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Good, cheap, small USB scanner?

Heh, I'd much rather a SCSI scanner than a USB one. Wait, I am using a SCSI scanner 😀

You can find the HP 3300 series really cheap, even (close to) free after rebate. Then again, there are a plethora of cheap USB scanners out there right now. I've never been impressed. 😉
 
I recently purchased a Mustek 1200 UB Plus (Australian model number - may differ for US) to replace an older parallel port scanner I had. It was extremely cheap just $100AU. To be honest I wasn't expecting much out of the scanner, but since I only really use it like a photocopier/scanner anyhow (I have a digital camera also) I wasn't too concerned.

The scanning quality is excellent for the price however - it totally amazed me there. The twain interface is very good compared to other scanners I've owned/used in the past, and the greatest part of all (and quite unexpected) it's very good at OCR due to the bundled ABBY Finereader program.

In the past I haven't bothered much with OCR, it's been too clunky and inaccurate to worry about. Not this time around. I placed a cheaply printed magazine page in the scanner and OCR'ed it through the scanners multifunction frontend. It scanned quickly, took almost no time at all to process the scan and output a perfect copy of the page to word, layout pictures, colors and all. Not a spelling error in sight. Everything editable. This finereader program makes Omnipage and TextBridge look stupid by comparison.

Greg
 
I recently bought a HP Scanjet 2200c USB at Staples for $80. It's a good name brand and does a decent job for it's specs. It's not very large and it's light.

Having worked in several scientific departments at colleges and Universities and I've used a number of scanners (high and low end) and have always been pleased with HPs consistancy and compatibility.

 
For general purpose, the Canon scanners are great. Plus, no power cord or brick - they're powered by the USB port.
 
Just picked up a Microtek ScanMaker 5600 for design work, and the thing is a champ! Killer color purity (true 48bit) , great resolution, (4800 x 2400 optical), and it comes with an mp3 CD player. 🙂 Got it for $179 with a $20 MIR.
 
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