Rating: 
Summary: Solid Scanner, Shaky USB Interface, Weak Epson Support
Review: The Epson 2450 Perfection is a good scanner, but I was very disappointed with the incompatibility of the USB interface with an add-in USB 2.0 card (Belkin F5U220 - not a hub). I am using WinXP Home. Using this setup, the scanner prescans, but it cannot complete any final scan without an error. It works OK using a USB 1.1 interface, but very slowly on high-density scans (35 mm slides, film). I solved the speed problem by switching to the firewire interface. (Epson does not supply the firewire cable.) Epson customer service was quite unhelpful, blowing me off with the convenient theory that only USB interfaces on motherboards can be expected to work properly with their equipment (where is that in their specs?). I'm not alone with this problem as a Google search will reveal.
Rating: 
Summary: Great scanner for the price.
Review: The scanner works great with either USB2 or Firewire. Didn't notice any speed difference between the two. The other people that are complaining about the USB speed must not be using USB2. You also get a USB cable with the scanner. If you are going to use a Firewire cable, you'll need to get a 6 pin to 6 pin cable. The epson twain worked great when you are scanning in multiple slides or negs. It would separate them out into individual pictures. The Silverfast twain works great with negs and allows you to choose between various films to give you a more acurate color rendition. The only thing that I found annoying was that the scanner doesn't scan all the way to the edge. You need to keep the item to be scanned least 1/8" away from the borders. Makes it a little hard to line the pictures up completely straight. Over all a great fast scanner for the price.
Rating:
Summary: Great scanner for the price.
Review: The scanner works great with either USB2 or Firewire. Didn't notice any speed difference between the two. The other people that are complaining about the USB speed must not be using USB2. You also get a USB cable with the scanner. If you are going to use a Firewire cable, you'll need to get a 6 pin to 6 pin cable. The epson twain worked great when you are scanning in multiple slides or negs. It would separate them out into individual pictures. The Silverfast twain works great with negs and allows you to choose between various films to give you a more acurate color rendition. The only thing that I found annoying was that the scanner doesn't scan all the way to the edge. You need to keep the item to be scanned least 1/8" away from the borders. Makes it a little hard to line the pictures up completely straight. Over all a great fast scanner for the price.
Rating: 
Summary: Great flatbed scanner, ok for negatives and slides too
Review: This is a great flatbed scanner for professionals and consumers alike. In flatbed mode, it is very fast and provides great results. I'm using it connected to my Mac via firewire under OSX. There is an Epson Twain driver that works under OSX with this scanner, which you can download from [another website]. This scanner is good for anyone who wants to scan prints and documents, with the occaisional negative/slide scan. It's photo/documents scanning is quite fast, however when scanning transparencies it is quite slow. And although it does a fine job at transparencies, of course the results are not as good as with a dedicated film scanner. But, good dedicated film scanners cost thousands of dollars, so the Epson 2450 is a good compromise. I'm a photographer and I use this scanner to scan black and white and color medium format 120 negatives and prints with great results. Epson is proving itself the leader in digital darkroom desktop imaging. They are the leaders in inkjet photo printers as well. The only reason I'm not giving this scanner 5 stars is because of the price, which I find slightly high.
Rating:
Summary: Makes other scanners look really sad.
Review: This review can be quite short and make all the relevant points. * This scanner is FAST (using IEEE 1394)
* This scanner does an incredible job on transparencies.
* The included software (Epson Twain 5) is really nice.
* Did I say it was fast? Don't even think of using this scanner with USB. Get yourself a IEEE 1394 card and put it in your machine. This scanner makes USB look like the dark ages. IEEE 1394 is THE reason to buy this scanner to me. I did a quick test and it made the final scan with IEEE 1394 seem like the pre-scan on USB. The included transparency adapters are kind of flimsy, but I keep them in a safe place. You can scan 4 slides without adjusting anything...it scans them in sequence at the quality level you want. I'm scanning 120 negatives as proofs and it's done away with my need for any kind of contact sheet/4x6 proof of my shots. I can make darkroom enlargement decisions right on the PC. My clients can get a very good idea of the tonal quality and composition without me going through the expense of printing ANYTHING in the darkroom. For reflective media, this Scanner is incredible. I've never seen scans like this with such speed. The copy function is great - hooked to a Lexmark Z52 on draft mode, and it makes really, really fast copies. I found myself feeling like I was working an enlarger in a darkroom rather than a PC and Scanner. I was digging up old negatives that were never printed just for the fun of it. Turn the scanner to its maximum resolution and it slows down some but the results are suprisingly good for flatbed! I made a 11x14 print from a 120 negative and it looked really good. Dare I say ready to exhibit? Now I'd like to have a $3000 film scanner for my 120 work (donations accepted) but until then, this is doing great for me.
Rating:
Summary: Fine scanner, but check the software....
Review: This scanner was purchased to do heavy duty technical work for two university courses I'm preparing. It delivers high quality scans quickly using the software provided. However, there's a big problem if you want to use Macintosh OS X, the new Apple OS. Epson's drivers operate neither in native OS X nor in Classic mode. Instead, you've got to shut down and boot up in OS 9.2. I wish I had understood that before purchasing this scanner.
Rating: 
Summary: Dust under glass
Review: Very disappointed to receive this expensive scanner with dust under the glass. Otherwise, installed Windows XP on a year old computer, scanner installed fine and works fine, except for the
under-glass dust. May return it, but a reviewer of another Epson product writes that they did that and got another one with dust under the glass.
Rating:
Summary: hate to rain on the parade, but.....
Review: Well maybe not rain, but drizzle slightly. Although I agree with the other reviewers regarding the quality of the scans, there are a few shortcomings. The Epson Twain, while easy to learn, has a terrible time with anything other than bright slides, and arbitrarily cuts off parts of the slides IT feels are too dark. I can find no way around this, other than to use Silverfast. This means scanning slides one at a time. Also, on negatives of photos I took of fireworks, the scanner refused to scan the slides, only the parts it considered bright enough. Again, Silverfast was the only getaround.Maybe my scanner is the Friday afternoon model, but...
Another thing, the Twain seems intent on extrapolating the image to over 4 times the optical scan. Why?? If you scan 4 slides at a time, all 4 need to be manually reduced to 100% individually, adding greatly to scan times.
Other than that, a good reliable scanner with very good scans.
Rating:
Summary: Still a great scanner
Review: Why am I writing a review for a scanner that has been out of production for 2 years? Because it's so darn good! I've had mine since January 2002 and it has performed without a hitch. I have upgraded to Mac OSX since I bought this and was really disappointed Epson did not make a driver for it. Luckliy I discovered Ed Hamrick's superb "VUESCAN" software. Get it at hamrick.com. On OSX or Windows it simply blows away any Twain driver or Epson driver. It rivals silverfast AI. The best thing about this scanner is the firewire interface. It's rocket fast for print scans. Why have scanner makers not migrated to this far superior interface?
You can scan film too, but be warned that 35mm is a bit soft. I've had some luck by scanning directly on the glass without a neg holder. 120 and 4x5 film look beautiful on this scanner. It has a great dynamic range-with the right software.
Pick one up used if you need the Firewire speed. You won't be disappointed.
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