I've owned an Umax Astra 600p scanner for well over four or five years now. I've attached it to several computers, all of various speeds. Currently, it's connected to my P2 450Mhz computer, and is doing fine. It's been around for a while now, but at the end of the day, technology in this area hasn't improved significantly. This model, as the 'p' in the name indicates, is connected to the parrallel port. Everybodys first fear is then "Where does the printer plug in to?!?". Simple! It plugs into the back of the scanner. The printer performance doesn't seems to affected by this, just make sure that you have enough printer ...  Read the complete review

Umax are generally the cheapest scanners you can get. When buying a scanner, the main features to look for and pay for is: a) Resolution This is not too much of a problem because if the scanner can do over 600 dpi, then its more than enough for any user, barr the Multimillion pound publisher..! b) Price Don't go over board. Buy the scanner tha meets your needs not your budget.. scanners are very cheap, don't boterh spending more than about £100. c)Speed Parralel port is the slowest with USB and SCSI being faster, but expect to pay a little more for those. If you use the scanner regularly than a scsi/usb would be a good ...  Read the complete review

When I was looking for a Scanner I was on a very tight budget and when I saw a 32 bit scanner at such a low price, well I had to get it. At first I was a little sceptical about the quality of this machine. It was bought for home use and to support my teaching. The quality is excellent when price is taken into account. Umax may be on the lower end of the price war, but if this is what they can do then to heck witht the compition. I have seen equivilent results from far more expensive machines, so save yourself a few bucks and get it ...  Read the complete review

This little scanner has provided me with many hours of respectable use and all for very little money indeed. Coming from an image recognition background I'm ofeten accused of being over-critical of the output that scanners can, and sometimes cannot, produce. The UMAX has, for the price, provided a suitably good output for the sake of document management (200 dpi B&W) at a very good speed. Often one finds that with parallel ports scanners they can be dogged with poor warm-up speeds and there is little attention paid to the speed of the scanner internal scanning hardware because of the expected delays with the parallel port interface. UMAX seem to ...  Read the complete review