Best Scanner for the money

I purchased a Microtek Scanmaker 4800 about 3 weeks ago after using a Microtek Scanmaker X6 USB for almost 2 years. This was a big step up in image quality for the work I was doing.

First off, the Scanmaker 4800 is a 1200x2400dpi scanner with 48-bit color and uses an USB interface. It is a low-profile scanner - being about 25% thinner than comparable scanners. It also comes with a Lightlid 35 which is a transparency adapter for slides and negatives.

For regular scanning, the 4800 is rather quick and delivers good scans with good color matching. I usually scan at 24-bit color as the 48-bit color image is rather large and doesn't add that much for what I scan.

The thing that drew me to the 4800 (and for that matter the X6 before it) was the transparency adapter. I covers the full thickness of the scanner platter but is only has about 1" worth of light vertically - this serves the purpose for scanning slides and negatives. However, I can scan a full page transparency with this adapter if I just move the Lightlid 35 at approximately the same speed at the platter light - an added bonus. Furthermore, with this scanner, you can now calibrate the lightlid adapter - this has given me much more accurate coloration to my slides with minimal work in Photoshop. One weird thing with scanning slides at 48-bit color depth - I kept getting random brightly colored pixels in my scans of slides - but they came out easily with Photoshop's remove noise.

There are 5 buttons on the front panel which are can be used to Scan, Copy, Email, Copy to Web, and OCR. You hit the button and it opens the appropriate software. I have never used them yet.

The software included is more than enough for the average person - you get Adobe PhotoDeluxe, Acrbat Reader, Ulead Photo Explorer, ABBYY Finereader Sprint OCR, and Scanwizard 5.

One interesting point, this scanner has no power button. This was very weird to me since I couldn't figure out how to turn it off. It took a call to customer support to tell me that there is a setting in Scanwizard 5 software that will turn the scanner off after a dedicated idle period. I could not find this in any of the manuals included with the scanner - not a minor oversight, since I was concerned about shortening my lamp life. I have completely turned it off now by removing the Stimon.exe from the Startup using Msconfig. Now it takes a little longer to start when I first start scanning, but now the scanner is never on unless I want it to be.

For the call to customer support, I was on hold for 45 minutes before a service tech answered - absolutely horrible. Furthermore, basic support is free for only 90 days, then after that it is $30 a call - ridiculous. Advanced support is a for a fee from the start. So if you are new to computers, you may think twice about this unit just in case you need support.

Overall, this a really good scanner, and I picked it up for $85 shipped from Buy.com. That is darn cheap for a reliable scanner with a transparency adapter.