Microtek ScanMaker 4900 - Flatbed scanner - 8.5 in x 11.7 in - 2400 dpi x 4800 dpi - USB
Microtek's ScanMaker 4900 is an affordable dual-platform multimedia scanner featuring the new slim EDGE Design. It has a high 4800 x 2400-dpi optical resolution and scans at true 48-bit color depth. The ScanMaker 4900 has a Sigma-6 CCD sensor, which features six rows of sensors (instead of the usual three) for enhanced accuracy, clarity, and resolution. The scanner also features 7 Smart-Touch buttons for Scan, Copy, Email, PDF/OCR, Scan-to-Web, Setup/Cancel, and Custom.
Microtek ScanMaker 4900 - Flatbed scanner - 8.5 in x 11.7 in - 2400 dpi x 4800 dpi - USB Accessories
Microtek ScanMaker 4900 - Flatbed scanner - 8.5 in x 11.7 in - 2400 dpi x 4800 dpi - USB Reviews
A real piece of junk, cheaply built with inferior parts, poor quality control and also prone to break down in a catastrophic manner. My Microtek 4900 Scanner overheated for no apparent reason and started spewing a considerable amount of smoke from its inside. It may set your house on fire or poison your family. Do dot leave it unattended while plugged. It may be good for a product liability lawyer, though. Luckily I caught this in time to avoid a fire, but I did inhale the toxic fumes.
I bought this scanner several years ago, at the time, USB 2.0 scanners were not available. For the things it IS intended for, it does a bang-up job. I sure as hell couldn't find anything as good for anywhere near the money at the time. While I never bothered to try using the film/slide attachment, I knew it wasn't intended for serious scanning of such things.I have a film scanner for that.
I thought I would use it to scan in pictures of my son and print out Christmas cards, etc. I seems that after spending $120.00 on a scanner and using it 6 times that my scanner has to be repaired. Since I don't have as much free time as I would like I probably used it 3 times to scan in photos and 2 times to scan in documents that I needed a second copy of. After 3 days I received their response.
What a joke. I would recommend never buying this product. I recently tried to scan in a family picture for a friend at work and the photo had horizontal lines all over the left side of the picture. I purchased this scanner 16 months ago.
I went to microtek support online and tried the two procedures they suggested in their FAQ's. When that did not work I emailed them with my problem. Their repair facilities are located in Southern California or Canada (since I am in Michigan that does me alot of good). Oh, and since I am beyond the 1 year warranty period I will be charged $80.00 per hour.
The hardware seems well engineered, and the software is powerful. The scanning software does not communicate directly with the programming of the push buttons, an inconvience shared with many other scanner brands. The result for us is that we ignore the buttons.Judging from other reviews, quality control and user support are an issue with Microtek. That power comes with a price, though, for figuring out the software logic requires an amount of effort only justified in a production setting. Low resolution scans are satisfyingly quick. It is unrealistic to expect an inexpensive scanner to accomplish perfect color fidelity, but our scans have done a good job of matching the originals. Since we switch users a lot and often boot up only to check email, the scanner lamp is left on more often than not. We haven't tried 35mm slides, partly because of the inconvenience of setting up the attachment, and partly because getting a good transparency scan from an inexpensive flatbed seems like such a reach.The "standard" interface is appropriately simple, and the "advanced" one powerful.
We got a good one and would buy again. The scanner has more than lived up to expectations. Microtek apparently doesn't believe in power switches, but does provide a power-saving mode that turns off the lamp after a designated time. (One operation that does really seem to slow things down is descreening). I've been using the ScanMaker 4900 for half a year on a 400 mHz Pentium II running XP. At the other extreme, you can have as much color depth and pixel density you could ever hope with scan times appropriate to the accomplishment.
After 10 minutes or so the lamp shuts off.I contacted Microtek and told them all about it (It's windows XP, blah blah blah) and they said they can't replicate the problem and have a nice day.Probably won't buy another Microtek when this lamp burns out, which might not be too far away unfortunately. I haven't tried the slide attachment but since that's a freebie I couldn't complain if it didn't work well. A nice scanner except for that, however. Scanning photographs is simple and the resolution is plenty.The buttons on the front are very nice for doing things like sending a document straight to your printer, or to an e-mail.
I'm using it to scan documents and images for web design and it does the job nicely. There is even a button that you can configure to perform a certain task when pressed, like turn the lamp off. If I run the software, then it works. THE BAD NEWS: I must press this button every time I start up my computer, unless I unplug the scanner, because the software fails to turn off the lamp after so many minutes of idle time (like it is supposed to do).
This scanner works well for me.
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