Customer Reviews

Umax Astra 2100U Flatbed USB Scanner (PC/Mac)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

This scanner provides beautifull scans on my MAC G3 when it works, but the software is very buggy and causes serious system crashes (which were confirmed by ConflictCatcher). I called customer technical support and they said there was no cure.

I purchused it because it's very nice features, 36bit, up to 9600dpi, one touch scan, etc, at affordable price. However, the VistaScan software is a very bad program. It kept lock up the system or gives weird errors and I can't give go up higher than 1800dpi. I like the scanner, but I really wish UMAX could fix VistaScan's problems.

As a customer of this product, I would give Umax a 1 star. Why? Mainly because they are wanting more money if you dont have an older operating system. I am running XP like most other computers are, and had this scanner for a year on a 98 machine. I tried installing the software which is incompatible with XP, to make things worse, I go to the Umax website, and they do not have ANY updated software for free. But at a cost of 15 dollars. 15 dollars for scanner software that should be supported by XP, its a joke. I already paid for the scanner, and they expect me to fork another 15 dollars? No free software for those with newer operating systems. Every other computer product I have bought has free downloadable software for XP users, and not a single dollar was charged out of my account. I have already told this to everyone I know, we will not be buying any Umax products, and I suggest that you dont either.

This is a very good scanner at this price level, and thesoftware packages are really not all that bad as indicated by thefollowing complains.

At first, I was very impressed with the quality of scanned photos and documents, but I was having some frustration customizing the software applications which came with the scanner. Well, the reason I was frustrated at first was because I was expecting the same level of user-friendliness you would find on other software such as WinFax, Microsoft Word, and Other popular commercial software. Well, I decided to spend some time and be patient to learn to use the software, understand the configurations and some try and error. I have now master the VistaScan (Beginner), Presto! PageManager, and the three push buttons.

So, I can now scan the way I wanted it too, and the scanned result is very good. I am happy with it now after using it the second day! END

Windows 2000 and MAC OS9 prove problematic.

Windows 95/98 - Scanner worked well and was easily set-up.

MAC OS 9.0 - Scanner installed and worked well but I cannot uninstall the scanner, when it is not connected the whole system crashes.

Windows 2000 Pro - After 18 months I finally have this scanner working in windows 2000 it turns out that the umax software installs the driver file pv8630.sys into you c:\winnt\system32 folder, if you move this file to the c:\winnt\system folder your scanner will work. Umax support don't seem to be able to tell you this, which is very disappointing.

Like some of the other reviewers, I tried to load the included software for this UMAX scanner on a new computer with Windows XP. And XP will not recognize the software at all. (Actually, I think this scanner's software was written for Windows 95??)

So the only alternative as far as I can see is to load drivers from the Scanner and Camera Wizard if you use this scanner at all on XP. Of course you will lose a lot of the scanner's capabilities by doing this.

Too bad, as it worked great on my old Windows 98 computer .....

Such is progress?

I given this product for Christmas to run on my gateway 2000 2oomhz PC running windows 95b. I was unable to get the scanner operational I contact both Umax and Gateway. Umax was of no help and told me to change my IRQ for my USB port. Then I contact Gateway and was told that the USB port is working and that the Software for this product is the problem. Umax stated unless I change the IRQ they will not help me. Right now I am going to return the item and purchase a different scanner. I will never purchase another Umax product again their support stink and are complete incorrect.I was force to give 1 star by amazon it should be zero star. This product is the pits for windows 95b.

I bought one of these about 3 years ago and it has given good service, running on Windows 98.

I now have windows XP and as other reviews have said, the software provided with the product does not work at all with XP. However, the critisism in some of the reviews above is not up to date. I have loaded updated software from the Umax site, which was free and works fine with XP. In fact it appears identical in use with the software initially provided.

I still think this is a good scanner, although it is a bit dated and bulky by today's standards.

RA

This scanner is real cheap and works great, I've owned one for 2 years. The scanning software is very basic, but if you have Photo Shop or some off-shoot of it, you really can't beat this scanner for the price. I've used one's that are 5x as expensive and frankly can't tell the difference (they may be a little bit faster). It's not the fastest in the world, but it has worked fine for me for 100's of photos and even text documents. Regarding the 1st review on this page, if you have a crapy computer system that isn't sophisticated enough to run graphics hardware or software, you're going to have a problem no matter what.

I have used UMAX scanners since 1996 (the 1220S and 2100U) and had fairly good luck with them until recently. UMAX customer support has always been pretty much non-existent but their scanners had a good following so one could always find a solution to their screwy driver problems if one looked around on the web. With the advent of Windows XP however, you might as well throw your UMAX gear away. Their parallel port scanners are not supported at all and the SCSI and USB scanners are supported only if you buy the new drivers at a cost of [money amount]. What is worse is that the XP drivers that they sell you don't work at all. Don't get sucked in!! UMAX is trying to rip you off by selling you driver software that won't install and they do not provide any useful support once you paid the money.