Umax Astra 1220P Color Flatbed Scanner

I've being using this scanner for about 7 years and had not had any problems with it. Scan quality is very good. The software takes a little getting used to but works just fine once you learn it. I've scanned B/W and color documents, and have also scanned actual hardware items with very good success. Quality seems good as mine has lasted 7 years. I now have a printer/scanner combo so don't use it much now-a-days unless I need to scan a large document (this scanner has a big scanning bed). Overall I would buy again.

When I owned this scanner I thought the image quality was top noch. Colors were acurate. Details and sharpness were good.I was using on a Win98 machine. However, it was very slow and I kept having to reinstall the twain drivers because they would get corrupt causing green or black scans. It was much worse when I switched to WinME. Then when I upgraded to WinXP I just got rid of it. I have not been to happy with what I replaced it with, the Epson perfection 1660, so I'm currently looking for another scanner.

I've had this "scanner" for about 3 years now. Let's put it this way: I had time to go watch an episode of Friends while this thing completed a 300dpi scan. It has given me nothing but trouble from the beginning, and the other reviews are correct in that there is no support for any new OS's (Win 2000, XP, etc.) short of purchasing new drivers from the manufacturer. Umax is a bunch of daft cretins if they actually think anyone will waste their money on such inferior support. I was fortunate enough to find a pirated copy of their updated drivers (it came from overseas and was in a different language) so I could use the scanner with XP. Surprisingly it worked but that didn't stop the errors and incredible slowness this machine is notorious for. I wish Amazon would add negative stars to their scale.
I hope other potential customers will steer clear of it and find another model, even another company. You'll be much happier.

Scanner works well with Windows 98. However, is now obsolete with Win-XP unless I purchase an updated driver from UMAX. I am not happy with this hidden cost.

Buy Umax only if you will never upgrade your software. If you plan on upgrading your operating system in the future Umax is not the way to go. Any time you need to upgrade drivers for say a new operating system or if you lost yours, unlike most other computer manufacturers, Umax will not let you download drivers for the upgrade. Instead they will mail you the drivers for just [money amount]. Real customer service.