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HP SCANJET 5P
STANDFIRST
Despite the many advances in video digitising
systems, a scanner is still the fastest and most efficient way of getting a
high quality still picture into a PC. Until recently Hewlett Packard have
mostly been associated with high-end and office-oriented models, so how does
their latest entry-level colour flatbed scanner rate against the competition?
COPY
Flatbed colour scanners used to be an
expensive luxury, that few outside of the publishing industry could afford or
justify. However, over the past year or two prices have plummeted. A quick
trawl through the ads in computer magazines reveals plenty of models selling
for less than £200, but many of the brands may be unfamiliar. That’s not to say
there’s anything wrong with them -- some of them are very good indeed -- but
only recently have some of the bigger names in the computer industry started to
take an interest in the budget end of the scanner market. You can be sure they
intend to grab a slice of the action and in this highly competitive
environment, and that means offering more than just their good name.
Hewlett Packard shouldn’t have any problems
with brand awareness, and with a street price of around £250 the Scanjet 5p
could tempt quite a few people to think about trading up from bargain basement
models, but is it worth the extra? To
answer that you must first decide why you want a scanner. The two principle
applications are to acquire images on a PC, for incorporating into documents,
web pages or digital video productions, and to import documents and convert
them into text files, using optical character recognition (OCR) software. If
you’re mostly interested in the latter then you could probably get away with a
cheaper model but if image quality and flexibility are important, then
something a little more substantial is required.
At first glance the Scanjet 5p appears to
have quite a modest specification. Resolution -- it’s ability to capture fine
detail -- is rated at 300dpi (dots per inch), which is fairly average these
days. It has an enhanced mode, which increases resolution to a maximum of
1200dpi, though this is a largely academic. It is dependent on software
interpolation, which basically means the computer guesses at what colours might
lie between the scanned picture elements or pixels. Scanning at this sort of
setting saps PC power, it can take ages -- even on a fast Pentium PC -- and on-screen and printed images can end up
looking soft.
The Scanjet uses a SCSI (‘scuzzy’) interface,
it comes with a connecting cable, plug-in mains power supply and a suite of
software, including image manipulation and OCR utilities. Heading up the
feature list though, is one-touch operation. On the front of the scanner
there’s a green button; this automatically launches the scanner software, so
there’s no need to mess about, searching through directories and menus to get
it up and working.
Design and layout are conventional, it’s
reasonably compact, measuring 125 x 306 x 485 mm, the only minor ergonomic
niggle is the on-off switch, which is tucked away down the side. Installation
appears to be fairly straightforward. The plug-in SCSI card occupies a spare
ISA expansion slot. Operating software is normally supplied on CD-ROM but we
ended up using floppies -- 14 of them -- as the CD-ROM had mysteriously disappeared
from our review sample. All went swimmingly until the system fired up for the
first time on our Pentium test-bed PC. A device driver conflict locked up the
mouse, and this took some time to resolve, by manually changing IRQ settings,
even then it wasn’t happy. In theory this shouldn’t have happened, but like a
lot of supposedly ‘plug-and-play’ peripherals used under Windows 95, new
hardware can run into trouble when it is installed on anything other than a
plain vanilla PC with no baggage, or remnants of from previous installations.
You have been warned.
It’s mostly good news from now on, though.
The green button is big plus. Pressing it brings up the HP PictureScan task
manager window. Once click and the scanner makes a low-resolution preview-scan,
so you can size the image area and change any of the default settings. Click on
the accept button and away it goes. It’s fast, an A4 sized colour picture takes
between ten and twenty seconds to acquire, then it’s automatically pasted into HP’s
PaperPort programme, where you can decide what to do with it. Options include
saving it to a different file format, to copy across to another application.
This includes PhotoPaint, where you can mess around with all key picture
parameters -- down to pixel level -- to your heart’s content.
PERFORMANCE
Without doubt the most impressive feature of
the Scanjet is speed, not just the scanning rate -- which is fast -- but how
quickly it can be put to work. HP haven’t sacrificed quality and raw images
look very good indeed on the default settings. Colours are accurately rendered
colours, brightness and contrast levels rarely need adjusting. The bundled
software includes a fairly routine selection of image and text handling
applications, but they are generally better presented, and more fully
integrated, than most of what the budget competition has to offer.
SUMMARY
We like it. It’s quality peripheral, with
quality software, it’s easy to use, sensibly priced, and it performs well.
Hopefully our difficulties with the installation won’t be typical, though we’ve
got a nagging feeling that others, with
well-used PCs might run into the same sort of problems.
SPECIFICATIONS
Make/model Hewlett Packard Scanjet 5p
How much? £307 (£250 typical street price, inc
VAT)
System colour flatbed scanner
Features single button application launch,
energy saving facilities, supplied with HP Picture Scan, Paper Port, Corel
PhotoPaint, Caere OCR software on CD ROM
Interface ISA SCSI card
Resolution 300dpi optical, 1200 dpi
interpolated
System req. Apple MAC system 7, IBM PC or
compatible with 486 or better, Window 3.1 and 95,
Contact Hewlett Packard, telephone 01344
360000
CV RATINGS (1-5)
Scan quality 4
Build quality 4
Ease of use 5
Value for money 4
Overall rating 85%
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Ó R. Maybury 1997 2805
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