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"