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| Mustek Be@rPaw 1200CU |
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Hardware Reviews January 2001 • Vol.4 Issue 1 |
Mustek Be@rPaw 1200CU | ||
 The uninspiring color-image quality of Mustek's new Be@rPaw 1200CU will not have you doing cartwheels, especially when you consider this scanner's price of $149. The 1200CU does not perform as well as some less expensive machines, but it does a pretty good job of rendering black-and-white photographs, graphics, and text documents. The 1200CU is a very small scanner; it weighs just four pounds and is only 1.4 inches tall. Mustek advertises this scanner as portable, presumably because of its Plug-and-Play USB (Universal Serial Bus) connection. However, with no lock for the machine's optical head, you'll have to be careful when transporting the scanner to avoid damaging internal parts. The 1200CU has a resolution of 600dpi. Buttons on the front panel of the scanner let you send your scanned images directly to your scanning software, copier, e-mail application, or fax machine. Another button lets you automatically change image settings for scanning color, grayscale, or line art images. However, you can only use the front panel buttons when your e-mail and Internet browser applications are open. In addition, the preset configurations for the one-touch buttons cause the images to scan in too dark, a common problem afflicting many less expensive scanners with front-panel buttons. Accompanying software includes Ulead Photo Express 3.0 Special Edition, BearPaw scanning software and drivers, ABBYY FineReader 4.0 Sprint OCR software, and Trellix Web. As we mentioned earlier, the overall color-imaging performance of the Mustek scanner was not impressive. Although it only took 0:17 to scan in a 150dpi black-and-white graphic, the 1200CU dragged on for 3:43 to complete a 600dpi scan of a large color photograph. The images themselves appeared filmy and washed out, and light colors and white areas within the images had little detail. Color balance was satisfactory, though; color transitions among varying shades were reasonably smooth, and flesh tones looked pretty natural. In addition, the grayscale test image appeared with 26 shades, only one below our 27-shade benchmark average. Other black-and-white images looked good, with decent shading and detail in a photograph; clean, even ink coverage on a graphic; and crisp, readable letters on the text document image. Our overall impression of the Mustek BearPaw 1200CU is that it's a unit best suited for users concerned primarily with scanning in black-and-white media. However, for the price, you could purchase another scanner that can also handle color media effectively and give you some flexibility for other scanning tasks. by Lori Robison
$149 Mustek (949) 790-3800 http://www.mustek.com
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