Rating: 
Summary: Great Bargain
Review: Since I purchased my first Canon color printer 2 years ago, I've had nothing but positive experiences with Canon products. This scanner is no exception. It's replacing a VERY old parallel port scanner and I must say, technology has come a long, long way.To begin with, this scanner is incredibly fast. Connected to a USB 2.0 port, full page color scans at 300dpi take less than 30 seconds to complete. Most of the time, I use it to scan pencil sketches directly into Photoshop (extremely easy). In gray-scale mode, I can scan an entire page at 300dpi in ~10 seconds...blazingly fast! Top it off with easy setup, self powered USB (no power brick!), and sleek design, this scanner is a bargain. Unless you're doing hardcore, ultra high-res, ultra high-quality, professional graphics work, this is the scanner for you.
Rating: 
Summary: Does NOT work at 1200dpi
Review: The LiDE 50 will not scan at 1200dpi. I'm running a 1Ghz Athlon with 256MB of RAM and plenty of system resources in Windows 2000 Professional. The scans just "hang" at 20% or 90% and never finish. Also, parts in the internal mechanism of the scanner I recieved appear to have minor corrosion on them. Whether it is this or a compatibility problem that is the cause of the scanning problems I will never know because there is no way I'm wasting my time with another unit.
Rating: 
Summary: I'll keep it.
Review: This is my third attempt at using a scanner. Microtek is for people who know what they are doing, i.e., not me, and Epson 1660 wouldn't work with my eMac, so after much research and with the great Amazon price, I decided to order the LiDE50. I had some trouble installing the software (my fault) but have been able to scan with no problems. Having to use Classic is a drawback, but one I can live with since I'm able to get the scanner to work. It doesn't seem to make much noise at all, little beeps like R2D2, and its diminutive size is great for my small desk. It is very sleek and seems to be well made. Since I've only had the scanner a few days my first impressions may change later on, but right now I am very pleased with the LiDE50.
Rating:
Summary: Buy Photoshop Elements 2.0 and get LiDE 50 scanner free
Review: This scanner comes with a fully functioning Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0 CD and the scanner is less costly than the software alone. Regarding the scanner itself, I purchased the scanner to digitize many photographs and documents. The image quality seems to be good. The scanner is powered by the USB connection so there is no external power cord. The speed isn't great but its sufficient for my needs. The scanner has a really great feature called multiscan which is its strongest and weakest feature. This allows you to put more than one photo in the scanner and the scanner scans in each photo into a separate JPG file. When this works it is awesome. Unfortunately about 25% of the time it can't find the edges of the photos correctly and the result is that you have to scan the photos separately. I also like the ability of being able to scan to PDF for documents.
Rating: 
Summary: Caution to MAC OS X users
Review: This scanner has been a nightmare. Before purchasing the scanner I called Canon and asked then if it worked with Mac OS X.3. They assured me it would work just fine. I am running Mac OS X.3 and installed the LIDE 50 Scanner with assistance from the Canon Phone Tech Support (not toll free). After they walked me through the software installation, the scanner did not work. The Canon Tech person then instructed me to download a new Toolbox and a new Driver from their website. After downloading I called them back and had them guide me through these installations too. After the new installations, the scanner worked, but when I opened iPhoto all my photos had disappeared. My library and albums were gone and the windows were completely blank. IPhoto had worked perfectly minutes before the installation. The Canon tech tried to figure out what had happened but after about an hour of trying things and me getting nervous as the tech did not seem sure of himself and was giving up, I thanked him for all his help and asked him if we could get the opinion of a Supervisor or Senior Tech. He politely agreed and a Supervisor came onto the phone and told me that he would have a Senior Tech call me. The Senior Tech called me a few hours later and said he had reviewed the problem and had determined that "there was no way that the Canon product could have caused the problem and it must be your computer" and he would not be able to help me. I explained to him that the computer was 2 months old and my machine and software worked perfectly up to the minute the Canon software was installed. I explained that immediately after the scanner software was installed, iPhoto just became non functioning and my photos disappeared. I also told him that while I was waiting for his call, I had spent several hours on the phone with Apple and they could not solve the problem (they tried for hours )but said the evidence made it clear that something was going on with the new installations. The Canon Tech just repeated several times that he had determined that it was impossible that the Canon scanner had caused the problems and he could not help me. I said I was disatisfied and upset and I would like to speak with someone I could appeal to. I was connected to a "corporate supervisor" who said, "I'm not a technician, but I've been told that it was impossible that the Canon scanner or software caused the problem..sorry, we can't help you." End of discussion. So, now my photos are gone, iPhoto is non functioning and I have spent hours on the phone and nothing is fixed...and no help from Canon.
I rate Canon customer service as poor, unsatisfactory, and insulting. The product I rate as poor, nonfunctioning and a definate NO-NO for Mac OS X.3 .
Rating:
Summary: Really Nice and Slim
Review: This scanner has very nice features. It's very slim and functional. Image scans are fast and have good image quality. The ScanGear is very simple to use. You can scan multiple photos at the same time and have it on separate windows in Photoshop (not included). Best of all, it's compatible with WinXP and is USB2.0 certified. Works well with Adaptec XHub4 for Notebooks too! That is if you're short on usb ports like me. Tried it with Targus' Cable-Powered USB2.0 Hub, didn't work. I suggest you use it with Adaptec hubs and adapters coz they're the ones certified by Canon to be compatible with the scanner.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful scans, great value, fast... just as advertised
Review: This scanner is all that Canon advertises:
* BEAUTIFUL SCANS: I scanned over 1,200 photographs with the LiDE 50: Black and white, color, newsprint, etc. The color, shading, and texture of the originals was retained. No added marks or lines from the scanner.
* GREAT VALUE: The software that comes with the scanner is actually stuff you want to keep and use (for a change). Unless you're looking to go pro, Photoshop Elements will be everything you're likely to need (I'm comparing it to features in PaintshopPro 7.0, but Elements is far easier to use). Add to it a bundle of other software that may be just as useful to you, depending on your project.
* FAST: Suffice it to say that I needed to scan a lot of snapshots at 300 dpi and waiting for the scanner was not a problem. See some of the other posts for time measurements. * I used this on a machine that supported USB 2.0, running WinXP Pro. Installation and set up basically took care of itself. I'd buy it again.
Rating:
Summary: If you want to scan more than one page- forget it !
Review: This scanner is sleek and does not need a lot of space, due to its design and the wonderful single USB cable connection. The scans are of good or very good quality (compared to HP).
However the printer driver is unbelievable annoying. You have the option to use default scanning settings ( for b&w, greyscale, magazine, text) or to manually adjust the settings for each picture. The options are standard but the preview window is very small (too small). Thus you have to guess very often. But the worst feature of this driver is, that there is no way to save some of your own settings. You have to make the same adjustments all over again - for every single page of a document you are scanning ! (This affects every software you are using).
This is unacceptable - on the other hand they deliver a well working OCR program with scanner (0mnipage). What are they thinking?
Rating: 
Summary: Lide 50 Review: Consider Carefully
Review: Well after accidently dropping and smashing my previous Canoscan 1240U which I was completely happy with, EXCEPT for the speed. Superb image quality, but painfully slow, I looked at the canon site to checkout the new range. I considered 3 canoscans, the Lide20/30 and 50.
I selected the 50 primarily because it was USB2 and more than twice the speed of
my old scanner (the 1240U's are renovned for slow scans). Unfortunately this scanner just doesnt live up to any of the hype or my expectations. I did expect the image quality to be as good as the lide 20 or 30. The images as other people have also said are grainy and drilling down on a 600 or 1200dpi scan easily shows this. I am very dissapointed with the image quality.
The dust button must be enabled otherwise dust imperfections are shocking. The speed is certainly faster especially on preview. But on some scans depending on what you are scanning at etc its not alot faster than my old scanner. I get the
feeling that this scanner is geared around the 300dpi, as some scans other than
300dpi eg: 150 take an unexplainable long time. The updates of the scan software are nice, but not alot better in my view.
I did end up having to uninstall all of my older Canoscan software to be sure
that there wasnt some wierd software issue causing the poor quality. If I had to choose again, I think i would again suffer the slow speed of the Lide 30 (updated 1240U) and choose it even the lide 20 is better quality than the 50. Having said all this even though the scanner is usb2 capable i have it plugged into a usb1 only port, but this shouldnt make any difference.
Rating:
Summary: impressive
Review: wow! i really am impressed by this tiny scanner. i've only just received this scanner, but what i have tested thus far has been outstanding. it's speed is wonderful in comparison to the 3 or 4 year old umax scanner i had been using. this scanner is light weight and easy to use. installing the scanner and software is a breeze. it comes with a small stand so that it will sit horizontally on its side if you are pressed for space. the scan quality is great, too...which is the most important thing. it's also aesthetically pleasing, with a stainless steel look.
the only con i have for this product is my concern about the stability of the top. it seems slightly flimsy, although most scanner tops are the very same way.
overall, i would recommend this product to anyone, though i have only had it for a few hours and could not give any specifics on longevity.
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