The Most Affordable Large Format Scanner

The Mustek ScanExpress 1200 is probably the cheapest large format scanner for sale. But cheap isn't necessarily bad.

Instead of the normal CCD (Charge Coupled Device) used by other scanners, the ScanExpress 1200 is one of just two units that use a CIS (Contact Image Sensor) to scan documents. More features about its capabilities will be revealed in this review of the Mustek ScanExpress 1200.

A useful component for any office using scanners for business, this large format machine will be an invaluable asset. Documents with dimensions of 297 by 420 mm will fit in the flatbed tray and can be scanned with a 9600 dpi (dots per inch) resolution in full color. The machine is connected to a PC via a USB 2.0 interface cable. The most popular of Windows operating systems such as 2000, XP and Vista can be accommodated as well as the Mac OS X.

Quality copies can be made then faxed or E-mailed using the software included in the package. Also part of the bundle are OCR (Optical Character Recognition) programs and image enhancement programs which may be of interest to graphic designers. A 48 bit color depth coupled with a 24 bit gray scale is supported for printing on A3 sized plain paper.

The minimum system requirements for the scanner are a PC with a 500 MHz Pentium cpu, 220 MB free space on a hard disk drive and 128 MB RAM in system memory. There should be an available USB 2.0 port and an SVGA color monitor for viewing the images. The USB port does not supply the power, this comes from a supplementary 12V mains power adapter supplied. The scanners light source are LED's which do not require a lot of power and enable quicker cold starts.

The scanner does not have any outside switches or keys. There is no on/off switch. The machine is controlled entirely via the operating software. This controlling software has not been upgraded in the last five years. The drivers, however, are very much up to date and offer support for 64 bit Windows XP as well as Vista.

Scanners can use up a large amount of space due to their large footprint. The ScanExpress, being an large scanner has this problem. Placing it in the office could cause problems. One of the more useful features, however, is being able to remove the cover from the base. This enables books and multi page documents to be scanned with ease. The two wedges holding the cover on to the base may be removed, allowing the cover to be lifted off.

Optical resolution is important to a scanner, but interpolated resolution claimed as an enhancement by some scanners should be treated with caution. This is a trick by the software to enlarge an image using less data. No clear picture can be produced by any machine with little or no data. The machine can produce an image with 9600 dpi resolution but it only requires 75 dpi to display the image on a color monitor. A color image will print clearly at 300 dpi and black and white images would be crisp at 600 dpi.

The information above assumes images are to be printed using their original dimensions. When printing enlargements, however, higher resolution is needed. This is because when printing of the final picture takes place, the higher dpi is retained after the enlargement. Hopefully the information contained in this review of the Mustek ScanExpress 1200 will have been of use to everyone.