Epson Perfection 1200U USB Flatbed Scanner

My former scanner by Microtek was difficult to set up and did not work until I searched for hours in the documentation and on Microtek's web site and finally found a rather complicated answer. I still have to apply the "fix" to any computer I use the Microtek scanner with.

In contrast, the Epson Perfection 1200 USB Scanner was a breeze to set up. I just plugged the USB cable in with my computer already on, turned the scanner on and Windows 98 detected the scanner and the "Add Driver" wizard came up. Just point that to your CD drive to load the drivers and that's it.

The scanner is very fast and quiet. The twain interface is as good or better then any I've seen. The quality of the scans is top-notch across the board, from color to contrast to shadow depth.

I choose this scanner based on a ZdNet review of Epson's 636 USB scanner which won their editors choice award. They said it works especially well with Epson Color printers which I found to be the case too.

With a hardware resolution 1200 x 2400 dpi, the Epson Perfection 1200 USB scanner has higher optical resolution than any other scanner in it's price range. It's a real bargain.

Tips: Whatever graphics program you use, set up an ICM color profile. Or use the ICM profile of your monitor. Adobe Photoshop comes with a utility to do this. Then in the twain interface of your scanner click the "Use ICM" check box. Then your scans will look more like the originals when viewed on-screen. If you have an Epson printer (I have the Stylus Color 740), when you print choose the "Epson Stylus Color 740" profile from the "color space" list. If you have another printer it should show up in the list too. This info is for printing from Photoshop, but other graphics programs should be similar.

Scans printed from my Epson printer look almost identical to the original including color tone and depth.

I use this scanner primarily for professional web design and personal photograph reproduction.

Overall it's just a great scanner and I'm very happy with it.

I recently upgraded my old Epson Perfection 600 scanner with the 1200s and it is amazing. It scans super fast (especially the SCSI version which I have) and the optics (1200x2400) are the best available in this price range. The color of the scans is very true to life and the descreening feature does an excellent job of taking the "texture" out of photos. The one touch button on the front can be a little hard to set up and until it is customized, adds an extra step to the scanning process. The twain driver/software adds a lot of really nice "tweaking" features for the advanced user, but isn't the most intuitive I have seen. Overall, this is the most impressive scanner I have ever seen in this price range.

installed our scanner with no great effort put in a picture of our dogs and followed directions---turned out great