CS2000

CADalyst, April, 2004

CS2000

Western Graphtec

www.graphtecusa.com

Star rating: 4.5 stars out of 5

Price: $13,995

At $13,995, the Western Graphtec CS2000 scanner is priced comparably with other scanners of similar capabilities reviewed here. It's one of the lightest and most easily maneuverable scanners we tested. The Western Graphtec CS2000 scanner differed from the other scanners in its connectivity and in appearance--it has an attractive black and very dark blue finish in contrast to the light putty finish on the other scanners. The CS2000 scanner has only a SCSI connection, so you'll need a SCSI card in your system.

Following the directions laid out in the manual, I attempted to calibrate the scanner. In this instance, because it turns out the scanner had an updated BIOS that was incompatible with the calibration software included with it, calibration took a tedious six hours and forty minutes to complete. According to the manual, calibration should take about 30 minutes. Western Graphtec assures us that it generally requires less time, especially with the right software.

The primary scanning software that accompanies the CS2000 is Scanning Master 21. Though this software works fine, it's at times inflexible and doesn't offer as broad a range of options as some. That said, it was easy to scan, and the software immediately located and started using the CS2000 across the Adaptec 29160 Ultra SCSI card we used to test this particular scanner. The company says that a new version of its software will be released by the time you read this article. Scanning Master 21 v4.60 offers additional image editing features and other options such as Scan-to-Email and Scan-to-Print.

For ease of use, the Scanning Master Color Copy application lets new users provide minimal information about scanning specifics such as sheet size, scaling, and required number of copies before scanning. A Pre-Scan function allows easy adjustments for difficult originals such as faded bluelines.

Scans were high quality, with good color separation on the 24-bit color scans and a broad range of grays on the monochrome scans. Scan times were very reasonable at 46 seconds for monochrome and 130 seconds for color.

Western Graphtec has a couple of new scanners coming to market in the near future. Watch for them in Product Showcase online at www.cadalyst.com.

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