Microtek ScanMaker S400 Flatbed Scanner

Other products by Microtek

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 6 x 22 x 16 inches ; 14 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 12 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B0002ED5CE
• Item model number: 1108-03-750001
• Average Customer Review: 2.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank

  Popular in this category: (What's this?)

  #54 in

  Electronics > Camera & Photo > Printers & Scanners > Flatbed

• Date first available at Amazon.com: June 17, 2003

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

The ScanMaker s400 is the perfect combination of precision engineering and stylish design, bringing high-resolution scanning to the home. Its high 9,600 x 4,800 dpi resolution lets you create poster-sized files of your film or photo with remarkable sharpness and detail previously only available in much higher-priced scanners. With Microtek's exclusive ColoRescue, color restoration is as easy as a click of a button.

The ScanMaker s400 comes with the new LightLid 35 Plus accessory for scanning 35mm slides and filmstrips. Rounding out the scanner is a hi-speed USB interface, eight easy-to-use buttons, as well as imaging and document-scanning options. Software includes Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0, Adobe Photoshop Album SE, Microtek ScanWizard 5, Microtek Utilities (scan, copy, email, OCR, scan-to-web), ABBYY FineReader Sprint OCR, Kodak Digital Science Color Management, Ulead Photo Explorer, and Adobe Acrobat Reader (see tech specs for PC/Mac compatibility). The scanner is backed by a one-year warranty.

What's in the Box
ScanMaker s400, USB cable, power adapter, LightLid 35 Plus 35mm slide and filmstrip adapter, software CD-ROMs, user's guide, warranty and registration card

Product Description

The ScanMaker s400 is the perfect combination of precision engineering and stylish design, bringing high-resolution scanning to the home. Its high 9600 x 4800 dpi resolution lets you create poster-sized files of your film or photo with remarkable sharpness and detail previously only available in much higher-priced scanners. With Microtek's exclusive ColoRescue, color restoration is as easy as a click of a button. The ScanMaker s400 also comes with the new LightLid 35 Plus accessory for scanning 35mm slides and filmstrips. Rounding out the scanner is a Hi-Speed USB interface, eight easy-to-use buttons, as well as imaging and document-scanning options.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Average, December 27, 2004

A Kid's Review

This scanner is good and bad at the same time. It is horribly slow, but I'm using the pictures I'm scanning for a slideshow of pictures throughout my life at my Bar Mitzvah party, and the quality of the pictures are very good.

Be warned, scanning negatives on this scanner requires very high resoulution (but I think that this is the way with all scanners I'm not sure), and it takes a VERY VERY long time to scan. It took ten to twenty minutes depending on the settings for ONE PICTURE. They turned out in good quality, but I was highly dissatisfied with the time it took.

Overall, this scanner is pretty good. But if you are a person that needs pics in a hurry, this is not for you. But if you are creating a slideshow (like me) and have time for it, this scanner is a very good choice.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Great Scans, Slower than Molasses in January, December 26, 2004

By	Kevin T. Quinn (Akron, OH) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I bought this scanner because I was looking to scan negatives, and I was attracted by the low price and high scan resolution. Of course, you get what you pay for. In this case, it seems that I paid for Photoshop Elements 2.0 ($35), and a $100 scanner. The scans are quite sharp, and it comes with a lit adapter for negative scans. The downside is that the scanner is excrutiatingly slow. A 4800 dpi scan (4 times the resolution a film developing place puts on a photo cd) of a single image from a negative strip took nearly 10 minutes to scan. It was slow, but a very sharp and clear scan. A smaller scan (1200 dpi, roughly 1000 x 1500 image, about equivalent to a photo cd) took 5 minutes to scan the image.

The other flaw is that the negative holder has no "feet," so if your scanner is not even, it will slide across the glass while you are scanning. Putting the back of the scanner off of the desk leant it back, and kept it in place well enough, but it's unfortunate that I had to make such a gimmicked solution. Again, though, you get what you pay for. For less than $150, it's hard to find a 9600 dpi optical scanner. Verdict - flawed, but nice image.

21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing, December 11, 2004

By	The Wine Commonsewer (Casa de las Rocas Grande California) - See all my reviews

Another reviewer praised this scanner because it scanned photos well. I would concur, but other than that this scanner is a bust. It is clumsy to use and the controls are not user friendly. Despite claiming to make use of USB 2.0 technology it is excruciatingly slow, even with plain B&W low res text. It is virtually useless for scanning multiple pages of text into, for example, a .pdf file because after each page you have to tell it what you want it to scan again. And whose idea was the black background on the lid? Since it is difficult and time consuming to set up and scan you often end up with scans that are bordered with black rather than white. Endless pixels of waste that have to be cropped and also sacrafice some of the quality of the scan. I plan on donating the scanner to the Goodwill and I kick myself for not returning it while I had the chance