Review on Kodak 1960988 ScanMate I940 Scanner by Anthony Mcgarry

My opinion of this scanner is that it does an excellent job of scanning both sides of a page at the same time. Now let's break it down so I can show the strengths and weaknesses of this scanner. Scanner: Weaknesses: 1) Default Scanner Software Settings - The scanner software defaults to 200 dpi which causes pages to pass the scanner but produces scans that are not very good. You can change these settings to 300, 400, or 600 dpi for each scan setting. 2) Using the bundled software to scan at resolutions above 200dpi caused the scanner to vibrate (the vibration was due to the stepper motors being told to enlarge the page through the reader with a long pause between steps) when I my computer system used, and probably this was due to bad image caching (just a guess) and pages are crawled much slower. It's not a deal breaker, it's just that he made more noise than I wanted. 3) There is no collection point for the exit paper ie she spits it out from my desk. You need to find a way for the pages to end up in some sort of bin if you want to keep your pages in a nice neat stack. This doesn't detract from the quality of the device, but as home users we'll most likely need pages off the ground. 4) A small input tray, but quite suitable for home use. 5) You can use higher paper guides in the paper input tray to prevent pages from skewing. Advantages: 1) Small, compact and durable. 2) Turn on the device when you open the top. 3) Comes with decent scanning software. 4) Scans both sides of the page fairly quickly with good software (more on that below). 5) Comes with every power supply imaginable (replaceable part of wall power transformer). 6) Paper user manual is intelligently written. 7) Accepts thick paper/cardstock (I'll serve a greeting card with no problem) 8) Kodak Capture Pro Software (Limited Edition) So let's talk about the main thing we need to talk about, software, because that's what it does or breaks the little jewel. The software that comes by default has an icon in the toolbar and offers multiple scanning options, but the default settings produce terrible results at 200 dpi, so changing these to at least 400 dpi for color, 300 dpi for black and white, and more are other options you'll change to adjust the scan quality. Once you have done this the scanner will work very well BUT to get the most out of this scanner you need to have better scanning software and I only have Adobe Acrobat version 9 (not cheap software but I need it for my work) . There are other very good and some even free software packages out there (you may already have one that you like and use). When you install the printer software (included on a CD), a TWAIN driver is loaded for your other software to use. When I use Acrobat to scan a batch of documents with the 300dpi color document setting, pages fly through the scanner (maybe 1 page every 2 seconds, I don't think I really counted) and the scanner ran very smoothly. In contrast to the supplied software, no vibrations were caused. Using Adobe Acrobat Pro to scan: 300 and 600 dpi color document = no vibration and fast scanning. Grayscale at 300, 600, 1200 dpi was smooth and fast. Now I don't want to miss out on the basic scanning software that comes with it, it's not bad at all, but you shouldn't use the default settings if you want a good quality scan result. Also make sure you don't always use the color scan option when scanning a typical black and white invoice/statement as you can scan in black and white at say 300dpi and get great results and very fast with the software that comes with it just really crashes, when you select scan color mode. Capture Pro Software Suite Limited Edition: This is a great bonus because while this software isn't like Acrobat Pro, it does some pretty neat things. Let me hit you with something I couldn't get him to do, which is to fix the distorted scan. This wasn't a problem for me, but might be for someone who wants perfectly aligned vertical scans. What's great about it is that you can batch scan your documents, meaning you load a batch of documents into the scanner and a grid of document images will appear. You can select one or more images and then save them in many different formats (I like searchable PDF) and you save the selected pages then delete them and then select and save the other scanned pages. It actually speeds up document scanning as you can scan a large volume and then easily save it. Also, the vibration is the same as if I used Acrobat's permissions, so everything works fine. I'll have to use this a little longer to see if this app makes me more productive compared to Acrobat (by far my favorite, but I might change). Paper skewed: while paper was in the paper input tray and being fed into the machine. , the pages regularly shifted slightly to the upper left corner. This isn't a problem at all when using Acrobat as it automatically corrects the skew of your scanned pages, but the software that came with it didn't do the job. So the bump (albeit a slight bump) is really against the hardware that allows the page to move at all and I have a feeling the paper guides would be a little higher or maybe the paper tray could be tilted back a little more, to improve this alignment, this issue would be a little more fixed. But let's face it, automatic document feeders always run the risk of picking up a little more on one side than the other because the pages aren't perfectly aligned or a little thicker or whatever, and that's what happens with expensive automatic documents. also feeders. It was an observation and I will not discourage you from buying this device. Cleaning Access: The top opens easily and allows you to clean the scanner areas with a clean cotton cloth. I don't know what products to use to clean the rollers, but I'm hoping that won't be necessary any time soon. Summary: Although I haven't had this scanner in over 24 hours, I love it and it replaces my Lexmark MFP which I only used. for the scanner because the ink was terribly expensive. I gave it a try even though it was finished in the short amount of time I had to give a fair review. I wish I could compare it to a $400 or $800 scanner, for example, but I don't have the resources. What I can't rate at the moment is the durability of this product but I'm not insulting it so I hope it lasts at least 10 years. For a home or even a small office scanner, I highly recommend this one. Please note that I paid $160 to have it shipped to my door and I'm a home user and have never tested this with just USB power, I used the mesh that came with it and I'm running Windows 7SP1 (everything is up to date as of this review). These are the factors to consider when reading my review.