I’m in the market for a scanner and since I’ve never owned one before I was hoping that I might get some pointers on what to look for and reliable brand names from experienced scanner owners. It will be used at my home and setup on a network. It must be able to scan an area of 8.5 by 14″, be easy to setup, have software that is easy to use and capable of sending the scan to a printer or a drive on the network. It would be nice if it had USB and parallel connection capabilities. From the research I have done it looks like I want a CCD based unit but when it comes to DPI, bit’s, single pass and the other technical stuff I’m not sure what I need. I want good quality but since it’s not in a work environment it doesn’t have to be great quality.I would like to get one for $300 Canadian or less ($150-$200 American). One that I was looking at was the Microtek Scanmaker V6UPL at http://www.microtekusa.com/smv6upl.html. Does anyone have any experience with this brand or model and how do the specs. look? As stated above I would like opinions on what minimum specifications I should look for and hopefully get some brand names and model numbers.
Thanks for any help you can provide.