Epson Achieves 'Perfection' With New Premium Scanner — the Perfection 636; The Perfection 636 Delivers Highest Resolution, Best Performance, and Exceptional Quality for Less Than $300

Business Wire, Sept 14, 1998

TORRANCE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 14, 1998--Epson America Inc., creator of high quality, award-winning imaging products, today unveiled its new Perfection 636, the highest quality, best performing SOHO and consumer scanner in its class.

Ideal for business, small office and home consumers, the Perfection 636 is an easy-to-use product that delivers the quality, flexibility and performance typically found in professional level systems. The Perfection 636 sets a new benchmark in the consumer market for flatbed scanners.

"Consumers are beginning to recognize the potential of digital imaging and are looking for high quality products to meet not only their needs today, but tomorrow as well," said Frank Romero, product manager, new products, Epson. "The Perfection 636 is an easy-to-use, technologically advanced, and powerful product that encourages consumers to gain expertise while continuing to meet their scanning needs as they grow."

About the Perfection 636

Featuring Epson's built-in ColorTrue(tm) Imaging System -- the skillfully engineered integration of superior hardware, optics, and processing -- the Perfection 636 produces scans with amazing detail, phenomenal color accuracy, and incredible performance. The Perfection 636's maximum hardware resolution of 600x2400 dpi is achieved through Epson's advanced Micro Step(tm) Drive technology which features an extremely precise stepper motor, 4MB of onboard memory and intelligent image processing. Epson's Micro Step Drive technology enables the Perfection 636 to achieve maximum sub-scan or vertical resolutions of 1200 dpi and 2400 dpi using a method known as "half-stepping" and "quarter-stepping" of the scanning carriage to double and quadruple the optical resolution.

To improve OCR accuracy, the Perfection 636 features Epson's unique Text Enhancement Technology (TET) to extract scanned text from colored backgrounds and Auto Area Segmentation (AAS) to more easily scan documents with a combination of text, graphics and photos.

The fastest scanner in its class, the Perfection 636 utilizes its ColorTrue Imaging System, with superior processing built into the scanner hardware and a SCSI interface, to achieve incredible scan speeds. The SCSI interface ensures not only faster scans but also higher quality scans because all of the Perfection 636 scan information is transmitted, unlike other scanners that utilize a lossy compression method to increase data throughput speed with slower interfaces such as parallel and USB.

The Perfection 636 comes with everything the customer needs inside the box for easy set-up with PC or Macintosh. An Adaptec PCI SCSI card is included with the product along with easy-to-use installation instructions. Unlike ISA SCSI cards, the Adaptec PCI SCSI card is much faster and easier to set up because Windows `95 and `98 automatically detect it. Additionally, PCI SCSI cards do not require an IRQ address, thereby eliminating conflicts. The Perfection 636 also includes "Epson's Scanner Basics Guide," an easy to follow booklet that provides directions for set-up, introductory software guidelines, and recommended resolution and scanner settings for a variety of desired output options.

Brand Name Software Bundle

The Perfection 636 offers a superior, best-of-breed software bundle including: LaserSoft's Perfection 636 Scan Software, Epson's TWAIN driver, Adobe's PhotoDeluxe(R), Presto! PageManager, Xerox Textbridge(R) Classic and Broderbund's The PrintShop(R) PressWriter(tm).

For superior photograph and image scans, the Perfection 636 is bundled with LaserSoft's Perfection 636 Scan Software, an excellent scanning tool that complements Epson's TWAIN driver. LaserSoft's driver provides an easy-to-use interface offering many image adjustment options in the prescan mode. Additionally, rather than manually adjusting image quality, users can simply click the "Auto Exposure" button for perfect scans every time. To increase productivity, LaserSoft's Perfection 636 Scan Software also offers a batch scanning capability typically available in only higher end scanners. Batch scanning allows several images to be scanned at once, all at different settings and saved as separate image files.

The Perfection 636 includes Adobe's PhotoDeluxe Business Edition for Windows and PhotoDeluxe 2.0 for Macintosh to be used for graphics applications. NewSoft has developed a customized version of its popular Presto! PageManager to facilitate document management at a new level of integration for push-button ease of use. Users simply touch the green button on the front of the Perfection 636 to launch PageManager and scans are automatically downloaded into almost any application including e-mail and fax. Combined with Epson's TET and AAS scanner technologies, Xerox's Textbridge Classic OCR engine provides the best OCR capabilities in a consumer level scanner. As a bonus, the Perfection 636 also includes Broderbund's The PrintShop PressWriter to allow any user to create professional quality business communications with a few clicks of the mouse.