In the halfway house - Plustek USA's ScanFX sheet-fed scanner - Hardware Review - Evaluation

Home Office Computing, Oct, 1995 by Russell Letson

WIN / DOS Sometimes a company gets a product only half right. Plustek's ScanFX offers two features that set it apart from other entries in the sheet-fed scanner sweepstakes: a familiar fax machine-style front panel and 24-bit color capability. Unfortunately, limitations in the support software make the package less attractive.

The ScanFX looks like a truncated fax machine, housing a 10-page document feeder, a fax/copy control panel with a full complement of fax-related buttons, and a two-line LCD readout. A small controller card and six-foot cable attaches the ScanFX to your computer. The scanner can produce line art, grayscale, or 24-bit color images up to 600dpi. Fax resolutions include standard and fine (100 and 200dpi) as well as a proprietary 300dpi super fine setting. You can use this last setting only with the ScanFX Receiver software running on both ends of the call.

As nice as the hardware is, the accompanying software doesn't quite follow through. You can fax from Windows or scan or print images, but the methods are unsatisfactory. First, you need to have the ScanFX resident program loaded before you start Windows, eating up 28K of precious memory. Next, the One-Key utility that controls the links between the scanner and your Windows applications dedicates three of the scanner's one-touch keys to fax, copy, or scan functions. Finally, simply put a document in, the feeder, press a key, and you get the ScanFX scan-and-save or scan-and-print modules or your favorite fax application--ScanFX doesn't have one of its own. You also have access to the ScanFX dialing keypad for more direct faxing, though Windows performance gets jerky while the fax/modem is in use.

On the plus side, ScanFX comes with Micrografx's Picture Publisher LE image editor and Calera's WordScan OCR for Windows. One-Key establishes direct links to those applications, so you can set WordScan to send recognized text directly to your word processor of choice. A TWAIN driver also lets any TWAIN-compliant application, including many computer fax programs, use the scanner.

We encountered two problems using ScanFX under Windows. First, any attempt to do TrueColor scans at more than 200dpi locked up our test system, no matter which graphics application we tried. This is almost certainly a Windows memory-management problem, because 300dpi grayscale scans gave no trouble. More puzzling was the failure of the scan-and-print function, which worked fine under DOS but quit with an error message in Windows.

Running under DOS, the ScanFX resident program manages sending, receiving, storing, and printing. For faxing out hard copy, the scanner operates pretty much the same way that a conventional fax machine does. On the incoming side, it can print faxes immediately or save them for batch printing later. Unfortunately, there's no provision for faxing files directly from a DOS word processor or graphics program--you must still print out hard copy and then fax.

ScanFX's familiar fax machine front panel should make it easier for the techno-nervous to do hard-copy faxing, and its color scanning ability and 600dpi top resolution give it a performance edge over less ambitious scanners. DOS diehards will welcome a fax/graphics product that operates well in their environment, but the product's software limitations may keep Windows users away.

Details

ScanFX Scanner

Manufacturer: Plustek USA, 408-745-7111 List/Avg. Street Price: $799/$499 Key Specs: 600dpi maximum scan resolution; 1,200 software interpolated

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