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Searching for a Decent Scanner?
Stumped about Scanners asks: "My little sister's scanner is acting up, so she's in the market for a new one. However, the software she wishes to use it with (some funkadelic 'music OCR' thing that lets you scan sheet music and transforms it automagically into MIDI files) claims that it doesn't work too well with HP scanners. And, truth be told, I've never known much about which scanners are good and which are crap. So, which scanners lately are decent? Which are crap? I know that DPI matters very little (just like it does in printers)-- it's quality that matters. Could the SlashDot community provide some info on which scanners (some from HP and some not from HP) are decent? Are there any quasi-reputable sites (a la Tom's Hardware?) that have reviews on such things?"
Uh, can somebody explain to me why they consider all-in-oners not to be TWAIN compatible? TWAIN is after all a software protocol, and my wife's Epson scanner/printer/copier/fax seems to be TWAIN compatible (in that I can hook up to it's driver as a TWAIN source in Paint Shop Pro and get a picture back).
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
The OP is correct: just like with digicams, it very often doesn't matter what the resolution is, the scanner needs to have good quality optics or it is shite.
What would you rather have, a 300dpi scan that is crystal clear (if a bit jaggy under a magnifier), or a 1200dpi scan that renders its blurriness in incredible resolution, and at about 16x the file size?
If your scanner doesn't have good glass under the hood, it makes no difference how fine the CCD/CMOS resolution is.
Look at the tomato! Isn't it sad? He can't dance! Poor tomato!
Well, you know wrong.
No, YOU know wrong. DPI doesn't matter for spit; any new scanner sold these days will use a greater resolution than most people will ever need. Just like all xMP digital cameras are not equal - the quality of the optics goes a long way toward determining final quality; I'd take a 3MP cam with Nikkor or Leica optics over some roody-poot 1000MP camera.
Chances are, the 600 DPI Epson will produce better quality scans than that 3600 DPI (interpolated) from Brand J (for junk).
Get a clue before you start correcting folks.
Because /. has that 8-hour interrogation to prove who you really are so no marketing geeks ever get on here and try to pretend that they are unbiased users.
/. doesn't let the "marketing geeks" have any more say than the "unbiased users"- thus letting a ton of people jump on the marketing geek's posts with disagreements and bad reviews. The bad reviews that you'd never see on a marketing site like ZDNet or Tom's Hardware.
No, because
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.