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Rating: 
Summary: Quality and Ease of Use
Review: Having chosen the Canoscan 8000F and the Epson 2400 as my short list, I finally selected the Canon. Why? In the shop (Australia) both machines were on display - the Epson seemed very flimsy compared to the Canon - the lid of the Epson came away in my hand!I have a flat-screen iMac. I downloaded the latest Scangear CS for Mac OSX, and Canoscan Toolbox from the Canon website - these being more recent than the August 2002 disk. I had Adobe Photoshop Elements 2 already installed. Then I plugged in the Canon and everything worked perfectly straight away. The machine has very impressive resolution and functionality and works seamlessly with Photoshop Elements 2. (Note that the instructions say that the only native OSX software that will work with Scangear CS is Adobe Photoshop - not true any more - Photoshop Elements 2 works perfectly! A great product all round.
Rating:
Summary: Quality and Ease of Use
Review: Having chosen the Canoscan 8000F and the Epson 2400 as my short list, I finally selected the Canon. Why? In the shop (Australia) both machines were on display - the Epson seemed very flimsy compared to the Canon - the lid of the Epson came away in my hand! I have a flat-screen iMac. I downloaded the latest Scangear CS for Mac OSX, and Canoscan Toolbox from the Canon website - these being more recent than the August 2002 disk. I had Adobe Photoshop Elements 2 already installed. Then I plugged in the Canon and everything worked perfectly straight away. The machine has very impressive resolution and functionality and works seamlessly with Photoshop Elements 2. (Note that the instructions say that the only native OSX software that will work with Scangear CS is Adobe Photoshop - not true any more - Photoshop Elements 2 works perfectly! A great product all round.
Rating: 
Summary: unhappy user
Review: I bought this scanner 2 days ago in Phoenix and returned it today. Software takes almost 20 min. to install, is very confusing to use ( compared to a Visioneer 7300 which I have) there is no power switch meaning that the scanner is always on. But the warm up time is long and the scan is slooow and noisy. Cost was $199.
Rating: 
Summary: Slow Slow Slow!!! Software poor
Review: I bought this scanner because the image ratings were great. What I got was a scanner that spends more time warming up and thinking than scanning. This has caused a 4 fold increase in my scan times. As they say, time is money! Also, the software tools that come with have a poor, non-standard interface that required much head scratching. I just returned the scanner!
Rating:
Summary: Slow scanner
Review: I was looking for a high image quality FAST flat bed scanner and found 2 within my budget both MSRP$199, Canon 8000F and Epson 3170 so I bought 2 to compare. Both exhibit excellent image and text quality, both include negative/slide adapter and both have great software bundle.
However, 8000F comes with Photoshop Element 1.0 where as Epson 3170 comes with Element 2.0 which is $50 value by itself.
The slow scan speed of this 8000F makes this unsuitable for my need. Preview takes 7 second as oppose to 4 sec advertised speed. Scanning color photo full bed at 300dpi takes 43 sec, 96dpi takes 23 sec. The canon website says this is a fast scanner but my test proves otherwise. With the same PC setup for Epson 3170, preview takes only 4 sec, 300dpi color photo full bed takes 23 sec, and 96dpi takes 9.3 sec.
8000F is also noisier than the 3170. Another minor problem is 8000F does not have a power switch like the Epson.
One good thing about the 8000F is the copy to printer function works and OCR is a tiny bit more accurate than 3170.
Canon makes great printer which I also own but their scanner is a disappointment
I would not recommend user to buy this scanner.
Rating: 
Summary: Good all purpose scanner
Review: I've bought this scanner to scan both reflective media and films. Paper scans are amazingly clear, 35mm film scan is acceptable for a flat bed, but still not close to that from a HP s20. FARE takes out a lot of detail, but help a lot with the dust. Using it at the low setting work best for me. The scanner will scan medium format film properly. All you have to do is make a card board frame for it. One big problem I have with it is it won't create more than 6 thumbnails for batch scanning at 2400 dpi. Considering how the marketing dept stress the capability of batch scanning 12 frames , I'm disappointed in this. I'm contacting Canon to see if I'm doing something wrong and their support has been slow.
Rating:
Summary: Good all purpose scanner
Review: I've bought this scanner to scan both reflective media and films. Paper scans are amazingly clear, 35mm film scan is acceptable for a flat bed, but still not close to that from a HP s20. FARE takes out a lot of detail, but help a lot with the dust. Using it at the low setting work best for me. The scanner will scan medium format film properly. All you have to do is make a card board frame for it. One big problem I have with it is it won't create more than 6 thumbnails for batch scanning at 2400 dpi. Considering how the marketing dept stress the capability of batch scanning 12 frames , I'm disappointed in this. I'm contacting Canon to see if I'm doing something wrong and their support has been slow.
Rating:
Summary: Know what you're not getting
Review: The 8000F is a classic example of caveat emptor. Oh, it scans photos perfectly well, but the bundled OCR software works only in Classic mode -- and very slowly. If you are experienced reader of instructions, you can probably figure this out. Also, the CanoScan driver -- the driver for the scanner -- is Mac OSX compatible -- read this carefully now -- with very little software. You must boot in Classic to use the OCR software that comes with the scanner. The CanoScan driver will not recognize other OCR software, like Readiris, for example.
Rating: 
Summary: Decent scanner let down by rubbish software
Review: This is one of those computer peripherals that looks good on paper but lets you down when you get down to using it because although it is higher spec than what most people will pay for, it is still designed for people who have no idea why they want it. Amateur-enthusiast hardware and price, jo-bloggs software. In my case the ScanGear CS software is a let down when it comes to scanning negatives, because it tries to do everything for you. There is no option to just see what the scanner is seeing - you are presented with a varying number of thumbnails where the software has detirmined frames are. If it doesn't like a frame, it won't let you scan it. It will crop the image if it feels like it. Rotation and seeing two frames as one is just an annoyance that can be sorted in Photoshop, but still an annoyance. Why couldn't they just have kept it simple, instead of assuming that everyone who buys this is an idiot who can't handle software without big soft looking buttons, and doesn't really care what comes out the other end. If you want to scan negatives and want any control over what is get something else.
Rating:
Summary: Have fun with your Drivers!
Review: This scanner was purchased for the purpose of scanning many family photos and for that purpose it did a great job initially. I was able to put four pictures on the platter and it would create four JPEGs, one for each picture. Nice touch.
But then I unplugged it from the computer and have never been able to get it working right again. Do a google search on "CanoScan 8000F Twain Driver" and look at all the fun people have with the drivers for this thing. I have rerun the setup program. I have followed the instructions on unplugging the scanner, running their driver remove utility, rebooting, installing all over again and no luck. If you NEVER plan on unplugging the scanner it may work well for you. Basically if you don't have a web cam, or digital camera and never plan on unplugging it you may be able to use this scanner.
Any company that can not put out a driver/program install package that requires a single click from a user is pretty lame. The user should not have to jump through ten hoops to get the product to work correctly.
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