Epson Perfection 1260 Photo Scanner

Well i've read the reviews here and i here what your'e saying. I agree it's not the fastest on the bloc nor is it absolute satate of the art, and the Software could have been better, but it does do everything it's supposed to do , and the features are pretty good espically the ability to scan a mix of images on the glass and put them in individual files. May i say that most of the negative comments here relate to setting up and installing the scanner correctly, all those wierd colours and stripes are most often caused by wrong proceedures and plugging & unplugging usb hardware , switching off everything & restarting the Computer
will in most cases get things on an even keel. The Twain software in the Manual mode works better in some applications than others, Ulead PhotoImpact did a good job as did Paint Shop Pro also,and even Arcsoft Impression which is on the installation CD .Photoshop CS2 worked though in my opinion not as well as i would have expected.
Also how many people have downloaded the latest Twain driver from Epson, it's easy to find and download. The other bit of info,this is one of the few Scanners that will work in a Linux Operating system (Debian based distros in particular) but you have to download & install "Sane" to get it working.A few last tips try installing the software first,then close down the PC & connect the Scanner ,then start the PC, chances are it will be fine. Make sure the Scanner is "powered up" first then switch on your PC, not the other way round,even though XP is "plug & play compliant" it works better with the first option ,Messages like "Scanner could not be found " or Scanner could not be initalised" is because Windows is not "seeing it" you can check this by right clicking on EPSON in C Drive and see if "Properties" are available,in some cases "EPSON" may not even be there at all,in which case you know that the PC has'nt found it!, Have a second look at this Scanner and you may be happy yet. Good Luck.

Please do yourself a favor and don't purchase this scanner. It is by far the WORST scanner I've ever owned. I think my scsi scanner from the early 90's was better, at least it worked. Epson also is notorius for providing terrible support for their products and as far as I can tell no longer provides an updated driver for the 1260 model on their site. You need the full driver to scan slides.

I have had this scanner for about three years - use it moderately, but a lot at the moment. It has always done what is said it would, never any hang ups or errors and the Smart Panel equally seems to do what it says. Apart from the long warmup time, not a bad buy (although not obsolete) Those with problems may well have configuration difficulties or whatever.

I got this as part of a special offer with my Mac G4. I have been using scanners for almost 20 years, and this is *the worst* I have ever had the misfortune to be stuck with. There is no "off" button; the only way to shut it off (and prevent its big green light from illuminating the room) is to unplug it; if it has one-touch copying, I have never succeeded in getting it to work; the software is terrible -- at least fifty per cent of the time it stops making copies for no apparent reason; I use Adobe Photoshop's "twain acquire" function to avoid having to use the software which comes with this thing, but -- again -- half the time it does not work; it is not working now although it worked fine two days ago with the same connection and the same software.

DO NOT waste any time or money on this thing. Even if you receive it for free, don't bother with it -- it will waste so much of your time that you may just grab it and throw it against a wall or something else valuable.

I give it one star because it *does* work every once in a while. That is the only good thing I have to say about this piece of junk.

I purchased a 1260 about 9 months ago after my first-generation scanner (from UMAX) died. The scanner and software were quite easy to set up (on a PC running Windows XP), I've had no hardware problems, and I've found the picture quality to be very acceptable. It's a bit slow to warm up and scan, but both were as expected in this price range.

The bundled EPSON SmartPanel software is a disappointment; it gets the job done but is far from user-friendly (and my low-tech wife still hasn't figured out how to use it).