Rating: 
Summary: Flawed Driver Dooms Scanner for XP
Review: Pity... Latest driver from Epson (5.71) is dated at Dec 02, and it's obvious they have moved on to other tasks. Aside from annoying but surmountable installation problems, the Twain driver would hit the hard drive needlessly every second after invocation in XP, whether or not any Twain-aware application program was subsequently running. And it would freeze near the end of 1600 dpi 35mm slide scans. With no new driver in sight, had to return the scanner. You'd think they would support the product enough to have it work as advertised. Still looking for a decent 35mm slide scanner...
Rating: 
Summary: ¤¤WOW¤¤
Review: I bought this scanner so I could scan smaller stuff, as the ADF scanner on my office jet v40xi will destroy smaller pics/docs.well I now use this as the primary scanner, this thing rocks, the quality of the scans is remarkable. I was shocked. If you want a killer scanner at a decent price get the Epson Perfection 1660 Photo, it comes with PhotoImpression4 which has some cool ability's
Buy it, use it, you won't be let down.
Rating:
Summary: Epson scanners are a very poor choice for OCR
Review: One year ago (July 1, 2002) PC Magazine reviewed several scanners and their OCR software and, out of all the brands tested, Epson had the very worst performance.
Recently, I tried the 1660 model and its OCR performance is horrible.It is unbelievable, but you cannot even scan in landscape orientation (i.e., if you want two scan two pages from a book, etc.) - for this you have to scan the left page first and then you have to scan the right page.
This is just amazing; I doubt there are other brands using such an approach. Another (probably unique) Epson feature is that it will scan in only one position/orientation out of a total of 4.
If you try to scan in the other 3 positions/orientations the results are horrible and the software does not allow the user to rotate the picture/image prior to scanning to OCR. I am primarily interested in OCR; other than OCR, I scanned only a couple of photos ang got error messages generated by file.exe (the scanned picture could not be saved); apparently, this happens if somebody uses a resolution greater than 300 or 400. One year after the PC Magazine review, it looks like Epson is still the very worst choice for OCR.
Rating: 
Summary: Running XP / Install Issues / Ease of Use
Review: A lot has been written here. I have to agree that this is probably the best scanner for the price. Look at, and consider other scanners, but always keep this one in the back of your mind. I looked very seriously at the HP line. Their "look" is superb ... Very stylish. Don't be misled. Definitely not a bad product, but stay focused on why you're buying a scanner in the first place. Stick to the specifications and you'll agree the Epson is the best for the money. In my case, I have 3 young children, and I have recently become very concerned about keeping their pictures and other mementos safe. Also, I recently unearthed a ton of slides of my childhood, and quite frankly, who has a projector these days? So I wanted to get all this stuff in to a format that I could easily store, duplicate, and distribute. Not knowing too much about scanners, at first pass the HP seemed better suited for what I needed a scanner for. The slides and negatives have a type of holder that is self contained and looks like it would be easier to use than the Epson's "slides and negative holder" in the lid. In actual practice, the Epson system for this works quite well, and since all you have to do to is lift the lid, ultimately it's less cumbersome than the HP system if you have a lot of slides & negatives to scan. Installation: This had me a bit nervous based on reviews, but quite honestly it was a cake walk. The scanner package has a disc and a short to-the-point printed document that walks you through installing the scanner. In XP, several error messages came up during the install, and that concerned me until I really read the messages and came to understand that all the messages were really saying were things like, and I'm paraphrasing here, "You don't have a handheld organizer attached or associated with this computer, so I am not going to install the Organizer software". I just kept clicking "OK" and "Continue" until the software was completely installed. I probably got at least 10 of these types of messages. The printed page that comes in the box along with the scanner walks you through your first scan. . . Very easy. The quality is superb! This isn't your momma's scanner. The technology has advanced amazingly in the past few years, and using a scanner has never been easier. Just be patient and take your time learning. I have scanned in well over 300 negatives since I got the Epson yesterday, and it has completely exceeded all my expectations. Sharp, detailed, and the whole concept is pretty amazing, frankly. You're taking 35mm negatives and turning them in to archiveable, sendable pictures. The digital images I'm getting from the negatives far exceed the resolution of the best digital cameras, and for much much less. Other stuff: I have a ton of old records in printed format. Things like bank statements and stuff that I want to retain like pre-Turbo Tax Tax Returns. I tried scanning a few and for items like this, there's a "Full Auto Mode" setting you choose (For slides and negatives you have to use "manual mode"). This setting makes everything easy. Slap the document down on the glass, hit the scan button, and the software does the rest. Presto! Digital archive. OCR works, and seems to work well. For the uninitiated OCR converts a printed document, such as the page of a book in to editable text, like a word document. I scanned a couple of printed membership lists and there were only a couple of very minor recognition errors. Using a scanner isn't as intuitive as many other types of computer hardware. This one's pretty easy to master once you've done it a few times. Happy scanning!
Rating:
Summary: Epson 1660 incompatable with XP
Review: I have been needing a new scanner for a long time and researched online and the Epson 1660 seemed to be a good choice.The minimal instructions concerned me but I followed them to a T for installation and it did not work with my windows XP system.It crashed my computer several times!! I spent 3 hours on the phone with Epson, utilizing 3 different techs. Thank god it was a local call!However, it took a nice Canadian tech supervisor to get it working.That lasted one day. The next day the scanner stopped working and crashed my computer several more times. My precious files almost lost!!Do not buy this scanner if you use xp!!!
Rating:
Summary: excellent for the average user
Review: I bought this scanner on the strength of online owner reviews and have been very satisfied. I am not the average home user, and am still finding it to be more than adequate for what I need to do - I mostly scan small-scale flat art and photos, but I need a lot of flexibility in terms of resolution and settings, etc. The driver has automatic functions, but I haven't tried them out myself - I jumped right into the custom settings. I haven't tried the film/slide function yet, so I can't comment on that. I also can't comment on the Windows XP compatibility issue other people have mentioned - I use Windows 98 and haven't had a problem. My only complaint is that I have very limited space on my hard drive, and when I try to remove the ArcSoft PhotoImpression software (which I don't use - I import images directly into Photoshop), I seem to also remove the driver itself. I haven't researched the problem with tech support or the manual yet, so there may be a way around it. I also haven't tried out the one-touch buttons on the front of the machine. Overall, if you're looking at a scanner with this resolution at this price range (i.e - not a high end, industrial user), you're going to be really happy with this scanner. The images are great, it's fast, and the color is even a little truer than other scanners I've used. I would definitely recommend this for home (and light commercial, like me) users.
Rating:
Summary: Really fast...
Review: In the past I had always purchased HP scanners which are pretty good, but when compared to the Epson - the speed of the HP's fell way short. I really like the integration with other software (like Adobe Photo Shop) and also its own "Epson Smart Panel" which is so easy anyone can use it. Also, when scanning 35mm photos (I still have some of those!) the resolution is fantastic, I can fix minutes details in the photos and I end up with a better product than the original. Two thumbs up!!
Rating:
Summary: Stunning
Review: I may sound like a shill for Epson, but, I just bought the Epson 1660 Photo Scanner (not to be confused with the Epson 1260) and I am stunned, stunned by the amazing quality - the colors are more vibrant than I'd ever seen with my budget scanner (that 48-bit "color depth" was SO worth it; that's not available on the otherwise very good 1260 or on less expensive scanners by others). I am building up my talents in graphic design work so my attention is on nuances and I am pleased to say that this scanner captures every nuance of the original image. Fleshtones are particularly good, probably because of the color depth. The optical resolution of this scanner also beats my old scanner hands down (meaning, very fine detail does not fuzz out). On my old budget scanner, which came inside a box of breakfast cereal and whose name I won't reveal (cough AGFA cough!), required many color and brightness corrections to the images it outputted. Simple to do, but a waste of time when scanners like this are available. My budget scanner had other subtle problems, such as rainbow-like flares of color around the edges of small black text on white backgrounds (a problem called poor "color convergence"). There's no strange flares of color or optical distortions on this scanner at all. I am simply stunned by what I'd been missing. Consider this a hearty recommendation if you not only want a scanner that will do the job, but will actually impress you! As for the aesthetics, the unit itself follows the current trend of looking rather like a silvery pillow, which is fine. I haven't used the slide/negative scanner function so I can't comment on that yet. This purchase followed two days of research here on Amazon, Epinions, and PCWorld's websites, and based on that research and now having purchased this scanner, there is no other scanner I would suggest at this price level - it seemed as if everything else had made one kind of concession or another. In contrast, this is an outstanding scanner at a great price.
Rating:
Summary: Practice, Patience makes Perfection work
Review: I purchased the 1660 scanner at Costco ... because of the slide and film scanner function. The initial installation left me with no option for scanning slides, so I was ready to return it. After accessing support.epson.com and choosing "scanners" and then "Perfection 1660", I downloaded and installed the driver update for MS Windows 98 and XP, which presented a new slide option, called TPU (Transparancy Unit). After installation, three choices appear in addition to the "Flatbed" Document Source: "Color Neg Film," "Monochrome Neg Film," and "Pos Film." Choosing one of these activates the flourescent lamp on the lid, which illuminates the slides and filmstrips. Of course, you must remove the white cover from inside of the lid to reveal the 2" by 11" centered illumination screen, and place the four-slide plastic insert on the scanning glass. The software "SmartPanel" allows a preview scan and individual slide image rotation (I had to learn which way is "up", and allows choice of tiff, jpg, etc, and destination file--or you can fax, email, or publish each picture to the web. All of this information is in the "Scanner Reference
Guide" (the electronic Manual), which is why so many reviewers complain that there is no physical manual. I have sympathy for you who could not install from the cd-rom (since you cannot read what is not installed!), but if you want to make copies of slides and 35 mm filmstrips, the Epson Perfection 1660 is definitely the best value available. MHG and Viren P reviewers (10-13-02 and 10-26-02) rated this Epson above other Epsons and the Microtek, and I agree. I have both Win 98 and XP operating systems and installation was flawless with both.
Rating:
Summary: No Problems
Review: This is my fourth scanner in 15 years. It installed without a problem. Almost every photo I've scanned, regardless of age or condition of the original, came out great - with the exception of small tintypes. For those wondering how good the text scanning is - this has a wonderful OCR program. No gibberish to delete or massive reformatting. What a relief!
| 
