INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this report is to determine which scanner to purchase. I used the Internet to find information and reviews of scanners and narrowed my choices down to four: the CanoScan 5000F, the HP ScanJet 5550c, the Microtek ScanMaker 6800, and the Epson Perfection 3200 Photo Color. I chose these four because they are some of the newest scanners on the market, and each one comes from a different brand.

Criteria

I had to base my choices on the following main criteria:

The scanner had to be no more than $700
It had to have the ability to scan film negatives
It needed good resolution for professional looking scans

Aside from the basic criteria, I also had to look at how well it performed in scan tests. I got my information on the scan tests from PCWorld.com*, a company that specializes in testing computer products and providing ratings and results. Another factor in the decision is the other features of the scanners, including software packages and its connection capabilities.

Scanners have different types of resolution: optical and interpolated. I decided to base my decisions on optical resolution rather than interpolated resolution since interpolation has to do with software and nothing to do with the scanner itself.

Method

I found most of my information by using search engines to search the web. Google is the main search site I used because it almost always finds the information I need. I also went directly to the sites of the companies that produce scanners to see what was new on the market and try to make a decision. Since I could not test any of these scanners out myself, I also used Google to find a trusted rating site that had run scan tests on the scanners that I chose to consider.

* All scanners are tested at default settings under Windows XP Home on a Dell Dimension 2800 (2-GHz Pentium 4) PC with 512MB of RAM, using each scanner's bundled software.