Are Flat Bed Scanners Dead?

I have to admit, I'm a dinosaur as far as computer technology goes. I have a Dell A940 copier/scanner and an old Sony 3.3 megapixel digital camera that doesn't take macro pictures closer than 12".

I recently was given an almost new 36 bit, high-resolution color model #X6EL MICROTEK ScanMaker for helping a guy I know move. Is this thing any good or outdated?

I recently purchased this flat bed scanner for my wife...:

Plustek OpticBook 3600

The scanner itself is the neat item... You can scan almost to the binding of books because one edge of the scanner is very narrow and right angle (the edge where you put the binding--sofware auto-flips and crops the pages). Almost no shadows at the binding and you can scan about 5 pages a minute (~300 pages per hour). Not too bad...

I purchased the middle model (1) cheap software, 2) less cheap scanning software, and 3) usable software).

I don't have a copy of Adobe Acrobat (scanning version), so I don't know how this scanner will work with it. The 2) software is very buggy and hardly worth the money--but you can get it to work and with 100-1,000 GigaByte disk drives, the poor compression (especially in B/W scanning) is not a big problem.

If you are professionally scanning (and not a cheap guy), either get your own software or find out if the 3) option is better or not.

-Bill

No, I don't think flatbed scanners are dead. Seeing as how the mainstream digital imagery is less then ten years old, there are still lots of old prints and slides to be scanned. I myself would like a nice film scanner to scan some old slides from my parents.

Doing research on the model you posted indicates that yours is pretty old in terms of scanner advancements. It is pre-windows xp and comes with a scsi interface (do you have a scsi card in your pc?) which was somewhat common for pre usb interfaces. I see it comes with a transparency adapter to scan slides and negatives but I guarantee it won't do a good job at it. Only very recently have flatbed scanners begun to do a somewhat credible job of scanning slides and negatives. If you do happen to have a scsi adapter in your pc, it might do an ok job at scanning prints but probably a modern $100 scanner will do a better job.

I have a USB model I bought to be able to use with a notebook but rarely use it.

I still use the old HP 4C I bought when I used Windows for Workgroups 3.11. It needed a new SCSI card to use when I switched to Win98/XP/Debian on my other hard drives since HP wasn't going to support it under newer operating systems.

Newer flat beds seem to use plastic instead of glass beds, don't have on board image processing, and seem less durable. For my purposes the old model still does the job.

I'm in the process of scanning 500+ photos. They were all water damaged photos that my wife will try to repair via the computer. It's super time consuming so maybe I wish the flatbed was dead but it's not. I do about 20 whenever the mood strikes me.

Flatbed scanners are alive and kicking, at least in my house. In fact, I just scanned a receipt for 6 D batteries to send to flash-lights.com so they can reimburse me. I wish scanners weren't necessary, but many people still prefer to make things analog, and a scanner is quite good at turning (2-dimensional) analog objects into digital ones. I can still remember those promises of a paperless society about ten years ago - I wonder what happened?

Scanners may still be very useful, but some things just confuse me:

Fax machines - It's a scanner that emails your image and automatically prints it at the other end. I don't like being forced to print to analog when a digital copy was created moments ago.

Pagers - A cell phone that only has numeric text messaging, and nothing else. Why not just get a cell phone?

Most Iomega drives (Zip, Jaz, REV, etc.) - Bulkier than flash, less storage than an ordinary hard drive, and far more expensive than either.

TigerhawkT3 said:

I can still remember those promises of a paperless society about ten years ago - I wonder what happened?

Click to expand...

I wonder about that myself. It seems thanks to computers more paper is generated than ever now instead of the reverse.

As for flatbeds, they're still very useful. Those all-in-one things usually only scan full sheets. Not very useful if you need to scan a receipt for a rebate, for example.

Scanners may still be very useful, but some things just confuse me:

Fax machines - It's a scanner that emails your image and automatically prints it at the other end. I don't like being forced to print to analog when a digital copy was created moments ago.

Pagers - A cell phone that only has numeric text messaging, and nothing else. Why not just get a cell phone?

Most Iomega drives (Zip, Jaz, REV, etc.) - Bulkier than flash, less storage than an ordinary hard drive, and far more expensive than either.

Click to expand...

Agreed on all, and I'll add another-game consoles. Given that monitor resolution is higher than TV resolution, why on earth would anyone still want to play games on their TV? And if they do, most video cards these days have a TV out port so why do you need a stand-alone game console at all when the PC can play the games just as well?

When I got my first computer I had one. It collected dust for awhile before I finally sold it. I just didn't have much use for one, personally.
But they are still useful for some of the reasons already mentioned.

jtr1962 said:

...
Agreed on all, and I'll add another-game consoles. Given that monitor resolution is higher than TV resolution, why on earth would anyone still want to play games on their TV? And if they do, most video cards these days have a TV out port so why do you need a stand-alone game console at all when the PC can play the games just as well?

Click to expand...

One reason: simplicity. Computer games may be better, faster, and smarter, as well as do your laundry for you, but consoles are enormously easier to own and use.