Customer Reviews

Epson Perfection 1200U USB Flatbed Scanner

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

My former scanner by Microtek was difficult to set up and did not work until I searched for hours in the documentation and on Microtek's web site and finally found a rather complicated answer. I still have to apply the "fix" to any computer I use the Microtek scanner with.

In contrast, the Epson Perfection 1200 USB Scanner was a breeze to set up. I just plugged the USB cable in with my computer already on, turned the scanner on and Windows 98 detected the scanner and the "Add Driver" wizard came up. Just point that to your CD drive to load the drivers and that's it.

The scanner is very fast and quiet. The twain interface is as good or better then any I've seen. The quality of the scans is top-notch across the board, from color to contrast to shadow depth.

I choose this scanner based on a ZdNet review of Epson's 636 USB scanner which won their editors choice award. They said it works especially well with Epson Color printers which I found to be the case too.

With a hardware resolution 1200 x 2400 dpi, the Epson Perfection 1200 USB scanner has higher optical resolution than any other scanner in it's price range. It's a real bargain.

Tips: Whatever graphics program you use, set up an ICM color profile. Or use the ICM profile of your monitor. Adobe Photoshop comes with a utility to do this. Then in the twain interface of your scanner click the "Use ICM" check box. Then your scans will look more like the originals when viewed on-screen. If you have an Epson printer (I have the Stylus Color 740), when you print choose the "Epson Stylus Color 740" profile from the "color space" list. If you have another printer it should show up in the list too. This info is for printing from Photoshop, but other graphics programs should be similar.

Scans printed from my Epson printer look almost identical to the original including color tone and depth.

I use this scanner primarily for professional web design and personal photograph reproduction.

Overall it's just a great scanner and I'm very happy with it.

I needed a scanner that worked in Windows 2000, and decided to take a chance - based on other reviews posted here - with the Epson Perfection 1200U. The short of it is, the scanner worked right out of the box. Setup was easy, the Windows 2000 drivers I downloaded from Epson's web site installed without a glitch, and the software bundled with the scanner can't be beat. I was especially delight to find included the Presto PageManager, which is a kind of ACDSee thumbnail browser (with myriad other functions), and with it's Presto!Wrapper utility, which saves your image in a self-executing file to send to friends who might not have imaging software. Very cool.

The scanner is also the fastest I've owned, and the Twain software for scanning is multi-configurable for auto-sizing, exposing, et al of your image. Very very nice.

I'm very very pleased with this scanner, especially after I had bought an Acer 620U on the sole basis of its supposedly being Windows 2000 ready - only to find (to my horror and frustration) that the drivers for the Acer were bug-ridden and conflicted with my USB Iomega Zip Drive. I also had a Mustek 600II-CD, but had to give it the boot when Mustek said they weren't planning on supporting Windows 2000. So you can imagine my delight when the Epson Perfection 1200U not only worked right off the bat, but proved to be an unbeatlable value for the money considering the superior bundled software (Presto! PageManager, Adobe PhotoDeluxe, Broderbund Print Shop Press Writer, and ArcSoft's PhotoPrinter). Further, the scanner is fast, quiet, the quality of the image output is excellent, and there are other features I haven't even begun to explore. Easy and simple for home use, powerful and multi-layered enough for business use (I do both). An excellent product!

This is the second scanner I've owned. The first was a cheap Mustek scanner that I bought because it was "middle of the line", not because it was great. That was a mistake. Scanning took forever, and the quality was only average. There also was a bug in the scanner software which caused crashing...

Luckily my old scanner broke after a year or two and I was forced to look to the market again for another one. This time I was fed up with looking for a "deal", and proceeded to look for quality. I bought a well known PC magazine and looked at the ratings. The #1 scanner on the list was the Epson 1200U. At the time it was a little pricey, but I went ahead and said `what the heck' -- I dealt with a crummy scanner for so long, I wanted to treat myself.

THIS scanner is fantastic. The USB port is much more convenient than a "pass-through" parallel port. (I have a printer already hooked up to the parallel port, and have had memory problems with such pass-through ports in the past.)

The price is fantastic. I bought this scanner from Amazon.com 6 months ago. Now the price has dropped $100 more.

The speed is great. The "One touch" button brings up a menu that allows scanning at the touch of another button (so it is really "2 touch"). Pages (or photos) scan very quickly, and are very easy to touch-up and edit.

The software is great. You get Presto Page Manager and Adobe Photoshop Business Edition (this is not the full Adobe "paint and design" program, just one to be used for photos and editing).

The scanner's quality is VERY HIGH. I've taken 2" X 3" B/W crumpled Vietnam photos from 20 years back, scanned them, BLOWN THEM UP to 5" X 7", and used the bundled software to erase scratches and fix imperfections. When printed out (on a NICE printer, such as the HP Deskjet 970 CXI), they are absolutely amazing. The results are equivalent to professionally restored photos. If you are into this, you can't find a better scanner for the price.

I highly recommend this scanner, but I cannot stress more that without an equivalent printer, you won't see the full value behind it.

Just bought one of these a few days ago for a big photo scanning project. After having a few installation problems (the plug and play detected that the scanner was a new device, but it couldn't find the installation files on the CD for some reasion, so I had to install it through the "Add Hardware" control panel. Not a big deal, though.)

I was a little worried about the quality of the TWAIN driver before I started using it - I've owned an Epson Stylus Photo printer before, and while the quality of the harware is second to none, the software is some of the buggiest and unreliable I've ever used. I must say, however, that the Epson software team did a great job on the TWAIN software - no problems whatsoever, and the automatic pre-scan function when you first connect via TWAIN is a nice little timesaver.

As for the scanner itself, I am extremely impressed by the quality and quickness of this thing. Compared to my old UMAX Astra scanner (a great product, by the way), this thing just blows the UMAX away! I am continually amazed how quickly it scans, and I've noticed no problems with the scans themselves (except for matte finish photos, which my other scanner had an even bigger problem with - I guess the light from the scanner reflects in a haphazard pattern, which causes the photos to look like they have a lot of dust on them. The descreening function helps a lot with this, though).

Overall a great scanner, and well worth the money.

I just upgraded from a Visioneer Paperport One Touch to the Epson 1200 USB and WOW - what a difference.

First the USB port is so much better than the parallel port off the printer - no more annoying waiting for connecting (also the reason I switched from the One Touch - I could no longer connect) to the scanner.

Second, the OCR actually works. Scan under OCR and then just drop it into the application you desire and presto, it is converted. And I'm talking converted. It converts different fonts, sizes, and bolds to the application so that the entire document can be manipulated.

For the extra $, the Epson is WELL worth it.

I recently upgraded my old Epson Perfection 600 scanner with the 1200s and it is amazing. It scans super fast (especially the SCSI version which I have) and the optics (1200x2400) are the best available in this price range. The color of the scans is very true to life and the descreening feature does an excellent job of taking the "texture" out of photos. The one touch button on the front can be a little hard to set up and until it is customized, adds an extra step to the scanning process. The twain driver/software adds a lot of really nice "tweaking" features for the advanced user, but isn't the most intuitive I have seen. Overall, this is the most impressive scanner I have ever seen in this price range.

I run a photo studio from my garage and I need equipment that I can rely on; Everything I had heard about the 1200 is true, from the fast USB setup to the excellent twain driver. Scans are fast and accurate. The only drawback that I ran across was the scanner not being compatible with my copy of Windows 2000 RC2, I had to go back to Windows 98. When you conbine the Epson Perfection 1200 and a printer like my Epson stylus photo 750, you will no longer need to go back to Eckerds for reprints.

If you are looking for a quick and easy scanner which scans pictureswith great accuracy, this scanner is for you. This is the firstscanner I've owned so I read all the product reviews on a lot of scanners before I purchased this one. I'll try and be brief with my review but it may be difficult since the package offers so many features. I do agree with another Amazon reviewer about a better software package. For scanning, I use Microsoft Picture It 2000 which works great with the scanner. I think it's a lot better than Adobe Photoshop, because it's easier to use. The package does include Presto Manager which is a thumbnail picture filing program where you can keep your photos organized and run slide shows, a feature I like a LOT. Anyhoo, back to the scanner. It's a cinch to set up. It's because of the USB and the Drivers. I was scanning pictures in no time! The scanner is quiet. I've had access to other scanners and they were pretty loud in comparison to this one. Also, it is fast. When you read these reviews, you'll notice that everyone says it's quick. I suppose if you scan something at very high resolutions, it may take longer, but since I only scan pictures for family and friends to send via email, they're pretty low resolution, but very crisp and clear! If you are scanning for web pages, you'll want to scan them at lower resolution (small file size) since you want the pages to load up quicker, but with this scanner, the scans are very accurate to the pictures! The highest resolution is something like 1200 x 2400 dpi, but unless you are scanning photos and need to print them out on glossy paper, you won't use it at that resolution, but it's good to know you COULD! Also, at under 200 bucks, this scanner is a real bargain. You'll notice other scanners that can scan up to 1200 x 2400 will cost 300 and up. Not the Epson Perfection 1200U...To sum up: reasonably priced, fast, easy to set up, reliable, accurate pictures, quiet, possible to scan up to 1200 x 2400 dpi, what else is there to say? Simply Perfection!

I can't add anything to the glowing praise given by other reviewers except to say, it's all true! I had an old Umax I was very happy with and wanted to keep, but I recently bought a new Dell computer...the Dell salesman lied and my old SCSI card wasn't compatible...a new card would've cost about the same as this scanner so I opted for that USB convenience and a new machine. Based solely on the recommendations here, I crossed my fingers and went for the Epson B104091 Perfection 1200U. This was the easiest hardware I've ever installed, 20 minutes from box to first scan, feature-rich, amazing resolution, very reasonable price for what you get. There are more expensive scanners that don't do as much and cheaper ones that will only break your heart...so buy this one!

It took ten minutes to scan an 8x10 color picture at 300dpi with my previous scanner (an old Visioneer using the printer port). This one took 40 seconds for the same scan, and the quality was much better. The speed increase lets me scan all my documents to CD's; I didn't even try that before. Life isn't that long. Installation was a breeze, and the software was easy enough, although I use something else. This also comes with a deal for two software packages for $8, including Corel Draw and Ventura. An excellent deal.