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UMAX Astra 2200

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PCQ Bureau
New Update

This scanner offers you dual

connectivity–to the SCSI port or the USB port. On the USB port, it’s

plug-n-play. Just connect it to the USB port, install the drivers, and you’re

ready to go. If you have a SCSI card, and need higher speeds, you can

connect it to a SCSI 2 port also.

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The UMAX Astra 2200 (Rs 15,800 plus taxes, Summit Data Products, New Delhi, Tel: 11-6517994-98 E-mail: vkalyan@summitindia.com Website: www.umax.com) can scan photographs, films, and transparencies, and comes with a rich bundle of software The

Astra averaged 24 seconds for a preview and 38 seconds to scan and save a

10x15 cm color photograph as a TIFF image at 300 dpi. These speeds are

comparable to other scanners in its class. The scanned images were clear and

sharp with well-saturated colors. The scanner also has a reflective backlit

surface 10.5x15 cm to scan films and transparencies.

It has three easy launch

buttons–scan, copy, and custom. The scan button is for one-touch scanning,

and the scanner automatically scans the object into the bundled scanning

software–Presto! PageManager. Or you can launch the Presto! PageManager to

scan the image. The software calls up the Twain drivers–VistaScan–which

has two modes–Beginner and Advanced. The copy button lets you copy and

print to the default printers with just a press of a button. The custom

button can be customized for any function, including OCRing, which will scan

the text image, call up the OCR software (the scanner comes with two of

these–OmniPage Limited Edition and Recognita OCR–but you can install

only one), and export to your default word processing application. You can

even customize it to send the scanned image to a preset e-mail address.

Apart from Presto!

PageManager which lets you scan, view, organize or export images to other

applications, VistaScan, and the two OCR software, the Astra 2200 also comes

with Adobe PhotoDeluxe (both Windows and Mac versions) and VistaShuttle,

with which you can scan and create printable cards, e-cards, wallpapers or

screensavers from your photograph collection.

The scanner is slow, but has

excellent resolution. Priced quite reasonably, this scanner has a feature

found rarely in its contemporaries–the facility to scan films. It’s

aimed at the SOHO segment.

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