Excellent Parallel Scanner (Canon Canoscan N640P)

Member Name: drtamseel

Product:	Canon Canoscan N640P
Date:	19/09/02 (1523 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Quality of pictures, Easy to setup, Ease of use

Disadvantages: None, (may be slower than USB)

I bought this scanner almost two years ago. To share photographs with friends and family scattered all over the world, I opted for a scanner rather than a digital camera. The simple reason was that photos on a 35mm or APS autofocus are generally much better value for money when compared to the cost of an excellent quality printer with corresponding paper and ink etc. Also, the prints from a 'normal' camera are more than acceptable.

As an owner of an old PC, I opted for a Parallel port scanner. This machine is beautiful, light-weight and above all, very efficient. I won't go into the details of the technical specifications which can be found in the 'Product Description' on many sites. It would suffice to say that the scanner easily does that job.

The software too, is very easy to use. After fiddling with the settings a few times, it is easy to find optimum settings for different types of photos. And it works with Windows 95, 98 and Me (I've tried it on three of my personal computers).

The best way, in my opinion, is to save images as bmp files. Then open them in a photo-editing software and convert them into jpg. A portion from a normal 6"x4" photo will end up in a 37k jpg file in excellent quality.

There is, however, a downside of having a parallel scanner as compared to a USB. It may not work with some new laptops which do not have parallel ports. In this case an adapter is required which is currently around £20. The speed isn't bad as compared to a USB scanner and as I mentioned before, image quality is excellent too.

So far, I've had no problems at all and I'm becoming a Canon fan (after buying a 35mm AutoFocus camera to complete the set).

Summary: