Introduction

UMAX Astra 1220U

Scanners are a luxury, right? I mean, who needs a scanner besides making cheesy personalized greeting cards and putting pictures of themselves on their website?

Actually, scanners can be quite useful, on top of being fun to play with. Digital imaging (and thus scanners) is coming into its heyday. What do I mean by this? Well, several years, a good scanner was prohibitively expensive. The ones that home users could afford were pretty junky, on the most part. Lack of software that was easy for the home user to use played a big part in this as well. Nowadays, there is quite a demand for digital imaging, as a great percentage of businesses, including small ones, are putting up websites with pictures, logos, etc. Home users can do things like post pictures on their homepages, or send them through e-mails.

The times are a-changing. In the past several years, scanner technology has been increasing, and prices decreasing. Now it is possible to get an affordable SOHO (small-office/home-office) scanner without selling your car for it. The product in question is a UMAX Astra 1220U, described by them as the "easy-to-use USB color scanner for home and office". (That's right folks, there are things besides the mouse and keyboard that actually use the USB port). The 1220 series are basically the same, except the "U" uses the USB, while the "S" is SCSI, and the "P" is a parallel port connection.

Kenn gave me this thing to play with, and see if it was worth looking in to. Are you in the market for a scanner? Let us walk you through some of the relevant features of this modestly priced (and thus affordable) scanner!