Free Classifieds for jobs and property, anything for sale in the UK

Mustek Phantom 330CX Flatbed Scanner

Taken from : COMPUTER BUYER REVIEW

Verdict: A lightweight, slimline flatbed scanner that produces decent results at a very competitive price.

The advent of digital cameras and cheap scanners has made PCs much more fun to use, and probably enhanced their popularity with most people. Let's face it, seeing a picture of your dog/granny/kids on the screen has far more allure than even the prettiest suite of disk utilities. Scanning technology has become so cheap that you can now get a scanner for your PC that costs well under a hundred quid, and that a smarty-pants Mac type would have paid £500 for a couple of years ago.

At £79 including VAT, this new flatbed from Microtek fits firmly into the territory once occupied by handheld and sheet-fed devices, but with an optical resolution of 300x600dpi it should offer better image quality. The Phantom 330CX uses a new technology called CIS (contact image sensor) to 'read' the image being scanned, which has fewer moving parts and lenses than the CCD (charge-coupled device) system used by most scanners. This reduced complexity makes CIS cheaper and smaller, which goes some way to explaining the Phantom's low price and very slim build.

While it's a full A4 scanner, the surface area taken up by this scanner isn't a huge amount bigger than a sheet of paper, and the whole thing's under two inches thick. Add to this sleek appearance a matt black finish and you've got a sexy-looking, very portable gadget.

The Phantom 330CX connects to your PC via the parallel port, and installation's pretty straightforward, although quite time-consuming as a parallel port SCSI adapter is also installed. Everything worked without a hitch, though, and there's a diagnostic program that can be run to look for errors.

The basic installation consists of a TWAIN driver, ScanWizard, that's designed to be accessed from within programs like Paint Shop Pro via the Acquire function. It's very easy to use, and has settings for different types of document, as well as resolution and colour controls. The quality of the scans is very good, with strong colours and plenty of detail. Text is also very sharp, with none of the banding often visible with cheap scanners. However, one disadvantage of the Phantom's CIS technology compared with CCD scanners is the reduced depth of field. This means that it's very sensitive to any crinkles in the document being scanned, and areas that are further away from the scanning head quickly become out of focus. Obviously, most of the time this isn't a problem, but there could be times when you might want to scan a piece of paper that's been scrumpled up, for example.

By - Dave Mathieson

SPECIFICATIONS:

300x600dpi flatbed scanner, 30-bit colour accuracy, 216x294mm scanning area, parallel port interface, 264x416x43mm (wdh),

The scanner is in good working order and drivers for use with Windows 2000 and Windows XP can be downloaded from the internet... just type drivers for Mustek Phantom 330CX into your search engine.

Price: £30.00 

Posted: 12 Mar 2010

Contact:

Website: sites.google.com/site/newanduseditemsforsale/sale-items

Telephone Number: 07053508780

Please Sign in to Add to Clipboard... Report this advert...

Contact the advertiser

Email this to a friend