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Canon CanoScan LiDE 20 Scanner

Canon CanoScan LiDE 20 Scanner

List Price: $49.99
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Good for Travellers
Review: I have a job that takes me to Switzerland, Paris and London for months at a time. I take this scanner with me, for personal use, and it's great since it has no power cord and just plugs into my computer -- that's one less power-adapter that I need to lug along with me. On the down side, the software is crap and often freezes on my Windows system. All in all, decent for the price but try to find better softward.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Good scanner, good OCR, poor image manipulation software
Review: I've used this to scan documents for OCR, to scan photos, and to scan figures from textbooks (I teach CS at a small college) for use in lectures. Overall, I've been happy, especially given the price. Its small size makes book handling a bit awkward, and the Arcsoft PhotoBase and PhotoStudio software is simply terrible--I've uninstalled that garbage and use LView Pro instead.

I really like the LED light source: there's essentially no warmup time, and it gets its power from the USB interface, which is very convenient.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Don't purchase this for document copying!!!
Review: Although scans of photographs are adequate, black and white document copies are horrific. Even at the highest resolution, documents are barely readable once printed out and the software does not scale the documents properly, i.e., clipping off the page. I am extremely disappointed and will be returning this scanner.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: not bad
Review: Well i don't know too much about scanners since this is the first I've ever owned but it works great, and the photos look great. Plus it comes with this really cool photo editing software. And it's really really flat and compact so it takes up very little room on my desk.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Works well under Linux
Review: I use the Linux operating system and I chose this scanner after reviewing the SANE web page for USB scanners supported under Linux (Scanner Access Now Easy). This scanner is working very well with excellent color reproduction under Linux.

The development "snapshot" sane-backend 1.0.13 driver from Jan 18 2004 reproduced color in excellent quality. Beware of prior dated versions of this software that can result vertical lines in the scan or oversaturated color. The auto-cal time is about 25 seconds so I recommend setting "option cacheCalData 1" in plustek.conf. This reduced the auto-cal time to 8 seconds. Once the scan begins it is reasonably fast for an inexpensive scanner.

The scanner comes with a simple stand to hold the scanner vertical on desks with tight space. The only downside regards the glass surface which is set into the plastic so if you are scanning anything large which exceeds the glass area it will scan black fuzzy at the edges. If I could give 4 1/2 stars due to this it would still be a bargain of a scanner.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Why didn't I have one of these before!!
Review: This little unit is spectacular for what it does at the price! I ordered mine, it arrived quickly (for free, no less!), and I had it set up in a matter of minutes. Not only does it do a great job of scanning text for easy transmission to other parties as a PDF file, it also captures pictures quickly and easily, using a 1-button feature on the unit.

But here is the very best feature, if you intend to use it as a working piece of equipment rather than a simple, recreational toy-- the OCR that comes with the unit.

I scanned several technical articles needed for my work, and the unit had them formatted to editable WORD files in a matter of minutes. I scanned a 15 page legal document (articles of incorporation) that was laid out well, re-formatted and edited it to my specific needs, and re-transmitted the final, revised document to my partner in another city -- all in a matter of about 30 minutes. He was dumbstruck at how quickly this unit did a fairly complicated task--and so was I. This is a really, really neat unit, I just wish I had one a long time ago-- no more re-types of legal documents, articles, or other text documents that were previously re-typed by a paid assistant.

As you can tell, I like this unit a LOT -- and my partner purchased one within minutes of receiving the aforesaid legal documents -- he had to have his right away. Great unit, spectacular price, and simple to operate-- WOW!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great purchase!
Review: All the reviews here pretty much say it all. It's a bargain at this price brand new, w/ free shipping from Amazon. I love the software bundle (a powerful photo editor which I use a lot, OCR, & Scan to PDF among others)! It's my first scanner & I think it was a GREAT choice.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Nice Thin Space Saving Scanner That Gets The Job Done.
Review: Upon opening the box I was suprised to see how thin this scanner really is. It is about a little over an inch thick. It is great for saving space on the desk because of it's non-bulky design. It has three buttons on the side one for scanning photos, one for making a copy, and an other one for misc. I really liked the copy feature because when I need to make a quick copy for a document I just put it in the scanner and press the "copy" button and walk away let it do its thing. It scans it and then automatically send its to the printer where I can pick it up in a minute. I didnt even have to touch the computer! I only have experience with using the Mac Software it is average software nothing spectacular in interface design but whatever. Images come out in good enought quality for me.

Goods:
-Small space saving sleek designed case.
-ONE usb cable for everything [power AND data]
-Canon reputation for good quality imaging.

Bads:
-Sometimes the software can be buggy and keeps my computer from waking up, but that happens only occasionally. [Mac software, dont know about PC]

Conclusion:
This is a great scanner with an incredible value for all it does. I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a good looking scanner with excellent quality scans from photos to text documents.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: More Than Expected
Review: This scanner is certainly a lot higher quality than one would think, especially considering the cost. I feel like I should be sending Canon MORE money.

Image quality is greatly improved if you read the instructions and use the advanced options, but even without it, I rarely have to fiddle with anything.

This scanner is great for average use, but if you're wanting more professional quality, I'd go with a different scanner.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Acceptable Scanner
Review: It's small, and fast. Accepted quality for the average person who wants documents and occasional photos to be scan and shared.


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