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Canon CanoScan LiDE 30 Scanner

Canon CanoScan LiDE 30 Scanner

List Price: $79.99
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: very good scanner
Review: Easy to use and a good scanner for the price. Would buy it again.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Great, but not perfect!
Review: I bought this scanner knowing full well that it was not the fastest on the market. However, the price, ease of operation,and picture quality make it a very desirable scanner for the money. I've owned a Canoscan N650U for about 2 years now and have had no problems. I have upgraded operating systems many times and they all seem to handle this series scanners without incident. I'm now running WinXP Pro with a XP2600+ processor and I must say I'm impressed. If you are looking for a compact scanner with good looks and great resolution at a affordable price then this is a great buy. The included software makes it easy for anyone to get quality scans with little practice and is very user friendly. Nice job Canon!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Good scanner at its price range
Review: Note that it is NOT a 48-bit scanner but a 24-bit scanner. It is also NOT USB 2.0 High-Speed (480Mbps) but USB 2.0 Full-Speed (12Mbps, the same as USB 1.1). Scan quality is good for greyscale but just okay for photos. Good things about this scanner is that it is powered by USB bus power (500mA) and it can be installed vertically. However, there are other hassles with the scanner like one have to remove any existing TWAIN scanner driver, or the scanner will not work correctly (in my case, I have EPSON TWAIN scanner driver installed). You can check the spec. ...

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: OSX review ... it works, PICT files no good
Review: I hooked this scanner up to a Pismo Powerbook running 10.2.3, right after downloading all the current drivers from the Canon website. Set up was very simple, although a tad lengthy, as there are two plug-in installations that need to take place in a specific order. The installations themselves were quick.

The scanner DOES run natively in OSX. It took me a few attempts to figure out the finer workings of "Canon Toolbox", the program which allows you to scan images from scanner to file. BE SURE TO CLICK "Use Scanner Driver..." button for the advanced settings. I was running into a problem where 1200 DPI images were scanning like absolute junk...grainy, small, and totally worthless. After a few frustrating attempts I realized that the file format was the issue. SCANNING TO PICT FILES IS USELESS, but change the file format to JPG and the images scan and save as one would expect. I'm wondering if other people's comments of this scanner being "too grainy" have to do with the default PICT file format.

The scanner feels a bit slower than my ol' UMAX, but that thing only scanned up to 300 DPI, so I would image the increase in resolution has to take more time. I really like the slim design...it's about 20% the size of my old scanner.

So far, I like it enough. I'll updated this review in a few months after I've had the chance to really put it to the test.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Easy and beautiful scans, but....
Review: I've been a great fan of Canon printers and scanners for years and so it was something of a no brainer to get this one.

First, it produces great and very clean scans. And this after very simple setup. However, and this is an important point, if you want to take full advantage of its fine engineering consider using different scanning software. Suffering from some slow scans and an interface which I did not like very much I switched over to a version of Paperport which came from the Visioneer scanner I replaced and, voila, speedy and beautiful scans.

This is not to say that the Canon software did not produce very good look scans, but the Paperport easily equalled them and seemed to help address the slow scanning some reviewers have noted.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Can't beat it for the price
Review: I was a little concerned about getting this scanner reading several not-so-hot reviews but I have had none of the problems other people described. As for the speed, a 300 dpi image (which is all you need for most purposes, email, Web, scrapbook, not sure about printing), took just under a minute, which IS slower than other scanners, but for the quality and price of this scanner, I didn't think it was out of the question, especially for personal home use. Besides, you can scan 3 pictures at the same time and it will automatically crop three different images for you so you can save them individually. Although, this featured hasn't worked perfectly every time but most of the time it works perfectly. If not you just have to adjust your placement of the pictures.

I thought the software bundle was excellent. The OCR works quite well, and once you get used to it is pretty easy to figure it out without reading up on it. The only thing I don't like is the "CanoScan" toolbox, a feature that I think is supposed to allow you easy access to all the different software features from one screen... perhaps I don't know how to use it correctly because I've read other reviews where people liked it... but it doesn't matter, I prefer to just use the icon on my desktop anyway.

If this scanner doesn't produce great scans for you than just take it back because you either got a lemon or something is wrong with your computer compatibility. For this I used my wife's 366mhz e-machine on a Win98 platform. For [the money] you can't beat this scanner.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: The Canon CanoScan LiDe 30
Review: I bought this scanner for myself on December 14, 2002. It did not take me long to install the software and hook the scanner up to my USB hub. The software and scanner were VERY easy to install. The first two scans I did were too red. After some adjustment of the software, I got my scans to come out much better. The only drawback to this scanner is the slowness of scans. Other than that, it works great! I have used it to scan old family photos. I sent the pictures to a relative who was impressed with the quality! This is an ideal scanner for the home user. If you are looking for an affordable home scanner, this is the one!

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Canon, thanks for ruining Christmas
Review: Setup was a breeze, the scanner looks nice, and the software is OK. There's just one problem, the scanned pictures look like crapola. At first I tried scanning a magazine cover at 300 dpi and the resulting image looked nothing like what I was scanning, it was all blotchy and the text looked like garbage. Then I switched to 1200 dpi and a regular old photograph. The colors were OK but the outlines of the people looked all jagged like bad Atari graphics from the 80's. Oh and you have to wait like 3 minutes for the 1200 dpi image. I bought another brand of scanner for about 80 bucks five years ago and it beats the daylights out of this thing. Needless to say, I'm going to return this hunk of junk.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Slow and Grainy Resolution
Review: I purchased this mostly for it's size, weight and "single cord" hook up (it makes it easier to "move it" between computers). While all of those aspects make this scanner fantastic... the scan quality, resolution, and speed are very poor. It took over 10 minutes to scan a photograph at 1200 dpi, and even then the quality wasn't great. The included software, however, is a nice added feature. Anyways, I'm returning this scanner and in the market now for something with more speed and resolution (even if it is a bulkier item).

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: So Good So Far (with Mac OSX.2 'Jaguar')
Review: ...

Anyhow, it's fine. It scans right into PS7 and OSX doesn't complain. It's not the fastest scanner and I've seen better image quality. For my purposes (and, once again, given that I have PS7 for touching up images) it's quite satisfying. The thin profile and small footprint (plus a stand to store it on its side) make it a welcome addition to my [CRMPD] deskspace.

There is an odd 'trick' to get the Canon software to recognize PS7 in OSX, otherwise it may activate the Classic OS instead (and that's not so bad, generally).

I have an iMac G4/17", and I'm not switching.


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