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Epson Artisan 810

Roberto Baldwin — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:14:57 -0600

All-in-one printers do everything, but usually at the expense of excelling at any single job. Not so with the Epson Artisan 810, which quickly spits out high-quality photographic prints and also ably takes care of your scanning, copying, and standard printing needs.

The printer uses a tray that accommodates a variety of different paper sizes, including legal, 8.5x14 standard, and various user-definable sizes, which we didn’t have any problems switching between. It also includes a dedicated slot for 4x6 or 5x7 media. You can also print on ink jet–ready CDs and DVDs. The Artisan features print resolutions up to 5760x1440 dpi.

The 810 is speedy--by the time we walked across the room to even wait for our prints, they were already done. The printer has an RPM (Resolution Performance Management) mode that will give you the highest-quality prints available, but it comes at the expense of speed. We noticed the greatest improvements using RPM mode when printing grayscale images with smooth gradients between light and dark. The regular photo mode was more than adequate for point-and-shoot images, but higher-res DSLR shots also showed marked improvement with RPM prints.

Back in Black.

For standard document printing, the Epson produced crisp fonts and pages nearly shot out of the printer. The 810 gave us between 37 to 40 PPM, depending on the amount of included text, and churned out 4x6 photo prints in 8 to 12 seconds. Double-sided prints took longer, but the printer features a built-in duplexer.

The Artisan 810, like most printers, also serves as a card reader and gives you the ability to print directly from memory cards without a computer. We especially like the ability to print out a contact sheet with thumbnails and choose which images to print full size. You can also add frames and create greeting cards directly from the printer itself--a nice touch if you need a card pronto.

All of this memory card–based printing is controlled from the 7.8-inch touchscreen. The screen is home to the easy-to-use UI that controls printer settings and its many features. Setting up the printer, including Wi-Fi printing, was quick and painless.

Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500M

Arvind Srinivasan — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 12:37:07 -0500

More than meets the eye

Maybe Fujitsu’s design team felt nostalgic for their now-dead printer division, because there’s no way around it--the S1500M looks like a printer (or at least a scanner with an identity crisis). That’s not a bad thing, mind you. In fact, the scanner’s unusual design underscores Fujitsu’s main selling point: The ScanSnap reinvents the wheel, scanning practically any paper document as fast as a printer prints pages, aiming to bridge the gap between high-end, sheet-feeding office scanners and the cheapo, consumer-grade flatbed scanners that never align pages properly. We are happy to say the ScanSnap wins on both counts, delivering a product that not only scans with aplomb, but also innovates, adding features that we now want to find in every scanner.

When you open the box, you’ll find a strange piece of machinery that unfolds to become your scanner (like some kind of Transformer in office-appliance cladding). The compact design is a huge plus, as the ScanSnap can easily fit on the corner of a desk, on top of a cluttered table, or even in your backpack, if that’s how you roll. Operation is distinctively quiet, and build quality is sturdy. The only obvious design flaw is an output tray that can’t hold multiple pieces of paper, so be prepared to keep some sort of collection device handy when the scanned materials start flying everywhere, or manually remove the sheets when they’re done.

The ScanSnap is not a flatbed scanner--it instead uses ADF, or automatic document feeding--and this is where it stands apart from traditional scanners. Instead of putting in each page one by one, you put pages in the document feeder, and the scanner intelligently takes one page at a time and scans it, double-sided if you wish. The ScanSnap will perform color and grayscale scans at up to 20 pages per minute, which is markedly faster than anything you could accomplish with a hand-fed, flatbed scanner (unless, perhaps, you have an insanely fast scanner and have the hand-eye coordination of a world-class cup-stacking champion). Using the highest quality setting slows your output to five pages per minute, but even at this more logy pace, the ScanSnap has the remarkable ability to scan pretty much anything that fits within its spec range, even the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, were you to rip out its pages one by one, frayed edges and all.

This brings us to the scanner’s big drawback: It’s not a flatbed scanner, so it can’t handle 3D objects or even be trusted with any page that’s out of its 12 to 34 lbs paper thickness range (the paper stock for the cover of Mac|Life is 146 lbs, and even flimsy magazine covers usually weigh in around 100 lbs). This limits your scanning hijinks, though common office documents should never pose a problem.

Indeed, during our tests, we got the best results when scanning standard 8.5x11 sheets, and the ScanSnap faltered with thicker paper or odd-sized pages. Fujitsu provides a carrier sheet to use with smaller items. It works fairly well, but you’re stuck if you try to scan anything wider than 8.5 inches. That said, the vast majority of users will be scanning single 8.5x11 pages, and even as a heavy-use device, the ScanSnap performs well.

With the Mac-specific version of the device, Fujitsu demonstrates that it cares about our kind. The software allows you to handle scan jobs in groups, letting you feed, say, 30 pages into the scanner and leave for a cup of coffee. The software can print the scans directly, open them in MS Office, or add them as images to iPhoto. And while the S1500M’s sticker price may dissuade those on a budget, Fujitsu also bundles Adobe Acrobat 8 (a $200 value), which is a great add-on for users serious about digitizing their paper.

IntelliScanner mini

Susie Ochs — Thu, 28 May 2009 03:23:00 -0500

As anyone who’s registered for wedding gifts will tell you, handheld bar code scanners are fun. This one especially.

At $179, a tiny scanner that looks like a garage-door opener but actually reads the bar codes that are already printed on your media is a hefty investment. But then again, your media collection--all of your books, CDs, video games, and movies--is quite an investment too. You can use the IntelliScanner mini to scan and log bar codes to track and organize your media, and with add-on apps it can wrangle your comic books, wine, groceries, and the rest of your worldly goods too. And for items that aren’t bar coded, you can slap on your own bar code stickers (IntelliScanner calls them Asset Tags; 10 come free with the mini and they sell for $24 per 100 additional).

To use the IntelliScanner mini, just point it at a bar code, press the Scan button, and enjoy the satisfying beep that signals a successful scan. Be sure to have the Media app (or one of the extra apps, including Kitchen, Comics, Wine, and Assets, which can be bundled or purchased separately) open when you connect the scanner to your Mac, because the transfer happens immediately and automatically, and once the bar codes are transferred, they’re deleted from the scanner’s memory. We had TextEdit as the active application once when plugging the scanner in, and the barcodes were added to our text file, forcing us to either rescan them or paste each bar code into the Media app one by one.

The Media app (we reviewed version 3.2) looks up your bar codes in an online database and creates searchable records for your media collection that include tons of information: title, author, release date, starting price, purchase date, cover art, and more. Integration with Address Book lets you note when you’ve loaned items to friends, and generating an email asking about an item’s status takes one click. You can create smart collections based on various criteria, and publish your collection to a free account at www.intelliscanner.net. You can even track collections added to that website by your friends, by selecting File > New Remote Media Collection.

The scanner is fun to use, and the app is easy to learn. Publishing your collection couldn’t be simpler, and the Web interface is iPhone-friendly. We wanted a little more flexibility in creating smart collections--we couldn’t create one for all our games that had the Played box checked, for example.

Collectors can get more mileage from the IntelliScanner mini by using the other available apps too: Wine lets you track your vino collection down to the position in a rack, with space for ratings, tasting notes, a URL, and more--and the app also supports publishing and remote collections.

The Comics app’s powers include the ability to track both traditional comic books and to automatically download and store Web comics. It even lets you print Comic Tag sheets (with info and a unique barcode) to store in the bags with your comics, for easy inventory. Kitchen lets you keep an inventory of items in your pantry: Scan items in when you bring them home, then scan ’em out as you use them up to create shopping lists.

And the Assets app lets you keep a detailed home inventory, extremely useful for insurance purposes. All the apps have a similar interface and the ability to export records as CSV, XML, TXT, and tab-delimited files. Not everything you scan will be found in IntelliScanner’s databases, and manually entering info for unknown items is tedious--after all, it’s the scut work you’re hoping to avoid by scanning things in the first place. But the apps remember anything you’ve entered, if you ever scan the same bar code again.

Epson Perfection V30

Leslie Ayers — Fri, 08 May 2009 14:09:29 -0500

Beneath the Perfection V30’s low physical profile lurks powerful scanning chops.

Recession or no, time is one of our most valuable resources--second only, perhaps, to money. With the Perfection V30 scanner, Epson offers up a way to digitize hard-copy photos and documents that doesn’t suck you dry of time or money. That is to say, this sucker is fast and cheap--in a good way. The V30, a lightweight flatbed scanner with a conveniently flat lid so you can set a stack of papers on top of it without them sliding off, measures 17 inches long by 11 inches wide by 1.6 inches tall, so it fits nicely on a desk or side table--though the included power and USB 2.0 cables are only 6 feet long, so be sure your Mac and power outlet are close enough to reach.

Setting up the V30 and getting started scanning is a 10-minute deal, especially if you eschew a lot of the “extra” bits of included software, such as ArcSoft MediaImpression (a photo-creativity app) and Abbyy FineReader Sprint Plus (for optical character recognition). We skipped those at first and just installed Epson Scan, which is a bit fiddly--and not very pretty to look at--but lets you control what image format your scans are saved in, where they’re saved, and what kind of filters (dust control, descreening, and so on) are applied, saving you time in an image-editing app later on. The FineReader OCR software could come in handy for anyone scanning text documents that need to be converted to editable files--and in our testing on a dozen or so text docs, the OCR worked well.

The V30’s speed is impressive--and it’s whisper-quiet. A 300 dpi scan to PDF of a full-color magazine cover took 47 seconds. The same page scanned as a 25MB TIFF file took 1 minute, 33 seconds. Scanned as a 1MB JPG, it took 56 seconds.

The V30 has just four buttons: Power/Scan, Scan To PDF, Copy, and Scan And Email, a handy feature that scans a document according to the specs you’ve set up in Epson Scan, then launches your default email app and lets you choose a small, medium, or large version of the scanned image to send as an attachment.

Although it’s not advertised as a photo scanner exclusively, the V30 does an excellent job scanning color photos. The scanner works natively with Photoshop, so you can import a scan directly by choosing File > Import > Epson Perfection V30/V300. The scanning area is only 8.5 by 11.7 inches, though, so your scanned images are limited to those dimensions.

PlanOn Systems Solutions Docupen RC800

Lonnie Lazar — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 03:06:00 -0500

This pen-sized portable scanner allows for stealthy, one-pass scans on the go.

The DocuPen RC800 is a color scanner that weighs less than 2 ounces and measures 8.9 inches long by 0.5 inch wide. The pen-shaped device can make one-pass copies of contracts, signatures, articles, or any other document you might need to digitize on the fly. It’s a good solution when a desktop scanner is either unavailable or impractical. The included PaperPort software isn’t Mac-compatible, but the DocuPen is TWAIN compliant, making setup and use a plug-and-play affair.

Three adjustable scanning modes support up to 24-bit color and resolutions up to 400 dpi, though its paltry 8MB of onboard flash memory means you’ll have to limit large scanning projects to 1-bit monochrome, or invest in some additional memory. A one-page monochrome scan set on the lowest resolution produces a 400KB TIFF file. The DocuPen has a MicroSD memory card slot that lets you add up to 2GB of additional memory; currently the only supported MicroSD card manufacturer is SanDisk ($29.99 for a 2GB microSD card, sandisk.com). You’ll definitely need to buy additional memory if you plan on making more than one or two high-resolution scans in a sitting— an 8.5-by-11-inch grayscale text scan comes in at a whopping 10MB at maximum resolution. Under optimal conditions, scans are fully legible and sufficient for archival purposes; with less careful use, text and images can easily come out wavy and distorted.

Despite the fact that it’s not very Mac-friendly, the true beauty of the DocuPen may lie in its unintended uses. It is a simple tool for capturing digital images of graphic elements that can’t easily be preserved otherwise, though true image fidelity requires a steady hand and a stable, flat surface to scan on. In our tests, we used the DocuPen to scan detail from an oriental rug, the wood grain of a desk, a linen placemat, and a velvet Elvis. Our scans showed exceptional clarity and color. With a bit of practice, imagination, and ingenuity the DocuPen could become a boon to any designer’s palette—or just a really cool way to impress your friends at cocktail parties.

Fujitsu ScanSnap S510M

Roman Loyola — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 12:50:17 -0600

Makes scans lickety-split.

The ScanSnap S510M is the latest in a line of blazingly fast sheet scanners that specialize in printed paper. A stack of text pages from a report, pamphlets, flyers, forms, and more—if it’s printed, chances are the S510M can scan it.

The S510M looks a lot like its predecessor, the ScanSnap S500M (4 out of 5 stars, 05/07, p64), and it’s just as easy to install. All you need is the scanner driver to get going with the S510M, but it also comes with a full version of Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional (a $450 app) and a ScanSnap version of Abbyy FineReader 3.0, which performs optical character recognition (OCR). The scanner plugs into your Mac via USB, and when you want to scan, you just launch the driver, load your documents, and hit the S510M’s Scan button.

At its default Normal mode (150 dpi for color, 300 dpi for black and white; documents with color graphics and black text are scanned at the color setting), the S510M scanned at a rate of 17 pages per minute, and that’s with a double-sided document. That’s not far from Fujitsu’s 18ppm rating. A scan of a ten-page, double-sided color document with pictures and text took a quick 4 minutes at the S510M’s highest resolution (600 dpi).

The S510M saves files as PDFs or JPEGs, and had no problem handling varying paper sizes stacked into the feeder; the scanner has a setting for automatic paper size detection. We also tried scanning a stack of 4-by-6 color photos at the highest resolution, with imperfect results—we saw image noise and some banding in gradients. But while the photo quality isn’t as good as a flatbed photo scanner, for most documents it’s quite acceptable.

The bottom line. Attack that mountain of documents with the S510M. It’ll put you one step closer to the paperless office

COMPANY: Fujitsu

CONTACT: scansnap.fujitsu.com

PRICE: $495

REQUIREMENTS: Mac OS 10.2.8 or later, USB

Fast fast, fast. Good image quality for text and business graphics. Easy to use. Can scan varying paper sizes in a batch.

Mediocre photo reproduction quality. Pricey.

HP Officejet J5780

Cheryl England — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 11:17:00 -0600

An all-in-one with fax for $150 is a deal, plus you can upgrade to wireless printing for $100.

HP and others offer solid all-in-one devices that include printing, scanning, and copying in both black-and-white and color for less than $100. Fax capabilities, however, are becoming harder to find. It’s true that the fax is traveling into obsolescence, but that trip is a slow one, and there’s still a need for faxes in paperwork-heavy businesses. You can get by with using a free online eFax account to receive faxes, and scanning paper documents to email them out, but it’s a tedious process if faxing is part of your daily routine.

Enter the Officejet J5780 All-in-One. This little workhorse offers all of the functionality of standard multifunction printers, plus fax capabilities similar to those of its big brothers in the Officejet Pro series, all at the bargain price of $150. About the only thing you can’t do right out of the box is add the printer directly to a network, but for an additional $100 you can get the HP Wireless Printing Upgrade Kit for Wi-Fi printing on a network (or from your personal Mac).

The J5780 comes with one 100-sheet paper tray and handles a variety of media, including plain and photo paper, envelopes, labels, index cards, and transparencies. It has both a flatbed scanner and an automatic document feeder that can handle 35 sheets of paper. The J5780 is extremely easy to set up and use, thanks to excellent documentation and easy-to-understand buttons and software.

Like most inkjets, however, the J5780’s print speeds aren’t blazing. The J5780 can print black-and-white documents quickly—in our tests, a 10-page text file printed in draft mode at a peppy 25 pages per minute. Printing in normal mode slows to 7 to 9 pages per minute, while printing in best mode crawls along at about 1 to 2 pages per minute. Fortunately, the difference in quality between normal and best modes isn’t significant. Color printing is slower, but still quite acceptable.

The fax capability, however, is the real star of the show. You can store up to 100 pages in memory and up to 100 fax numbers in speed-dial. The fax capability even includes junk-fax detection, but you need to have caller ID in order for this to work. A separate fax manual clearly guides you through setup for your particular configuration. For example, there are instructions for setting up the fax to work with your answering machine or DSL Internet connection.

The bottom line. This thing is a workhorse, and the price is only slightly higher than that of a multifunction printer sans fax. If you send more than the occasional fax, you’ll love the convenience. If you don’t need to network the printer (thus saving the $100 cost of the wireless kit), then the Officejet J5780 becomes an even more amazing bargain.

COMPANY: HP

CONTACT: www.hp.com

PRICE: $149.99

REQUIREMENTS: G3 or later or Intel processor, Mac OS 10.3.9 or later, USB

Excellent value. Solid features for all functions. Fax capability.

Slow print speeds. Additional kit needed for networking.

HP Photosmart C7280 All-in-One

Stephan Somogyi — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 13:00:24 -0600

The Photosmart C7280 can connect to your network via Ethernet or Wi-Fi, so all your Macs can take advantage of its versatility.

The capable Photosmart C7280 All-in-One gives you a color inkjet printer, scanner, copier, and fax machine in one tidy, versatile unit. And it easily attaches to a wired or wireless network, making it an ideal choice for a home office or small business.

At press time, HP was still working on a full software driver installer for Mac OS 10.5 Leopard. The C7280 printer drivers are actually part of Leopard’s built-in printer driver collection, but Leopard users need to install additional software to use the C7280’s scanner. If you’re still using Mac OS 10.4 Tiger, you simply install the drivers on the supplied CD, and you’ll be up and running quickly.

The connectivity options are straightforward: You can connect directly to a Mac via USB, or use the printer’s Ethernet or built-in 802.11b/g Wi-Fi (including WPA2 encryption) for attaching to a network. In addition to configuration via HP’s Mac software, the C7280 offers a built-in Web server that lets you access some options that aren’t available through the control panel, such as Webscan (scanning over a network via a Web browser). The Web server is laudable, but it doesn’t support encryption, a security feature you’d want for maintaining your privacy while doing network tasks.

The C7280 uses a six-ink set (black, yellow, light and dark cyan, and light and dark magenta). HP’s drivers give you exemplary printing control, but the defaults usually work just fine. And while the first page of a job can take a little bit to come out after the unit’s been idle for a while, both black-and-white and color pages print swiftly, cleanly, and accurately. Given its name, we also expected photos printed on photo paper to come out looking good, and our expectations were certainly met. The printer’s built-in duplexer lets you print on both sides of a sheet of paper, but there’s no duplex scanning for two-sided documents.

When it comes to scanning, the C7280 can save files directly to a storage device inserted into its front USB port. We had no trouble scanning straight to a USB drive. You can also send scans over the network to a machine that has HP’s scanner drivers installed. The C7280’s fax support also works well, and the unit has both single-line and dual-line phone jacks, the latter being popular in home office situations.

The bottom line. If you need an all-in-one for your Mac, this jack of all trades won’t disappoint.

COMPANY: HP

CONTACT: www.hp.com

PRICE: $299.99

REQUIREMENTS: Mac OS 10.3.9 or later; USB, Ethernet, Wi-Fi, or Bluetooth

It just works. Solid Mac driver support for both Tiger and Leopard.

No duplex scanning. Minimal security for the built-in Web server.