Rating: 
Summary: Bad Support. No Windows XP driver...
Review: Be aware buyers. Epson still doesn't have windows XP driver for this scanner. There is absolutely no reason the drivers are not ready as of Feb 2002. Even the ones coming out is not certified by Microsoft. I usually like Epson printers but this scanner is totally useless with my Windows XP system.
Rating:
Summary: Bad Support. No Windows XP driver...
Review: Be aware buyers. Epson still doesn't have windows XP driver for this scanner. There is absolutely no reason the drivers are not ready as of Feb 2002. Even the ones coming out is not certified by Microsoft. I usually like Epson printers but this scanner is totally useless with my Windows XP system.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Scanner
Review: I found installation flawless, and operation reliable. I've had no problems with this machine at all. I'm running Windows 98 and I scan into Photoshop. When I "Import", Photoshop opens the Epson Twain software and I am able to scan without any problems. I can also The quality is quite good for the money I paid. I'm quite pleased with the product. The only thing I don't like is in the software. I cannot access my scanned image in Photoshop until I close Epson Twain. Even minimizing it doesn't work. However, that is minor.
Rating:
Summary: Fast, accurate, quiet, great support under Linux
Review: I got this scanner to replace a UMAX 1220S that I had before. The UMAX had one big problem - I couldn't turn it off. It sat on my SCSI chain and if it saw any traffic it would stay on - since I have CD-ROMs on the same chain it was on constantly! After a while being constantly turned on must have hurt something because after a while I started getting chromatic distortion on sharp edges. So it became time to replace my scanner. After a lot of research, I settled on either the 1240U or the 1640SU - one thing that helped me decide on Epson instead of another brand is that Epson has helped the Linux scanner programmers (the SANE project) to write drivers for their scanners, unlike other manufacturers that seem to want to keep their hardware interfaces a secret. After some more deliberation, I decided to go for the 1640SU over the 1240U. The deciding factor? Was it the increased resolution? No - for my purposes 1200dpi would be enough. Was it the fact that it has both a SCSI and a USB interface? No - I had already decided that I didn't want the hassle of a scanner connected to my SCSI port and that I was going to use a USB scanner. So what was the deciding factor that made me spend an extra $$? It seems silly, but it's true - the 1640SU has a power switch. Yes, I was tired of a scanner with no power switch and no way to turn it off. The 1240U is supposed to go into "sleep mode" after some time of not being used, but then again my 1220S was supposed to do that, and you know how that turned out. Also, I had read that there were issues with scanning wide material on the 1240U (supposedly reflections from the ribbon cable inside can leave a bright band across the scan), plus the 1640SU had generally better reviews. So I bought it. I can say that this scanner does everything I expected and more. The Windows scanning software works fine (I made sure to follow the instructions when I installed it), and then I tested on Linux. My first test was a disaster - the preview looked awful, and the scan was completely green. Then I compiled the latest version of sane (www.mostang.com/sane) and xsane (same site) and tried again. This time it worked perfectly! For grins I tried a 1600x1600 scan of a magazine cover (combined text and picture). The borders of the text were sharp with no chromatic distortion, and I could see all of the halftone dots in the scan. Perfect! As an added bonus, the scanner is *much* quieter than my previous one. The 1640SU makes a low whine when scanning, while the 1220S made a loud rumble. In my opinion, the quietness shows just how much better constructed this scanner is. Also, it has a smaller footprint than the 1220S (although it is somewhat taller). All in all, I am *very* satisfied with this scanner.
Rating: 
Summary: Initial Impression
Review: I just got my scanner last week and I honestly haven't used it much, but that's because my package came WITHOUT the Photoshop LE disc. I called Epson customer service. The guy was really nice and said they'd send it out right away, so I'm waiting. I had no problem installing the scanner at all. It was up and running in less than 10 minutes. So far, my biggest complaint is the Photodeluxe program. I think it's horrible. When I try to scan through Photodeluxe I get an error message saying there's a problem with my scanner. I have to open my TWAIN program to scan. I also think it's awkward to use as far as functionality is concerned. Steps for cropping, making color corrections and other functions are laid out in tabs on the top of the screen, which is nice for people who really need their hand held, I guess, but it's kind of cheesy. "Advanced" functions such as enlarging are hidden in a little button at the bottom of the screen. Boy, I can't wait until I get my Photoshop disc! But, all in all I think I will be happy with this scanner once I get Photoshop and really learn my way around the Perfection.
Rating:
Summary: Initial Impression
Review: I just got my scanner last week and I honestly haven't used it much, but that's because my package came WITHOUT the Photoshop LE disc. I called Epson customer service. The guy was really nice and said they'd send it out right away, so I'm waiting. I had no problem installing the scanner at all. It was up and running in less than 10 minutes. So far, my biggest complaint is the Photodeluxe program. I think it's horrible. When I try to scan through Photodeluxe I get an error message saying there's a problem with my scanner. I have to open my TWAIN program to scan. I also think it's awkward to use as far as functionality is concerned. Steps for cropping, making color corrections and other functions are laid out in tabs on the top of the screen, which is nice for people who really need their hand held, I guess, but it's kind of cheesy. "Advanced" functions such as enlarging are hidden in a little button at the bottom of the screen. Boy, I can't wait until I get my Photoshop disc! But, all in all I think I will be happy with this scanner once I get Photoshop and really learn my way around the Perfection.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent hardware, bad software, terrible support
Review: I purchased the 1640SU scanner for our office. We use the scanner on our "image cneter" computer which is shared by everyone in the office. The hardware works well: the image and color quality is superb, and the scanning speed is pretty good. The TWAIN driver and control works well, and there's a simple "auto mode" for people who want to scan their documents without worrying about scanner settings. Because our "image center" computer has only USB expansion (no PCI slots), we cannot use a SCSI interface that would speed up scanning tremendously. This has the unfortunate side-effect of seriously slowing down scanning at the highest resolution when the scanner has to temporarily stop scanning while waiting for data transfer to complete. This leads to a "back hitching" of the scan head which slows things down considerably. As I mentioned, this scanner is installed on a shared computer. Unfortunately, there is a really bad bug with the Epson Smart Panel software when installed on a networked Windows 2000 system. When this software is installed, it prevents people from logging in and using the computer -- it repeatedly throws an error dialog box that won't go away. We had to uninstall the program. That's too bad, because if the ESP program worked, it would have made the scanner even more useful and easy-to-use -- the ESP software allows you to assign a preferred scanning software to the push-to-scan button built into the scanner. The big problem with the Epson scanner is the awful technical support. Epson's web site is practically useless for technical support; and their non-toll-free telephone-support line, while cheerful, was useless. With our problem with the ESP software, Epson would not support the software; instead, they referred me to NewSoftInc (who wrote the software for Epson). NewSoftInc's web site is even less helpful, and I've not been able to get technical support, even after waiting on the phone for 25 minutes! Overall, this is a good scanner. I would have given 4 stars, even with the ESP software issues; but given the terrible technical support, I've decided to bump them down to 3 stars.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent hardware, bad software, terrible support
Review: I purchased the 1640SU scanner for our office. We use the scanner on our "image cneter" computer which is shared by everyone in the office. The hardware works well: the image and color quality is superb, and the scanning speed is pretty good. The TWAIN driver and control works well, and there's a simple "auto mode" for people who want to scan their documents without worrying about scanner settings. Because our "image center" computer has only USB expansion (no PCI slots), we cannot use a SCSI interface that would speed up scanning tremendously. This has the unfortunate side-effect of seriously slowing down scanning at the highest resolution when the scanner has to temporarily stop scanning while waiting for data transfer to complete. This leads to a "back hitching" of the scan head which slows things down considerably. As I mentioned, this scanner is installed on a shared computer. Unfortunately, there is a really bad bug with the Epson Smart Panel software when installed on a networked Windows 2000 system. When this software is installed, it prevents people from logging in and using the computer -- it repeatedly throws an error dialog box that won't go away. We had to uninstall the program. That's too bad, because if the ESP program worked, it would have made the scanner even more useful and easy-to-use -- the ESP software allows you to assign a preferred scanning software to the push-to-scan button built into the scanner. The big problem with the Epson scanner is the awful technical support. Epson's web site is practically useless for technical support; and their non-toll-free telephone-support line, while cheerful, was useless. With our problem with the ESP software, Epson would not support the software; instead, they referred me to NewSoftInc (who wrote the software for Epson). NewSoftInc's web site is even less helpful, and I've not been able to get technical support, even after waiting on the phone for 25 minutes! Overall, this is a good scanner. I would have given 4 stars, even with the ESP software issues; but given the terrible technical support, I've decided to bump them down to 3 stars.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent hardware, bad software, terrible support
Review: I purchased the 1640SU scanner for our office. We use the scanner on our "image cneter" computer which is shared by everyone in the office. The hardware works well: the image and color quality is superb, and the scanning speed is pretty good. The TWAIN driver and control works well, and there's a simple "auto mode" for people who want to scan their documents without worrying about scanner settings. Because our "image center" computer has only USB expansion (no PCI slots), we cannot use a SCSI interface that would speed up scanning tremendously. This has the unfortunate side-effect of seriously slowing down scanning at the highest resolution when the scanner has to temporarily stop scanning while waiting for data transfer to complete. This leads to a "back hitching" of the scan head which slows things down considerably. As I mentioned, this scanner is installed on a shared computer. Unfortunately, there is a really bad bug with the Epson Smart Panel software when installed on a networked Windows 2000 system. When this software is installed, it prevents people from logging in and using the computer -- it repeatedly throws an error dialog box that won't go away. We had to uninstall the program. That's too bad, because if the ESP program worked, it would have made the scanner even more useful and easy-to-use -- the ESP software allows you to assign a preferred scanning software to the push-to-scan button built into the scanner. The big problem with the Epson scanner is the awful technical support. Epson's web site is practically useless for technical support; and their non-toll-free telephone-support line, while cheerful, was useless. With our problem with the ESP software, Epson would not support the software; instead, they referred me to NewSoftInc (who wrote the software for Epson). NewSoftInc's web site is even less helpful, and I've not been able to get technical support, even after waiting on the phone for 25 minutes! Overall, this is a good scanner. I would have given 4 stars, even with the ESP software issues; but given the terrible technical support, I've decided to bump them down to 3 stars.
Rating:
Summary: READ the instructions and know ahead of time
Review: I've read the reviews and they weren't very flattering on this scanner. But after careful re-readings it became apparent that most of the complaints dealt with either incompatibility with printers and/or installation of the supporting software. I've run into these problems myself in the past and slowly, but surely, have discovered that they were due mainly,on my part, by not reading the instructions thoroughly. I decided to put my computer know-how, 3 years of playing around with it, to work and see for myself how 'awful' this product may be. (Amazon has a return policy-thank god) After receiving the item i decided to put everything aside initially and just go over the installation guide, noting any ambiguous or difficult to follow passages. The only discrepancy was noted when the guide notes instructions for only Window 95, 2000 and Mac operating systems. (I have a Window ME) I decided that i will follow the instructions for the Window 2000, as it is supposed to be nearly the same product as the millenium edition. It may be just me but the instructions weren't very difficult. The only minor complaint is that the manual didn't contain any detailed instructions on using the 'TWAIN' software and its properties. This can only be found in the actual software manual on the monitor. (go to start button, go to program, go to epson smart panel for scanner, go to user's manual) After the initial read-through i began the installation of the hardware, its connections and finally the software installation. But before i did this i made sure the hard-drive on my dell pentium 2 was defragmented(using the comupter system tools) to organize and clear up any unused space, followed by a restart. I followed the instructions for the Window 2000 on my Window ME thoroughly, noting there was some minor differences in the process but nothing confusing. After the hardware calibration and software installation, i by-passed the optional softwares for now, it prompted me to restart the computer.( It is also noted in the manual guide that the scanner should always be turned on first before the computer itself.) After restart, i started the program,just installed, and the rest was history. Everything ran fine, including the software. The included extra, photoshop limited ed., was really useless since you can't save any changes of the image to your hard-drive.( you can only do that with an upgrade at an additional cost!) After playing around with some of the setting i found the 'TWAIN' as well as the smart panel program to be very novice friendly and efficient.(advanced users will probably feel contempt for this simple program) My first scan was at a resolution of 97 dpi at 100% size of the scanned item. ( 1:1 ratio ) The results were pretty outstanding! At higher resolution the images were so huge and sharp that it used space up to 600 mb on my harddrive! For folks who want to scan and send pictures to friends via emails, a 97 dpi is more than you will ever need, really!. it's as sharp and big as the original print you just scanned. At 300dpi, the image is sharp enough to detect dust and paper texture of the scanned item. At 1200 dpi, the image requires so much space and processing power that it takes more than 10 minutes for the single scan! ( only useful if you are a graphic artist or want 8"x10"s or bigger prints out of your printer. the size of the image on your monitor does not translate equal size in the printed product.) After careful reading of the software instructions found in the program itself, you will find simple steps to save the scanned images to your hard-drive.(e.g. after the scan, close the twain panel. you will see the index panel pop up with a icon image of the scan. click twice on the small icon image to see the full-sized image. this new window has a file button where you can save it to any application or hard-drive of your computer in many different formats, including jpeg and bmp.) All in all, i found this scanner to be of excellent value and image quality. All i can say is to take your time in the installation and prepare ahead of time to get acquainted with the manual guide. who really cares if it take you an hour or two, just as long as it gets done right the first time. i've had this product for several days now and so far have made approximately 80+ scans without a glitch. If you are one of those types who can't stand reading through a manual then you will most likely skip or reverse a procedure and cause error messages to fly around. remember, a computer functions on exact sequential commands and so it's often necessary to follow the directions to the letter. If you are looking to scan images for emails, collecting images on your hard-drive or CD and web-site auctions, this scanner is actually an overkill. the epson 1240 will more than fit the bill for casual users. Hope this helps out anyone out there looking for a good value.
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