free xxx pics (Epson Perfection 1640SU)

Member Name: Alf Tupper

Product:	Epson Perfection 1640SU
Date:	25/06/02 (1976 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: simple set up, amazing quality reproductions

Disadvantages: bundled software needs refining

Apologies for the disingenuous title of this opinion but I wanted something that was eye-catching in order to court interest.

When I first started looking for a new scanner, it was because I had previously purchased several film scanners and was not happy with any of them, and found that the manufacturers exaggerated many of their features. I am very choosy about the quality of the scans, particularly for photo reproduction. I am a keen photographer, and look for the highest quality when I scan a photo, or anything for that matter.

After researching several scanners, I chose the Epson Perfection 1640 Photo because of its promise of professional looking photo scans, and the ability to also scan film (negatives and slides). This is definitely a feature that should not be overlooked. The quality of the film scans is incredible. Believe me I've seen film scans from some high quality (and very expensive!) film scanners, and they do not even come close.

For those of you who are interested, I have compared this Epson scanner to the Minolta Dimage Scan Dual II, the Canon Canoscan FS2710, and the Nikon LS2000, all of which are much more expensive and supposedly higher quality and they are not in the same street.

Besides the great film scans, the scanner also produces great quality copies of photos, documents and everything else that you can think of to scan. It sets up very easily, and did not give me any conflicts during the installation. I also recently installed it on Windows XP which I just bought, and it installed like a dream. I fully expected to have numerous conflicts, but Windows set it up perfectly.

The manuals that come with the scanner are OK. They don't go into much detail, but they certainly give you enough information to set up the scanner and learn how to use the software. This leads to the only weakness I have been able to find...the software. It has a lot of different options which are great and lets you
adjust just about anything, but every time you scan something, it remembers your settings from the last time you used it, and attempts to use them for your next scan. This is extremely annoying because it is normal to want to change the settings from scan to scan and you have to cancel it each time. I found it much easier to use the import function in one of my favourite photo editing software programs (Adobe Photoshop) and most of the software issues went away. I would definitely not let this deter you from buying the unit itself, but it is an improvement that Epson needs to make.

Another issue that I should note is that although the scanner allows interpolated scans in excess of 12800dpi, good luck getting your computer to process something that high in resolution. I have a Pentium II 366 MHZ machine, and I found that it struggled with scans greater than 1200dpi. I realise my computer is relatively old, but it's not a complete dinosaur and it still had trouble.

As for the rest of my experience with the scanner, I cannot complain at all. It is the best scanner I have ever used, and once again, Epson lives up to its reputation as a leader in imaging products.

Summary: