At 09:43 AM 11/3/2001, John Rodgers wrote: >interface UMAX Astra scanner for $79. You can probably bet a USB interface >unit for the >same money nowadays.

USB ports are so much easier to deal with than parallel ports (for scanners) that I expect parallel-port units to go off the market before long. SCSI is still best for high-speed work but cheap scanners don't scan all that fast. I would anticipate some possible problem with simultaneously accessing a USB Zip drive and a USB scanner because they each use a big chunk of the available bandwidth, but using them separately should be no problem.

Rules of thumb for scanner specs -- look at the optical resolution only, the "interpolated resolution" numbers are worthless. One of the things that money buys is scanning speed. If you're scanning lots of unbound documents, consider a sheet-fed scanner that sucks the page through a slot -- they're much more convenient than loading a flatbed scanner with page after page. Unfortunately there probably aren't any under $100 -- Visioneer makes one that lists at $200. Or try for a flatbed with a document feeder.

> But for >faxing purposes, if you scan at 150 dpi the records should be fine.

Standard faxes have a resolution of 203x98 for normal mode, 203x196 for fine mode. I'd recommend scanning at 200 dpi for this purpose. There is some good info at http://www.scantips.com/basics05.html which I heartily recommend. That's the page on scanning for fax; the home page is http://www.scantips.com/ -- good discussion of many aspects of scanning.

david

David Beierl - Providence, RI http://pws.prserv.net/synergy/Vanagon/ '84 Westy "Dutiful Passage" '85 GL "Poor Relation"