Mustek ScanExpress A3 USB Flatbed Scanner

When I bought this scanner, I loved it. It was everything I needed at the right price. Then I upgraded my computer to windows 7. Well, this scanner doesn't support it. More than 20 inquiries about whether a driver will be forthcoming have resulted in NO RESPONSE from Mustek. I do no believe they ever intend to update te drivers, leaving this scanner dead in the water for newer computers and now completely useless to me. I would never buy anything from Mustek ever again no matter how good it looks on paper.

I need to buy a large format scanner soon, and read a lot of reviews regarding software problems on another listing of this scanner on Amazon. So I decided to try installing the software before buying it. Thought I would post this. Hope it helps...

I have an iMac G5 (no intel) with 10.4.11, and this installed the Driver Software successfully...

1. Updated Free Stuffit Expander Update on the Stuffit website.

2. Went to the Driver Download page on the Mustek website... Mustek Support>Scanner>USB Port>A3 USB 1200Pro.

3. Click 10.4 Install. (Did not work on Safari. Got a page of Code.)

4. Opened Firefox.

5. Went to the Driver Download page on the Mustek website... Mustek Support>Scanner>USB Port>A3 USB 1200Pro.

6. Click 10.4 Install.

7. Found Installer on Desktop, Double Clicked on it, followed instructions...

8. Photoshop>File Menu>Import...

9. Saw ScanExpress A3 USB 1200 Pro right there in the Menu. Woohoo!

Without a Twain Plug In, it may not work with Graphic Converter. I may ask Thorsten in Germany after I buy the scanner.

Now I just need to buy this scanner and see if it actually works!

Since I will only be using this scanner for very large items, mostly 12"x12", the 1200x1200 resolution is absolutely fine. It's only when scanning small photographs and things that you may want to enlarge some day, that you need a better quality scanner with higher resolution, and with the price of good regular size scanners down, why not have two?? Yay!

I scan a lot of documents for my business as it makes it easier than maintaining loads of paper. Normally, I use Canon scanners (which are very Mac friendly) to scan documents into PDFs.

However, Canon doesn't make a scanner (that I know of) that can handle Legal size paper, so I went in search of a large format scanner to convert the few documents I have in that size to PDFs. This was the most affordable by far, and the price was right considering how little I plan to use it.

As other reviewers have noted, there is a TWAIN driver available for OS X that will allow this scanner to work with Macs. However, this requires that you have some sort of software on your system that can use it. With Canon scanners, one can use Preview to acquire the image: simply plug in the scanner and go. It doesn't work with this scanner.

Since I have Photoshop, I was able to scan an image into that application. However, it was a far cry from the easy of use of the Canon products. They ship with a "toolbox" app that makes it easy to scan in a number of documents, similar to making copies on a photocopier, and save the whole thing as a single PDF document.

While Photoshop can save images as PDFs, it seemed very slow and in the end I would have had to take a number of individual PDFs and combine them together.

Determined to find a workaround, I fired up a Windows VM and installed the default Mustek tools. While not 100% Mac I found a procedure that worked well enough that I was able to get my PDFs in a timely fashion (although it is a far cry from the ease of Canon's tools).

1) Launch the "Panel" application that Mustek provides for Windows.
2) Configure your scan setting (mouse over the various icons until you find the "Settings" one).
3) Scan the first page (again, mouse of the icons - it's the first main icon on the left)
4) Once the first page is scanned, another dialog will appear. The icon on the bottom right will allow you to do a "new" scan which will add the image to the queue.
5) Scan the next page using the "new scan" icon in this dialog
6) Repeat until all pages have been scanned
7) When finished, click on the "To AP/Save" icon.
8) After some time (depending on the number of pages), there will be a TIFF formatted image file in the "My Documents" directory
9) Copy that file to the Mac (using either the built-in VM tools or pscp - Google "putty download" if you are familiar with scp)
10) Open the TIFF file with Preview and "Save As" a PDF

Kludgy, I know, but for as inexpensive as this scanner is I'm not sure there is a better way.

So, if you are a Mac user who uses Photoshop and you need to deal with a lot of large scale images, this scanner may work well for you. If not, or you are like me and want to scan in PDFs, etc., only consider this if you absolutely need a large format scanner.

This is an excellent scanner, and gets even a higher grade for the price. I am a working cartoonist and the ability to scan 11x17 art in one pass is a great convenience. I should add that I purchased this product to replace a previous 11x17 Mustek scanner that died on me after EIGHT years of fine service!! (Full disclosure, I am probably not what you would describe as a heavy power user.) So I purchased this because it had to connect to an Win98 machine, which the newer models do not.

About 7 months after I purchased this scanner, however, I upgraded to a brand new iMac. I have been able to get this to work with the Mac because I installed Windows XP to run within Mac OS X, using Parallels Desktop. (I had some old PC programs and data I still needed to run after the migration.) I was amazed at how easily I got it to work within the virtual Windows environment. So I am grateful I didn't have to rush out and spend money on a new scanner to use with my new system.

One word of caution: Yes, the scanning software that came with the scanner does seem rather poor quality. I've always scanned through Photoshop, which provides a lot more control over the quality and resolution of the scan. Be sure to understand how to scan depending on your output. I scan my original art through Photoshop 5.5 on the Windows XP side, then afterwards simply work with the file using Photoshop CS on the Mac side.

The price for this type of scanner is worth the product. I purchased this scanner for my Macbook. It is compatable with Windows and Macs but not with Mac OSX. The sellers description did not include this information. It is in smaller lettering on the outside of the box though. I now have to pull out my desktop anytime I need to use the scanner, but am willing to do so because of the great price. Also, it only scans through .tif images and the is not 5 star quality. I would still reccomend it for office or school use.