark background. the only time it stumbles is if the text is a similar colour to the background.

Back to the scanner itself - highly recommended. Took about 10-15 minutes to plug in and install the drivers, and I haven't had a single problem with it since. And I do a LOT of scanning. It even works with my *ancient* SuperFax software, I simply defined the SuperFax software as a printer, and it scans the piece of paper/photo/whatever directly into the fax software. Which is 16 bit. Which is at least 5 years old. Impressive.

I'm running it on a 466MHz laptop with Windows 98 and 64Mb RAM, and I still get fast results.

Summary: