Larger Flatbed Scanners? 34
An Anonymous Coward writes: "I work for a University department and we're looking to find an affordable flatbed scanner with a scanning area of 11x17". Affordability is critical, and it's surprising how hard it is to find one of these... Some basic models I've found range from $1,000 to $4,000. Can the Slashdot community suggest any scanners? Will they?" I settled on a smaller scanning surface after finding the same thing, but my scanner (an Epson Perfection 1650 Photo) is supported nicely by the excellent Xsane. What scanner advice can you offer, especially when it comes to cross-platform support?
Re:Good color Printer too..... (Score:3, Funny)
(A vague question deserves a vague answer.)
Re:Good color Printer too..... (Score:1)
Sure, anything dye sublimation is fairly good. Better than my ability to spell the technology anyway. :)
Also expensive, but you didn't say anything about that.
Re:Good color Printer too..... (Score:2)
Hate to say it, but... (Score:4, Informative)
However, if you're dead-set on going down that low-cost road, your best shot would probably to pick up a few Plustek OpticPro A3-i scanners on clearance somewhere. (Here [scanneroutlet.com] for instance.) The company's not around anymore, so you'll be on your own for support, but at $175.00 per unit, that might be a risk you'd be willing to take.
I am curious as to what the university so desperately needs to scan at 11x17, though...
Maps (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Hate to say it, but... (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.plustek.com/
Re:Hate to say it, but... (Score:1)
Ugh, my bad. I'd read reports at a few different design sites -- here's one [balloontales.com] -- that the company had tanked and future purchases were going to be at-yer-own-risk (much like buying 3DFX cards; god I loved my Voodoo 5500...).
Seems like they had a reversal of fortune. =)
Overpriced (Score:2, Insightful)
Holy Price Gouging, Batman!
A letter size USB flatbed goes for US$90-120 at most stores around me.
For $3800 you're getting a few extra inches of rubber tractor, glass, and plastic.
You would think somebody would try to fill this market void with a larger scanner at an affordable price.
Re:Overpriced (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Overpriced (Score:1)
anyway rambling aside, if you notice those $1,000 scanners generally are much higher qulaity than the ones that come in cereal boxes and whatnot.
picking up an old oversized overstock on ebay would probably be a mess for me, i'm a mac user and still waiting for Umax to support the scanner under OS X.
HP (Score:2, Insightful)
WARNING! (Score:1)
There are some things money can't buy (Score:4, Funny)
Epson scanner: $100.
Roll of duct tape: $2.
The look on your department head's face: priceless.
My solution (Score:2, Insightful)
Mustek A3 EP scanner $100 (Score:3, Informative)
I believe Fujitsu makes scanners in this size, priced around $1,000 - $1,500 (that may include a sheet feeder), and Kodak makes a very expensive ($23,000) but VERY fast scanner in this size (we had some technical problems with one we had in on evaluation in mid-2000). My consulting client needed to scan about 50,000 11x14 color images, along with about 20,000 poster images (mostly 27x41 movie posters), and ultimately decided to buy a couple of $25,000 52-inch Contex sheet-fed scanners.
I don't need my A3 EP scanner any more, so perhaps I should post it for sale on eBay. But then I guess I'd need to set it up. It does have a small crack in the glass. Maybe I should just put it out at my condo complex yard sale this Saturday. ;-)
Hey, Anonymous Coward: if you're in the Bay Area, give me a call, maybe I'll donate it to your insitution. I think it uses one of those pass-through parallel port connections.
Before you select your solution, you need to determine the actual application before buying anything. How fast does it need to be? (Trust me, manually positioning 50,000 pages on a flatbed scanner is going to take a long, long, long, long, long time.) What resolution, and what kind of color range? How accurate must the color mapping be?
Finally, note that there are service bureaus that will scan a bunch of documents, sometimes even come to your office and scan them right there, for prices ranging from 50 cents to $2 or more per image (depending on condition, size, color/monochrome, etc). One firm in Vacaville was doing this for government agencies: send in 3 guys with 3 wide-format scanners ($10,000 each) and scan for a few weeks, then deliver the document images on CD-ROM or tape.
As a university, you might find some alumnus or other supporter who would lend you this kind of equipment for a specific project -- ask around. Check if another department (engineering? public planning?) might have a scanner, or maybe there's even a scanner like this in the basement of the bursar's office.
Re:Mustek A3 EP scanner $100 (Score:1)
What ever happened to Handheld Scanners? (Score:1)
Re:What ever happened to Handheld Scanners? (Score:1)
the closest thing to those old handhelds i have seen are the "pen" scanners that they sell everywhere (staples even). not the same as what you speak of, and i think they really are only for text. one of my housemates has one and can scan passages of text from a book. it's wireless, and you just sync the pen to the machine. he can take it to the library or a bookstore and basically copy a passage of text, take it home and sync it to a text document or webpage.. he said the text recognition is pretty good, but i never used it. he's a windows user, and i don't think the devices are supported on other platforms, but maybe they are now......
Re:What ever happened to Handheld Scanners? (Score:1)
The deed books are large, so it would most likely do 11x17 without any problems.
Honig
Epson 1640XL (Score:2, Informative)
It's a very nice scanner though, and includes lots of items you could easily pay a few hundred for alone: Silverfast software, color calibrating software & plates, fast SCSI + Firewire + USB interfaces.
The preview and scan speed is fantastic (we use it on fast SCSI). We're still nailing down the color on transparencies. The reflective quality is wonderful right out of the box, though it tends to want to 'help' by saturating soft colors.
I agree with the earlier poster about using a service bureau - if you don't need the large size very often, they can be very cost effective. For us, we scan enough that this should pay for itself in about 3 months (vs using a scanning service)
Digital Camera? (Score:1)
Of course, OCR would be more challenging.
How about a digital photocopier? (Score:1)
Same Here (Score:2)
Thanks!