Scanner Purchase Advice short list (fwd)

[Jeffrey Perry]

 Well after spending the day on reasearch I am pretty much
 where I expected.
 

 
 I have a few Qs then I want to make the purchase:
 
 Short List of choices: (in current order of preference)
 
 1) Microtek X6EL (#1 pick for me because of included slide support)
 
 	Q: SANE Supported?? I see evidence in archives that X6 (apparently
 	   a parallel port version) is. I also see patches for X6EL.
 
 	Q: The company website showed NO info on any of the listed
 	   SANE supported models. Are these all older models the
 	   company may not be supporting any more?
 
 	Q: I read one or two comments about the slide support
 	   which apparently is bundled in. They said it was
 	   a bulky device which did not sit flat and had to
 	   be held in place by hand under the cover. Is this
 	   true? OR is it a light lid like many others?
 	   Is it any good? Any other comments?
 
 	Q: Confirm: Comes with Adaptec 2902 e/i ?
 
 	Q: Will Linux support Adaptec 2902 e/i ?
 
 
 2) UMAX Astra 1200S or 1220S
 
 	This model has had extremly poor support from the US support
 	office lately and the company apparently initially lied about a current
 	problem with the ROM. US office has decided not to fix it
 	UK office is shipping upgrade roms or replacing it if you
 	ship scanner.
 
 	Q: I believe I understand that the ROM is only an issue
 	if you upgrade to a newer version of their TWAIN drivers
 	or other shipped software. Am I correct? I am a bit fuzzy
 	on this. The problem is that bw scans stop working apparently
 	and this makes it useless for OCR unless you buy color OCR software.
 
 	Q: Confirm: The card it ships with is 25 pin SCSI so I will need some convertors
 
 	Q: Comes with SCSI terminator? Needs one? Built-in?
 
 	Other drawbacks/inconveniences: 
 		- No on/off switch
 		- lid hinge may snap if raised to too great an angle
 		- bad docs but good web troubleshooting guide
 		- lock/unlock switch needs to be in middle for proper operation
 
 
 
 3) Mustek
 
 	I have very little information on these. They were not mentioned much on dejanews
 and their website yielded a list of the following four.
 
 	Q: Are the following scanners supported? Which ones?
 	(the website chart was very confusing in this area - I hope someone will fix it)
 
 	Paragon 1200 III SP
 	Paragon 1200 SP
 	Paragon 1200LS
 	ScanMagic 9636
 
 
 4) Plustek (all seem to be parallel but at least one is supported by SANE)
 
 	Q: Any plans to work on SANE support for the 9636 or other model with
 	   builtin slide support?
 
 5? ) Any others which should be on this short list? I looked briefly at HP Scanjets but they
      seem expensive for the price range I set (around $200)
 
 
 
 Thank you in advance for your assistance...I hope to be enjoying a new scanner under Linux soon!
 
 Jeffrey Perry
 j.perry at lynx.dac.neu.edu (note the dot after the j IS part of the address)
 

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