Easy scanning - HP's ScanJet IIcx scanner - Hardware Review - Evaluation

Home Office Computing, Jan, 1994 by James Karney

* * * 1/2

HP Scan Jet IIcx

List Price:$1,179

Average Street Price: $1,000

Manufacturer: Hewlett-Packard, (303) 350-4000, (800) 752-0900

WIN/MAC

The Hewlett-Packard ScanJet IIcx, the successor to the ScanJet IIc, is well suited to the demands of a small office that needs to convert black-and-white or color images (photos you want to use in your newsletter, for example) or text documents (perhaps reports that you'd like to store on your system) into electronic form. The new scanner improves on the IIc's design, offering faster performance, improved OCR (optical character recognition, a process that converts optical images of text into computer recognizable data), and by the time you read this, an optional transparency adapter ($759) for people who work with media such as 35mm slides. At $1,179, the IIcx is also priced lower than the ScanJet IIc. As with the IIc, you can purchase an optional ($559) automatic document feeder for scanning in as many as 50 pages at a time.

The ScanJet IIcx is easy to install. Setting up the unit involved placing the SCSI (small computer system interface) host adapter card in the PC (if you're using the scanner with a Mac, you simply plug it into the Mac's SCSI port), attaching the cable and power cord, and installing the scanner drivers and included software. The beauty of the arrangement is that the SCSI card has no jumpers to set and automatically seeks a free address configuration. Adding the automatic document feeder was also a simple snap on procedure.

The IIcx has an optical resolution of 400 dpi, but it can simulate an enhanced resolution of 1,600 dpi through software-the greater resolution is handy when, for example, you're working with photographic images and want to maintain as much detail as possible. The unit will scan in anything from black-and-white line art to grayscale and 24-bit (16.8 million) color images. HP DeskScan II version 2.0 for Windows provides a quick and easy way to scan and export images--the program is simple to use and provides basics like contrast, brightness, and color adjustment. It's a good choice when you need to get images into programs that don't have scanner support, but it doesn't provide fancy special effects or extensive touch-up options. For that, a limited edition of Aldus PhotoStyler for Windows is included. The scanner ships with a TWAIN driver, so you can also scan images directly into any TWAiN-compatible application, including Aldus PhotoStyler. (For Mac users, the product ships with Adobe Photoshop Limited Edition.) You can also use DeskScan II for creating fax files to be sent from programs like Delrina's WinFax PRO.

Running the IIcx was almost as easy as setting it up. Using the TWAIN driver, I scanned full color images into CorelDraw's PhotoPaint module and into Adobe Photoshop. I had no problems getting good color saturation and tonal balance when scanning in full-color images.

The document feeder had no real problems passing a 20-page hard-copy report into ExperVison's TypeReader OCR software. Like many third-party OCR applications, TypeReader incorporates HP's AccuPage technology, which HP claims will read type as small as four points. I had some difficulty with four-point type in the footers, but since other scanners can only read down to six points, I was impressed. You wouldn't want to scan in the four-point type used in legal briefs without bothering to proofread the results, but you can feel pretty confident about the process, especially if you're using a top-flight OCR package like TypeReader. Other advantages of AccuPage technology are its ability to retain a document's original format and scan text from pages with color or even coffee-stained backgrounds.

All in all, the scans I performed seemed to go a good deal faster than the same types of tasks performed on the older IIc. Third-party, high-performance SCSI host adapters (such as the UltraStor 34F or AHA 1542C) might even improve the times.

The HP ScanJet IIcx's ease of use, improved speed, simple installation, and reduced price will make it a popular choice for general office use and desktop publishing applications.

  About Our Ratings
The zero-to-four-star
ratings are based on       0      Poor
performance, features,     *      Fair
setup, ease of learning    **     Good
and use, availability,     ***    Very Good
warranty, support,         ****   Excellent
documentation, and price.