Price of equivalent scanner

  • Thread starter Thread starter Don W
  • Start date Start date
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Don W

I am in the UK. And want to get a scanner for a friend.

I have an old Epson Perfection 1250 scanner bought from 2001. It's a
junior version of the old Epson 1650 and it cost about 60% of a 1650.

I get the impression that the sensors on my 1250 were considered
relatively good for the year it came out.

Is the Epson Perfection 3490 or the Canoscan Lide 60 the same sort of
*quality* (not just resoultion) as my old Epson 1250?

What sort of price bracket today would a similar scanner to my 1250
be in?



--------------- START OF OVERVIEW SPEC -------------
On the 1250 I have True 1200 x 2400dpi dpi. 48-bit colour scanning
(24-bit output). CCD.

The 1650 had True 1600 x 3200 dpi and 48-bit colour scanning. Built
in "Hyper Processor" makes it faster.

Official UK price for mine was about 90 pounds ($90) in 2001. The
1650 was about 170 pounds ($170).

http://www.epson.co.uk/news_events/archive/release/sept01.htm
--------------- END OF OVERVIEW SPEC --------------
 
Don W said:
I am in the UK. And want to get a scanner for a friend.

I have an old Epson Perfection 1250 scanner bought from 2001. It's a
junior version of the old Epson 1650 and it cost about 60% of a 1650.

I get the impression that the sensors on my 1250 were considered
relatively good for the year it came out.

Is the Epson Perfection 3490 or the Canoscan Lide 60 the same sort of
*quality* (not just resoultion) as my old Epson 1250?

What sort of price bracket today would a similar scanner to my 1250
be in?



--------------- START OF OVERVIEW SPEC -------------
On the 1250 I have True 1200 x 2400dpi dpi. 48-bit colour scanning
(24-bit output). CCD.

The 1650 had True 1600 x 3200 dpi and 48-bit colour scanning. Built
in "Hyper Processor" makes it faster.

Official UK price for mine was about 90 pounds ($90) in 2001. The
1650 was about 170 pounds ($170).
Click to expand...
Scanners have advanced like other products and got cheaper over the years.
You can pick up a really good one for £25 now, but one with loads of
features and more advanced software for £35-40. It depends what you want it
for. Any computer shop will have them and as you know what specification
you're looking for it will be easier.
Try www.aria.co.uk
 
I think my Canon Lide 50 is marvellous. Lots of software came with it too,
including PhotoShop Elements.
 
Don W said:
I am in the UK. And want to get a scanner for a friend.

I have an old Epson Perfection 1250 scanner bought from 2001. It's a
junior version of the old Epson 1650 and it cost about 60% of a 1650.

I get the impression that the sensors on my 1250 were considered
relatively good for the year it came out.

Is the Epson Perfection 3490 or the Canoscan Lide 60 the same sort of
*quality* (not just resoultion) as my old Epson 1250?

What sort of price bracket today would a similar scanner to my 1250
be in?



--------------- START OF OVERVIEW SPEC -------------
On the 1250 I have True 1200 x 2400dpi dpi. 48-bit colour scanning
(24-bit output). CCD.

The 1650 had True 1600 x 3200 dpi and 48-bit colour scanning. Built
in "Hyper Processor" makes it faster.

Official UK price for mine was about 90 pounds ($90) in 2001. The
1650 was about 170 pounds ($170).

http://www.epson.co.uk/news_events/archive/release/sept01.htm
--------------- END OF OVERVIEW SPEC --------------
Click to expand...
Prices have gone down. You can get more scanner for the same money now.

You can research the Epson scanners and the current prices.
http://www.epson.co.uk/
 
"Don W" emitted :
I am in the UK. And want to get a scanner for a friend.

I have an old Epson Perfection 1250 scanner bought from 2001. It's a
junior version of the old Epson 1650 and it cost about 60% of a 1650.

I get the impression that the sensors on my 1250 were considered
relatively good for the year it came out.

Is the Epson Perfection 3490 or the Canoscan Lide 60 the same sort of
*quality* (not just resoultion) as my old Epson 1250?

What sort of price bracket today would a similar scanner to my 1250
be in?
Click to expand...

Lide scanners use "LED Indirect Exposure" technology - they're great
for documents but have a very slim depth of field - anything more than
a couple of mm off the surface will appear blurred. You might consider
a CCD scanner.. slightly bulkier but able to capture three dimensional
objects also.
 
Signal said:
S i g n a l @ l i n e o n e . n e t
Click to expand...

Is lineone due to disappear anytime soon? When I took it on, it was run
by Sainsbury, then I think it got bought out by Tiscali. I have no idea
who owns it now, or what its future is.

Reason I ask, I have an old line one account that I still pick up mail
from (it's the one I posted on sites, when I was very active in tracing
my family tree)

Dave
ps sorry for the cross post, but I have no idea which ng the op was using.
 
Dave said:
ps sorry for the cross post, but I have no idea which ng the op was using.
Click to expand...

That's nothing, I had no idea Lineone made scanners. How's that for
lame?
 
Philip said:
I think my Canon Lide 50 is marvellous. Lots of software came with it too,
including PhotoShop Elements.
Click to expand...

I went out to get an LiDE 20, ended up with a LiDE 25, which did not (at the
time) work with my linux box (although, after much hacking around with
sane-backends, I got some movement out of it, and actually got a reasonable scan
out of it, just in time for the sane developers to actually release a far better
back end which works extremely well).

The LiDE series use alternating red-green-blue LED's to achieve full-colour
scans. If you can see the scanning head while it is running, and move your eyes
about, the resulting colour flicker is quite psychedelic!
This works quite well, but the optical tech used does not focus anywhere other
than the top surface of the glass. Anything off the glass will be poorly
focused, if it is visible at all. Other scanners provide better coverage
off-glass. If all you are doing is photographs or flat documents, this will not
be a problem.

The LiDE scanners (at least the 20/25/30) are all bus powered, meaning no
additional power supply required (although if you are running them off a USB
hub, you should probably use a powered hub, or run them direct off the motherboard)

As to 'lots of software', I too can attest to that, but I have no idea what it's
like, as I do not have anything to run it on...
 
The Lineone domain is currently managed by Tiscali. I'd guess they would
have no reason to go through the grief of switching it off (and annoying
countless of their customers) and have made no noises about selling it to my
knowledge.
 
Philip said:
The Lineone domain is currently managed by Tiscali. I'd guess they would
have no reason to go through the grief of switching it off (and annoying
countless of their customers) and have made no noises about selling it to my
knowledge.
Click to expand...

Many thanks for a sensible answer

Regards

Dave
 
Don W <[email protected]> said:
I am in the UK. And want to get a scanner for a friend.

I have an old Epson Perfection 1250 scanner bought from 2001. It's a
junior version of the old Epson 1650 and it cost about 60% of a 1650.

I get the impression that the sensors on my 1250 were considered
relatively good for the year it came out.

Is the Epson Perfection 3490 or the Canoscan Lide 60 the same sort of
*quality* (not just resoultion) as my old Epson 1250?

What sort of price bracket today would a similar scanner to my 1250
be in?
Click to expand...

Reading the Epson and Canon sites should answer your question, but to
put it simply the most basic Epson scanner will be at least as good as
the 1250 was. And, not only are fewer notes required, the notes are not
work what they were in 2001 so scanners are a huge amount cheaper now.

It's worth looking at the whole bundle when deciding what to buy - for
example will your friend want to scan documents into Word and/or Excel?
If so look for something that includes OCR software.

If he wants to scan prints of photos then again the basic scanner will
be fine, but if he is wanting to scan negatives and/or slides and wants
a really good-quality output and/or has lots (hundreds) of slides to
scan and/or has so many documents to scan that a sheet feeder would be
useful, then the parameters change.

The cheapest Epson is the V100 - £60 approx., will do slides & film
strips, optical resolution (the one that counts) is 3200dpi x 9600dpi.
For basic scanning I can't think he'd need anything more. The next
model up (at least in stock at Savastore) is the V350 (£86). It's got a
slightly better optical resolution (4800 x 9600) and would be better for
scanning a number of film strips as apparently it has some kind of basic
feeder in the lid. However, don't confuse the photo correction software
with these scanners with the wonders of Digital ICE, Digital GEM and so
on. D-ICE sorts out dust in a completely different way, by scanning an
extra Infrared channel (film except for Kodachrome slides are
translucent to this, dust & scratches are not) and then using that extra
information to produce an image without dust & scratch marks. It's
*very* impressive.

I've never used a Canon scanner so can't comment on the merits of the
technology compared to Epson, but imagine that the basic Canon LIDE
would be fine unless his requirements are more than basic.

And, I believe there is some free OCR software around - though obviously
I can't say how good it is. I found a box with the wrong price on one
time I was visiting PC World and am happily using that on the few
occasions I need OCR.

Whatever you buy, steer clear of 'brand X' scanners. Make sure you can
find the maker's web site, and that you can download drivers etc. for
it.
 
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