A good secondary scanner for quick form, bill and letter copies., February 23, 2011

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M. Agostino “4for3.info” (New England) – See all my reviews

  

I had a heck of a time trying to get this running. The short story is go to the Visioneer web site to download the latest tools and utilities. I have it running fine on a Windows 7 notebook.

I have a standard flatbed scanner for photos that is my primary use, but for quick scans of bills, receipts etc., it’s a great addition. I save everything to PDF and can shred most paper keeping the documents as files backed up on disc. For tax purposes, it’s ideal. You have everything searchable and no digging through papers and file drawers. I am not almost completely paperless and this is the way to go.

The quality is pretty good, and everything textual is crisp and printable. Obviously not intended for photos or artistic use, even though it is a color scanner. I prefer my standard flatbed. This is merely a companion to my paper shredder.

The current (MSRP) list price is too high, but the sale price is currently 64% off. That’s about right.

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If this were 2003, it would be a winner, November 3, 2010

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P. MSakamoto “boy clothes” (Saratoga, California USA) – See all my reviews

  

  

Summary: The Visioneer Strobe 220 has great specs, moderate performance and is absolutely 5-10 years behind in user interface. The installation even feels older. That said, it scans OK and the software bundle includes the excellent Omnipage Professional 15 and the venerable Paperport 11.

Pros:

Nice bundle with scanner hardware, drivers, OCR software (Omnipage Pro 15) and organizer software (Paperport 11). These appear to be full versions and work in their function.

Good price for the bundle.

The scanner is fast enough that it isn’t an issue for a few pages (seemed like <10 seconds for a full page at 300dpi).

The scanner is quiet and does not seem any more noisy than the other sheetfeed scanners I have (Fujitsu ScanSnap, Brother 8660DN). Very tolerable.

The size of the scanner is small and does not take up a lot of desk space, for the scanner itself.

There are two settings for the output side of the scanner so that it can accommodate both thin and thick paper.

Cons:

Installation process is from Hell, or perhaps 1995. Probably in between as it uses the net, poorly.

** Don’t bother with the Nuance registration, which is a lot of the problem. Just register later or send in the form USPS if you must. The online process is a mess.

For some reason, they needed two disks for the install; perhaps they used CDs.

The scanner unit is small, but the cable is HUGE. It is supposed to be USB, but it is a special Y cable that has a connection to the power brick integrated into it and a proprietary connector on the scanner side. The cable is about the thickness of most VGA cables.

The software has amazing issues such as making the default scan size 8.5″ x 14″ which is US Legal pad. It apparently cannot be set to default to US Letter. Stupid, just plain stupid.

Scan quality is just OK. Good enough to make the OCR work.

Summary:

This is less for less. Get something else that speaks Mac as well as PC. There are a lot of choices in this price range. In the bargain, you can get software from this decade, too. Most of the copyrights for this software included are in the mid 2000′s.

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Craptastic scanner, November 28, 2010

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Charleen Merced (Stamford, CT and sometimes in Puerto Rico) – See all my reviews

  

  

The scanner I used in 1999 is better and easier to install than the Strobe XP 220.

Installation Process from hell

The installation process was a nightmare. Brought me back memories from hardware installations dating back to 1999, nay…1997. The scanner is connected through chunky Y cable; Y split from the power adapter for USB connection to the computer and connection to the scanner. It was cumbersome and annoying. The cable is heavier than the scanner itself and often made it tilt under the weight of it. The scanner took hours to install, 2 CDs, adding tons of bloated software to my computer and my waning patience finally snapping. After all of that, the scanner refused to work. I had no idea whether it was on since the designers of this product deemed an ON switch or light was not necessary. I left the Strobe-craptastic-scanner for another day.

Getting it to work

A week later I returned to the task of trying to make the crap-scanner work. It will work this time, sure it will, I mused trying to fool myself into wasting more time on scanner-fail. I connected the scanner to the computer and waited for my computer to recognize it. And I waited…and waited…and kept waiting. Since there is no ON button or nice green light to let me know whether this crapshoot was even on, I went onto prodding and clicking any and all buttons McCrappy had. Alas, there was only one greay button at the side. I pressed. Nothing. Pressed again. Nothing. Pressed and Held. Nada.

Finally, as if by some miracle, my computer recognized it and told me to calibrated. I hastened with a semi-victorious hope (maybe this will work!) and inserted the calibration page and waited…waited some more. Page aligned with the arrows? Check. Is the Crap-scanner on? No way to check. Grey button? Pressed. Nada. Check another electric plug? Nothing. Restarting the computer? Nothing worked. Finally, after the 10th unplug/plug back in of the cables…it worked!!!!

So, I quickly calibrated, before it decided to bail out on me again. Then I put in a test page for scanning.

Software

It has an unfriendly interface. Full of useless stuff and meager setting options.

Black and White scanning

The text was clear but lopsided. A LOT. I calibrated again. Lopsided again. Calibrated again and still lopsided. Black and white photo scanning had terrible quality.

Color Scanning

Let me laugh a bit here as I review the “color” scanning. Yes, there was color and there was scanning. Scanning the photo it looked like a pictured taken with a 1 MegaPixel camera, the ones you would find 10 years ago then scanned by a scanner of also 10 years ago. There were vertical lines running through the picture scan. It was bloody awful. Yes, I did scan on picture mode and played around with the settings to try to make It better. I checked the settings, the highest resolution was 600 dpi! (See shared pictures above.)

Conclusion

Bloody awful crap-tastic scanner.

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