Visioneer 6200 USB Scanner
Just a few weeks ago we worked with Visioneer's
latest and fastest OneTouch 8600 Model, this scanner ended up winning our
editor's choice award for it's scan quality and ease of use. The 8600 easly
beats out five other brands, such as UMAX, Mustek, Hewlett Packard, and AGFA
for overall usability. Not only did the 8600 end up being the top choice for
the advanced home user, but it also ended being the perfect business companion
with its powefull OCR features and high DPI. Selling for a street price of
$199USD will unfortunantly limit this product to people with money or the
ones looking for top-notch quality scanning without worrying about price tags.
|
Features
|
The
product
|
- Optical Resolution
600 x 1200 dpi
- Hardware Supersampling
Resolution 1200 dpi
- Enhanced Resolution
(interpolated) 2400 dpi
- Scanner Bit Depth
(color) 42-bit internal (over 4 trillion colors)
- Scanner Bit Depth
(grayscale) 14-bit internal (16,384 shades of gray)
- Output Bit Depth
24-bit color,
- 8-bit grayscale
|
|
For this matter, we decided to take a look at
visioneer’s latest 6200USB scanner. The 6200USB is very similar in technical
terms to the 8100 Model which we will be working on next week, but as you
might have already noticed, doesn’t feature the OneTouch panel. Because of
this and some other features not being on board, visioneer can manufacture
the 6200USB at a much lower price.
A Serious Scanner for Serious Scanners
How do you know that you’re
a serious scanner? You want at least 600x1200-dpi resolution in hardware mode
(not software interpolation) and you don’t want to wait all day for it. Good,
no, great quality is a must and, of course, you own a PC with USB ports. Unless
recovering from system crashes and lockups are you forte’, We suggest having
at least 128MB of RAM, preferably 256MB.
We used scanners with 64, 128 and 256MB RAM configs and let us pass on that
if 600x1200 32, 42-bit color 8.5"x11" scans are your norm, grab at least 256MB.
Why do you need all that RAM? Because this jewel screams speedwise. Turn on
system monitoring (Start>Programs>Accessories>System Tools>System
Monitoring) and look at the memory manager: unused physical memory. In Windows
98, which you need for this scanner, watch the amount drop to near zero when
processing your favorite pics. Yeah, before all you nut jobs start hollerin’
that your swapfile can be virtual RAM, consider this: Do you want 800MB/s
or 15MB/s processing speed? It’s simply annoying to click "acquire image"
and then run off to lunch…
The installation
As in most scanners, the first step will be unlocking
the protection tab located at the bottom of the unit. The locking tab protects
the scanner’s scan head by holding it securely in position. Make sure to lock
the scanner when transporting it from one location to another, but always
remember to unlock it before scanning because it won’t scan when locked.
The next step will be inputing the power source
from the included DC adapter, when done take the included 6" USB cable, and
connect it to the PC, you should see a message appear on you windows based
machine, saying that it has found an USB based device. Ignore this window
and insert the Visioneer CD, the setup should automoatically start if "auto
insert notification" is enabled on that particular drive. Continue the process.
Around the final phase of the setup, the scanner will be re-detected and properly
configured.
Drivers, drivers, drivers. Fully three sets of
device drivers are mandatory if you have any hope of producing accurate scans.
In addition to the scanner drivers, current monitor drivers and printer drivers
must be downloaded and installed. Within the monitor drivers are ICM (Image
Color Matching) files that assist in the WYSIWYG capabilties of the screen.
Well-supported photo quality printers have similar files within their drivers
and of course, the ICM printing option must be activated. Consult your respective
manuals, websities, and driver "readme" files for more information.
Technical Impressions
The 6200USB scanner features a single button
on its front menu. It’s the OneTouch button panel used to scan with your cusomized
settings. A noticeable missing feature on the 6200USB is the parallel port.
For production reasons Visioneer decided to sacrifice the parallel port, this
shouldn’t be a problem for most because parallel scanning is in its extinction
phase because of the new Universal Serial Bus (USB) Standard which offers
faster transfers.
The Visioneer 6200USB features scanning at an
optical resolution of 600 x 1200dpi, the 42-bit color capability is achieved
through an internal 14-bit analog to digital (A/D) converter that recognizes
over 4 trillion colors. Each dot in an electronic color image comes from a
blend of red, green, and blue (RGB). You can enhance it to 2400dpi through
software interpolation. The scanning quality of the 6200 is very crisp and
colorfull, in some scenes, supperior to the 8600 scanner.
If you take a closer look at the specifications
of both units, you will notice that the 8600 scanner offers 36-bits and is
using a 12-bit converter reconizing 68 billions of colors. Compared to the
6200 that features a 14-bit A/D converter and supporting up to 42-bits of
color, that’s over 4 trillions colors. All in all, these differencies could
be hardly distinguished when compared, as it’s very hard to notice a reasonable
difference.
Software Bundle
Visioneer included an interesting bundle with
its 6200 Scanner. Similar bundles are distributed with all of their scanners.
PaperPort Deluxe software easily manages all your documents and images and
works with most popular applications. TextBridge Pro 8 OCR turns scanned documents
into editable formatted text.
MGI PhotoSuite II SE Lets you easily capture,
touch-up, transform, organize, create, show and share photos with family,
friends and business associates. High quality templates create everything
from calendars to business stationary. MGI PhotoSuite II SE delivers unparalleled
functionality, productivity and entertainment to home and business users.
PaperPort Links™ let you drag and drop your
documents and images instantly onto linked applications. WebPublisher Creates
HTML links to post your scanned image to the Internet with WebPublisher link.
Conclusion
Selling at a street price of $89.99 at Visioneer’s
online store, this scanner is one of the best products in its price range.
The 6200USB is mostly targeted for the home market, but by looking at its
specifications we could easly put it in a much higher performance level. The
6200USB can be easly compared to an other brand's 150$ scanners. Visioneer
customers will also highly appreciate its official support for windows 2000.
We would like to congratulate Visioneer again for its latest low priced quality
scanner. We award it a 9/10 and give it our Value Award for its affordable
price and scanning quality.
Oleg
Mitskaniouk
00/06/15
