Customer Reviews

Canon CanoScan N1240U Flatbed Scanner

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

This wonderful piece of technology really makes life easier! You can install it on your PC in a couple of minutes simply by following the instructions. It comes with a photo-editing software that you can use without consulting a manual. The digital pictures are crisp and the colors are nothing but stunning. The software makes it easy to scan photos at a high resolution and save them as files with a lower resolution if you want to email them to friends and relatives, or upload them onto your webpage.

If you are an old-fashioned photographer who is not yet fully convinced of the quality of digital photos, but you nevertheless want to use the internet to send photos, this scanner is an excellent choice.

The Canon CanoScan N1240U Scanner has been absolutely wonderful for me.

Installation was a snap, simply throwing in the CD provided by canon and following the easy on-screen directions. I did need to visit canon's web site to obtain Windows XP Drivers, but that may not be an issue now that Windows XP is more of a mainstream product.

The Scanner comes with enough imaging software to handle all of your scanning needs. The buttons built onto the scanner make scanning, copying, and e-mailing pictures too easy! It's like adding a copy machine to your home or office.

The scanner is incredibly small, maybe only an INCH thick! It's completely USB connected AND powered, which means that one very small cord is all that is coming out of the scanner.

The photo quality is absolutely phenomenal -- Paired with my Canon Printer and photo paper, it's able to reproduce *identical* duplicates or enlargements of most ANYTHING I scan.

I recommend this scanner, wholeheartedly, to anyone who's looking to invest in one. The price is WELL WORTH IT. Don't settle for a cheap imitation! :)

This scanner can't be beat, in terms of features, price, and quality. I'm not a graphic designer, but the quality of the scans is -far- better than what I've seen from my previous scanner (the infamous Umax Astra). It's faster, it's much more compact (I keep mine stored vertically behind my LCD monitor), and the fact that it's USB-powered is a plus, not a minus, in my opinion.

What Canon doesn't capitalize on is the -software- that's bundled with this unit, even though the software is its best feature. You have to look closely at the specs for this model and the Canon N670U to see that for the extra $100, you get not only higher resolution, but a full copy of Adobe Photoshop Elements. If you've ever used Photoshop LE, it's hard to imagine how much better Elements is. It can even scan multiple images on the scanning bed; it figures out where the picture boundaries are and creates a separate working copy for each. This is an incredible time-saver.

My only gripe with this scanner is that it doesn't come with OS X versions of the software, but that may be less Canon's fault than that of its software vendors (Adobe is particularly sluggish in this regard).

I've recommended this scanner to almost everyone that I know. Throw out that Umax and get this!

Like another CanoScan poster here, I too have a pretty bad case of USB Peripheralphobia. My USB ports have been crunchy at best. But this Canoscan N1240U scanner was ridiculously easy to install and use. From plugging in the cable to popping in the CD-ROM and loading the software to scanning my first photo, elapsed time was about six minutes--and that included a restart. The scan was ridiculously simple--a little slow, but hey, my home office is not a service bureau--and the images are STUNNING. A host of image-editing tools are available within the scanning program, PhotoStudio. The scanner also came with Adobe Photoshop Elements and OmniPage OCR software. A separate CD-ROM is dedicated to Windows XP users.

I am thrilled to death with this product. And with the new lower price, don't pass it up! I did a good deal of comparison shopping on this model, and the best price is right here.

This scanner produces excellent quality images. Personally, I've found the 300 DPI setting ideal -- anything above this produces enormous files, and I just end up reducing the file size.

The best feature is the "Multiple Photo Mode" which allows you to scan multiple photos at once, and they are all automatically sized and imported into your image application (Photoshop in my case). This saves me a huge amount of time.

Just be careful to keep the dust out of this scanner, as it tends to show up in the high resolution images produced by this guy.

Oh yes, and you better have 128Mb or RAM or more.... I'd recommend 256Mb if you are using Photoshop.

Before I purchased this scanner on Amazon I e-mailed the Canon support group and asked if the scanner was FULLY compatible with Windows ME. The response was unequivocal: "Yes, it's fully compatible." So imagine my surprise when I took delivery yesterday (3/4/02) and couldn't get the damn thing to run due to an issue with my "Twain Driver" (no, I don't have a speech impediment). I spent many frustrating hours including two LONG calls to Canon's excellent (I'm serious, they are excellent) tech support.

Fellow Window ME users, let me save you a lot of grief.

#1 Apparently Norton/Symantec Utilities are somewhat incompatible with Windows ME which hangs up the install process. DEACTIVATE YOUR NORTON/SYMANTEC UTILITIES BEFORE INSTALLATION.

#2 In your INF folder there are thousands of 0 kb EOM files. DELETE ALL OEM FILES & THEN DELETE THEM FROM THE RECYCLE BIN ALSO. Warning, this process can take many hours!...

Comes with a large suite of software (newer drivers were available on the web), can be mounted vertically, has a cool lid that allows bulkier objects to be scanned, is ultra-light & ultra-sleek, and works under XP. The multi-photo mode is slick, and works like a champ.

The caveats: It's not ultra-quiet, so if that's a concern, you might be disappointed. Also, the multi-photo mode seems hard-wired to 300dpi, which should be fine for most everyone's needs. A three-year extended warranty can be had for $50 on Canon's site.

Overall I like the price & scan quality (hint: try all the options before complaining about the quality). If you don't need 1200x2400dpi, maybe the N670U would be a better option (does it come with all the software?).

This scanner is only 3.3 lbs and 1.3 inches thick. So convient because it's USB (one cable for both power and data transfer) I can really plug and play between my desktop and laptop. I can even take this scanner home over the Christams. Powerful! Scanning a regular 4 x 6 photo and enlarging it to an 8 x 11 using only 400 dpi setting was amazing. You can tell the material of clothing the objects in the photo were wearing (given you have a good printer). You couldn't even tell in the regular photo. There is a stand in which you can stand the scanner vertically and you really don't notice it's there. However, it scans the entire flatbed surface at high resolution instead of just scanning where the photo is. This makes it scan a little longer than SCSI scanners. If you intend to scan at 9600 dpi (it's maximum ability), you will need to wait and at least 500 MB of hard disk space empty. It's well worth the wait.

This is a VERY simple to install and use scanner that creates and exports excellent product. I was not sure what I was going to get, especially at this affordable price. I am more than pleased, I am happy and satisfied with this choice. I am now underway with a long-planned project of scanning a lifetime's collection of family photos to save on cd-rom to share with family.

I recently did all the research to figure out which scanner to buy, since the old HP scanner we got for free a few months ago does not support Win2000 or macintosh. I was originally leaning toward Epson or HP, but decided on the Canon for the following reasons:
1. Canon supports scanning bulky objects, such as books (HP does not)
2. The Canon is smaller, thinner, and lighter than Epson and HP (and comes with a little stand so it can be stored on its side)
3. Comes with PhotoShop Elements, an excellent program
4. There were many complaints about Epson's software, as well as reports of dust trapped inside the Epson, whereas Canon got nothing but excellent reviews and was in the top selling list on every scanner site I looked.

I have seen some reports of this Canon scanner being noisy...NO WAY. You CAN hear it working, but it's more like a gentle hum...

My only complaints are in regards to the ArcSoft scanning software. The biggest complaint is that my images were CORRUPTED if I save as a jpg! I checked arcsoft.com and they are "aware of the problem" but have not posted a patch. Their workaround is to save as another file type, such as tiff, and translate to jpg using another program (PhotoShop Elements should do the trick).

My other complaint is more like an enhancement request. There's this AWESOME time-saving feature for multiple photos where it crops and rotates up to 10 photos automatically, but it only does it at 300dpi. It would have been SUPER to be able to set a higher resolution. Yes it would be slower, but I just press the button once, go do something else for 10-15 minutes, and then when I come back all my images are perfectly scanned and waiting for me to save them. It is easy to set a higher resolution in the manual mode, but you have to keep coming back to crop and rotate the images manually and select a new area to scan...it's a pain unless you only need to scan a small number of images.

Overall, I'm VERY pleased with this scanner...now they just need to release some drivers for native OS X