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Cheap Decent Scanner

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Hey all, hope you're doing good,

Following this thread discussing how to digitise old photos, I've decided to buy a scanner to connect to my laptop.
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1057793
However, the ones posted there seem quite pricey, does anyone know of a decent scanner (not for negatives, for actual photos) that's cheap too?

Or perhaps seeing as I don't have a printer, would it be smarter to get one of those all-in-one printer/scanner things? I don't need an AMAZING scanner, just something that will scan documents and old photos to a high resolution. I think I'm leaning towards getting an all-in-one...
Thanks a lot :T

Comments

  • Sput2001
    Sput2001 Posts: 1,206 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture
    With the advent of all-in-ones, the stand-alone scanner is becoming an increasingly rare animal, at least as far as ordinary domestic use goes.

    An all-in-one is probably your best bet.

    What would you be doing with the printer, by and large? Pictures, text...?
  • fwor
    fwor Posts: 6,863 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper
    A friend has a scanner from the Canon LiDE range and she's very happy with it - they are quite slim, and hers is powered from the USB port, so no separate power supply required.

    The lower resolution ones seem to be around £30, but you'll pay more for the higher resolution models.
  • hethmar
    hethmar Posts: 10,678 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Combo Breaker Car Insurance Carver!
    Tesco and Staples have an all in one scanner, copier and printer from HP for £30. Ive had my HP all in one for 2 years now and not had any problems. I buy compatible ink from inkclub for it as you get 3 times the quantity for same price as own brand.
  • I would also recommend an all in one. I currently have an Epson all in one with separate ink tanks, so I only have to replace individual colours as necessary, and as an extra bonus, it also prints on discs. I buy compatable inks from eBay at a fraction of the real cartridges and have really good photo printing results.

    Whether you decide on an all in one or a stand alone scanner, IMHO it is worth spending a few extra pennies on one with higher resolution so that what you print out will not disappoint.

    I find that Amazon is worth looking at for the user reviews of potential purchases, if not the actual purchasing. I reckon that the reviews, being from ordinary people like me are more reliable than magazine reviews, who may be more biased commercially.
  • Kamran
    Kamran Posts: 477 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 100 Posts Name Dropper Combo Breaker
    thanks very much. I think I shall go for the all in one printer scanner copier, makes sense. My main printing will probably be text documents, not photos, unless its very occassionally.

    the HP one at tesco and staples for £30, what's the model number for that? are there any other reccomendations? =D oh and i do like the idea of getting the compatible ink, it was always the price of the cartriges that has stopped me from getting a printer in the past!

    thanks a lot!
  • exprog
    exprog Posts: 413 Forumite
    If you want text to be available as text (i.e. to use in Word, for example) you need to ensure the scanner has OCR capability. Otherwise you will scan the text as a picture i.e. you will be able to look at it but not treat it as text. Far as I know most cheap scanners will not do OCR.
  • anewman
    anewman Posts: 9,200 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Combo Breaker
    The only thing with Canon LIDE scanners is you cannot scan film slides (negatives) due to the nature of the scanning technology. Otherwise for photos etc they're good.
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