While we've come to expect one-year warranties with low-cost products, Microtek deepens our disappointment with its skimpy support. The ScanMaker 4800's support was nearly as bad. You can't expect professional-level film/slide output from a $99 scanner, but the particularly poor film scans looked like they were made inside a fish tank. Quality took a drastic dive with film and slide scanning using the LightLid attachment. Its 16.4-second grayscale speed was a lot better, but scans looked slightly overexposed. The scanner's sigma-6 CCD (charge-coupled device) scanning mechanism, with six instead of the usual three rows of light sensors, produced good color scans, but it took 43.7 seconds per scan, making the ScanMaker 4800 among the slowest models we've tested. The ScanMaker 4800 displayed mixed results in CNET Labs' tests. Microtek should collect all of this errant documentation into one convenient guide.
#SCANWIZARD 5 MANUAL#
One brochure guides you through ScanWizard 5, while another walks you through the included LightLid attachment for 35mm film and slide scanning, and the full-blown user manual is available in electronic format only. We usually ding products for having insufficient documentation, but in the case of the ScanMaker 4800, it was just the opposite its mélange of brochures and CD-based material actually left us more confused. Unfortunately, you cannot switch between panel modes while working on the same prescanned image.
#SCANWIZARD 5 DRIVER#
The ScanWizard 5 driver itself has a host of satisfying features, including a pared-down control panel that lets you set the brightness, the contrast, and the saturation an Advanced panel extends these capabilities considerably. Microtek includes a glossy handout promoting the use of the photo-sharing site iMira, but you can read about other services in CNET Software's roundup of four online photo managers. A fifth button sends your scan directly to a Web site of your choice. Three other buttons scan the image and transfer it automatically to your printer, your e-mail program, or your word processor. The Scan button generates a preview of your image in the ScanWizard 5 driver that you can then tweak, scan as-is, or send to another image-editing app. The ScanMaker 4800 is also easy to use, thanks to the five buttons lining its face. But a quick run through CNET Labs revealed that while some of the Microtek's features are exceptional, others are just for show. It features 48-bit color, a 2,400x1,200dpi (dots per inch) maximum resolution, and a film/slide attachment. The low-cost Microtek ScanMaker 4800 promises a big return on a small investment.
0 kommentar(er)
