Customer Reviews

Umax Astra 6400 Scanner

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

 

 

Well when my old HP crapped out, I knew I had to get me a scanner that would last more than 6 months and would produce high-quality scans. Enter UMAX. This is by far the best scanner I've seen available for the money, and the included firewire card comes in quite handy. If you're just sending photos to friends & family or if you need a scanner for professional purposes, this would, like, totally fit the bill, yo.

The UMax Astra 6400 Scanner is one of the best scanners you can ever own. I originally had the UMax Astra 1220U Scanner and it provided ok quality scans, but I take lots of pictures and waiting for scanners to finish scanning every single picture was a burden that discourage me from scanning pictures often. The 1220U series also wasn't Windows 2000 compatible so I decided to finally get a better scanner.

I research and found that the 6400 was known for it's fast scanning speeds so I decided to give it a try, and it didn't disappoint me.

The scanner comes with everything you need to use it and you don't need to worry about Windows 98se or 2000 compatiblity. It even comes with its own firewire card. The firewire card has 3 ports so not only can you use it with your scanner but you can plug 2 other firewire devices such as digital video cameras for digital video editing on your computer, that is if you have the software to do so.

All and all, I think this is the best scanner that any home user can buy for a reasonable price.

I just upgraded to Windows XP after buying this product. It's not supported by Microsoft. Neither is the Astra 6450.
Be very careful.

(...)

The thing that sold me was the firewire connection on a scanner listed at (this price). The scanner I replaced was infuriatingly slow so I wanted to ensure that at least the connection to the computer wouldn't slow things down further. No worries there. The UMAX previews and scans a standard photo in far under 20 seconds (I didn't time it precisely so I'm being conservative).

I was a little hesitant before I bought it because the optical resolution, at 600x1200, is half that of most newer scanners in my price range ($100-$200). But I dug around and found out that most of the scanning needs I have can be satisfied in the 300dpi range so the resolution is fine for my needs (eg - emailing photos and printing off copies of photos - my printer's resolution is only 600 dpi so anything more from the scanner is a waste). And the added speed of the firewire is a big plus.

The only downside - the bundled software isn't OSX ready. Of course, the so called OSX drivers for my printer don't work in OSX either, so I'm used to the "startup disk shuffle". And since the hardware is great for my needs, a software problem is only a minor annoyance which, hopefully, should be fixed by the supplier sometime.

My rating - 4 stars, with one demerit for the software issue - but it would have been 4.5 if I had the choice.

I bought the 6450 (same as this with transparency adapter) a year or so ago and it worked well enough under Mac OS 9.1. However, when I upgraded my Mac to OS X I was astonished to find out that Umax does not support this series of scanners under OS X and has no intention of doing so. That leaves recent purchases of the scanner high and dry. I am totally fed up with Umax and will never buy anything from them again.

I am high and dry with this scanner and no software. Yes you can PURCHASE the new software for OS10, but it's not available for DOWNLOAD. You have to wait for them to ship it. Can someone please explain to me why you can't download it like virtually every other piece of software in the universe?

I spent 2 full days trying to install this on any of 4 different brand new computers. 85 calls to UMAX customer support resulted in busy signals, and on the 2 occasions that I got a ring, I held for 35 minutes only to be hung up on before I spoke or heard a word. Website had no answers. I was able to get it installed on a windows ME system. After removing all boards in the computer except for the video card and firewire card in the win2k computer, we were finally able to get it working. Works O.K. now, but would never buy another one. Buy SCSI, if you need one this fast. ABSOLUTELY NO CUSTOMER SUPPORT FROM UMAX. Do you wonder why no retailer that has stores where you can return in person, stocks them? Good luck, if you buy this...

Well, I bought this scanner almost a year ago. It worked pretty well for a while. It is quite fast, and I like the way the TWAIN software retains modified settings until one changes them: a feature more manufacturers should consider. BUT, not only did it not work with XP (what were they thinking???) when I upgraded, it wouldn't work with 98 SE when I tried to re-install it on my old machine. Looks like the card is bad. Very disappointing performance.

Fastest scanner I have ever seen and a breeze to install!

This last review stating that the Astra 6400 is not OS X compatible is not correct, there is a software upgrade on the UMAX website for $49.