Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler OT- Scanners

You'll do fine John. None of those manufacturers make BAD products, though each is fully capable of making a lemon. Glad to be of service.

I think I have the same Epson scanner that Jack does; it has been great. I want to underscore the good software; it came with Photoshop Elements, which has been indespensible. The Epson Smart Panel software is good too. Easy to use, and very high quality scans. When I bought it, it scanned much faster than comparable models.

I especially liked (and have used) the backlighting feature that allows me to scan slides and/or negatives. I don't use it much, but there is no substitute without getting yet another dedicated device. If you have an old family slide collection that needs preserving, you might consider that capability.

However, I just bought a HP Officejet 7310 all-in-one, and it seems like a really good solution to a number of problems. We discussed this some in a separate thread, but if you need a new printer or a fax machine, you might consider just having ONE monstrous box sitting around.

I have not compared the scan quality of the 7310 to the Epson.

Good luck, bigjohn!

bigjohn, just to underscore the Photoshop Elements software. Terrific stuff. I see the version 3.0 just came out with some neat additions, including the ability to mix different sized pictures on a page for printing. Oh boy, something ELSE I need to upgrade.

Yeah, I find Photoshop Elements a necessity, although I've barely scratched the surface of it's capabilities. It's great for resizing photos, etc. My version has to be version 1, but they want a pretty piece of change to upgrade to the new version, so I'll probably limp along with what I've got.