USB/Parallel Port Scanner
The HP ScanJet 3400Cse
Specs: http://www.scanjet.com
Price: US$129; the CDN street price is $179 - $199.
As scanners become more of a commodity, with brand name models such as the HP ScanJet 3400 selling for US$129 and no-name knock-offs offered for even less, the challenge for manufacturers is to broaden their appeal beyond the early target audience of graphics industry professionals and to make them easier to use. With a software suite that's both useful and entertaining, the HP ScanJet 3400C is sure to appeal to those looking to add a fun peripheral to the family computer, but it's no slouch in the image quality department, either.
In fact, we've owned several ScanJet models over the years here at PC Buyers Guide and, while it is a bit ironic that this model produces vastly superior output to our old IIcx model (still working well and in occasional use) that cost almost 10 times as much when new, we're not complaining!
Our tests produced results consistent with HP's performance claims: We scanned a 4 x 6-inch color photo into Microsoft Word in less than 60 seconds; OCR'ed a full page of text into Microsoft Word in about 100 seconds and scanned a black-and-white drawing into Microsoft Word in less than 60 seconds, using procedures similar to those described on a performance comparison page on HP's website, comparing the 3300, 3400 and 4400 models.
The big innovation in the ScanJet 3400 is not its image fidelity or its speed -- it's about average for products in its price range in both regards -- but its software selection and the ease with which it connects to your PC and allows you to accomplish specific tasks. We're generally pretty blasé when it comes to the low-end photo-editing tools that usually come with cheapo scanners, but the HP PrecisionScan LTX tools and third-party goodies bundled with this product are really its best feature.
The Software
In fact, there are different software bundles shipped with the same scanner, marketed as different packages: as detailed at http://www.scanjet.com/products/3400c/Default.htm, the 3400C is the international version of the unit, while the 3400Cse and 3400Cxi versions of the scanner add PhotoFantasy and PhotoMontage packages from ArcSoft, respectively. HP, like many other companies, does this to be able to deliver comparably priced, but "different" models to competing retailers so that they don't have to offer price-protection against each other. In other words, the 3400C, the 3400Cxi and the 3400Cse are all the same scanner, but, because they're shipped with different packages, the boxes have different "model numbers" and the retailers don't have to match prices with their competitors. The result: happier channel partners.
Susan Khan, HP Category Business Manager for scanners and digital photography in Canada, told PCBuyersGuide that the 3400Cse is the only model available in Canada. The standout in the 3400Cse's bundled software suite is ArcSoft's PhotoFantasy™ 2000. It allows you to insert your photo (typically, the face of a member of your family) into an unlikely scene: onto a dollar bill, onto the body of a safari adventurer, cover girl, astronaut and so on. These sort of tricks usually take a greater degree of skill and planning (not to mention time) than required here. From personal experience, we can guarantee you: these make great birthday cards -- and, they make you look like a photo-editing whiz!
The software bundle also includes Trellix Web, a website creation tool that we have mixed feelings about. The good news: it quickly walks you through the entire process of creating and publishing a thoroughly professional looking website, with an absolute minimum of effort. If it gets any easier than this, we'd like to see how. The bad news: the code it creates is essentially proprietary and its web output can't be saved onto your hard drive as HTML or published using standard FTP tools unless you pay an additional US$29 for a "publish anywhere" export utility -- or, as stated on the Trellix upgrade page, elect to pay the US$69 full price for a standard version of the program with this capability and other enhanced features. In short, the HP version of Trellix Web is little more than a crippled freebie. Fortunately, most people probably won't care about doing things the hard way and will choose one of the program's options for publishing a free web site to FortuneCity, Interland, Prodigy Business Solutions, Sage Networks or Tripod. Those who want to produce a web site unencumbered by the annoying ad banners that are these free providers' raison d'etre will have to pay $15 or more per month for web space on a commercial host.
The software bundle also includes Adobe ActiveShare, a tool that's easy to use, but very limited. It's essentially an email-enabled picture cataloging utility with no-frills picture-editing features (red-eye removal, cropping, rotating and "instant fix" gamma correction) and plenty of sales pitches for other Adobe products -- most notably Adobe Photo Deluxe, which isn't included here. ActiveShare is also available for free on the Web, by the way.
Tying it all together is HP's PrecisionScan LTX, a scanning utility that offers the ability to scan in colour, grayscale or black and white, set resolutions, crop images, and so on.
The Hardware
The most obvious feature of the scanner itself is an oval panel on the top with three buttons. Pressing one invokes the appropriate scanning, copying (printing) or scan-to-email function. The software bundle automatically handles colour, grayscale, black-and-white or OCR (optical character recognition) tasks and chooses the appropriate resolution for the colour mode detected. And, as is common for most scanners these days, the unit is "TWAIN" and "OLE" compatible and can automatically scan directly to other image-editing applications that may already be on your system, if desired.
The scanner connects to your PC via USB (Universal Serial Bus) or parallel connection. We've had too many problems with other parallel port scanners to recommend this method if USB is available to you, but this feature may come in handy for users with older, non-USB-compatible systems. A pass-through parallel port is provided for connecting a printer, and the documentation describes the procedure (which you'll probably need) to help minimize IRQ conflicts and compatibility problems, if you elect to use the parallel port. As must be obvious by now, we chose to attach the unit via USB -- a process that, on our test machine running Windows 98, was completely painless. We installed the software, plugged the unit in... and it worked.
As noted here, the unit's specifications are respectable. It boasts 600-dpi (dots per inch) optical resolution and 36-bit colour resolution -- a claim, experience has taught us, that sometimes comes complete with fine print. A few years ago, HP conceded that its ScanJet 5100C scanner didn't actually scan with as many bits of resolution as the marketing materials had claimed. Originally touted as having 36-bit colour and 600-dpi optical resolution, HP later amended its web site to list the 5100C's optical resolution as 300 dpi and admitted that the scanner actually supported only 24-bit output; via a 30-bit colour converter, using internal 36-bit calculations on "internal hardware." Why did they do this? Our guess is because everyone else was doing it, too. Umax and Microtek both resorted to these ploys and there were lawsuits, eventually, as a result. The 36-bit figure on the 3400C, like the older 5100C, is listed as "internal hardware." This, we feared, might mean that the "fine print factor" still applies. However, we spoke to Bob Gann, HP's Image Systems Architect, and got the real skinny: the 3400C, unlike the 5100, performs 36-bit calculations in internal hardware and uses a 36-bit colour converter to deliver 24-bit output.
HP's web site is more than a bit misleading with regard to the unit's optional capabilities. The page at http://www.scanjet.com/products/3400c/accessories.htm suggests that document-feeder and transparency adapters are both available for the unit; in fact, the 3400C is compatible with neither.
Also false is the statement on the company's US$99 ScanJet 3300c page, stating that the 3400 includes Adobe Photo Deluxe 3.0. It doesn't. As mentioned above, Adobe's ActiveShare image editing, management, and Internet sharing software is provided instead. HP acknowledges these errors and says the information on the Web site will be corrected and clarified ASAP.
What's not to like? Perhaps it's just post-iMac style overload on our part, but we think not everyone will like the translucent plastic of the unit's gratuitously curvy cover, where every rub and strut inside the unit's lid is clearly visible. This feature is actually a bit useful, as it helps you see that the scanner light is on and moving when the unit is in use. The rounded corners on the bottom part of the scanner body and radial struts on the translucent top certainly make for an unconventional look. We had more than a few people gape at the scanner and exclaim "what the heck is that?" when they first saw it on our desk during our tests. The unit lacks an on/off switch, which is not as bad as it might seem; the ScanJet 3400 (unlike some of its competitors) slips quietly into a dormant state when it's not in use, drawing only 8W when in Low-Power mode with the lamp off. Probably the most glaring weakness of the package is the lack of a software tool such as Photoshop LE or Photo Deluxe, that can perform many more image-editing tricks than are available here.
Compatibility
The ScanJet 3400 is currently listed as compatible with Windows 95 and 98 only (Windows 95 supports parallel connections only) -- Windows NT and Windows 2000 are not yet listed as supported. We were, however, able to successfully scan images under Windows 2000, although we had enough trouble repeating the procedure that we can't recommend this scanner to Windows 2000 users. HP says it plans to support both operating systems. "As Windows Me launches," explained HP's Susan Khan, a driver for it "will be available in the scanner box after September 14th and it will also be available on our web site as a download. HP is the process of making [support for Windows] 2000 available via our web site."
The 3400, incidentally, isn't Mac compatible, despite its inclusion of a USB port. Support for the Mac is currently available on HP's ScanJet 5300 and 6300 series. Customers using these scanners are viewed by HP as the "image centric customers." We also asked HP whether the 3400 was driver-compatible with any other ScanJet model. It is not.
The unit carries a 90-day warranty.
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