Hold onto your pocketbooks with this one!
Pros:
Compact, lightweight, quiet, and scans at a good rate.
Cons:
Programming and marketing techniques deserve 10 years to life for those who devised the scam.
The Bottom Line:
The machine is great, but the problem is with the software. Total price needs to be upfront.
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Overall Rating:
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Author's Review
I bought this product via the Internet back in the spring of this year (2008). My purpose for the scanner was to scan data and marry it in my Word program in my notebook computer. What attracted me was the capabilities, compact design, ease of use, and setup.
The scanner arrived by UPS not long after ordering. Delivery was very speedy. The packaging was very thorough. I threw away some of the outside shipping packaging, but made sure I had left the inside packaging intact.
I did not get around to installing the scanner until May, after being well into my traveling. I plugged the disk into my computer, which installed fine, but when I tried to open it, it was license protected and required more money to open it and launch the software to operate the scanner. I was not into this for a business, so I had no intentions of selling such services. But, there's no way around this to get all of the capabilities the scanner has that I had purchased.
In other words, the scanner can do all of what it is said to do but only has capabilities according to it's program. Maybe you can get around this if you are some computer-software guru?
Thus began the venture of tracking someone down in order to unlock some features so I could use the scanner. I went around in circles. The company I bought from were no longer handling the scanner. After spending an entire day and a half of making calls and sending e-mails, I got some help. Someone wanted to get into my computer via the Internet to install my scanner. I wasn't too thrilled about opening up my computer to a stranger, so I investigated my other options. I was informed to go to a site via the Internet and download a mini version of a program that would handle operating my scanner. Not so simple. I ended up enlisting someone else to install the scanner.
I've tried numerous times to get my scanner to be more friendly with my computer, but to this day it is still an alien. It scans with my mini doc.shell program, but does not open to anything except a small Acrobat Reader. I cannot export it anywhere, and cannot open the scanned images in my Word program. It comes out all encoded-encrypted and the Word program cannot decipher it. I downloaded a plug-in for my Word to enable portable document format thinking that I could drop them in that particular format, but they still appeared encrypted. There is something in the software that is disallowing usage of the scanner with other programs.
I feel I got ripped-off, because they sold it to me knowing I would have to outlay a bunch more money to get what I had purchased in the first place. Right now I have a very lightweight paperweight for the price of $173.95.
I demand someone to rectify this problem! I need better software to handle this scanner. I have a large program on disk that I cannot use, because I am not buying an additional license in order to use this scanner. NO ONE TOLD ME I WOULD HAVE TO PAY TO UNLOCK A PROGRAM TO MAKE MY SCANNER WORK!
Keep all of your shipping material, because they require some number off of the outer layers of the shipping materials.
