On 17 Nov 98 at 16:32, chris wrote:

>     I presently have a p120 campaq with 32 meg ram and thinking
> about getting a scanner.  Should I go with the high end scanner
> with the high resolution or are the $100 or so scanners
> worthwhile.  Th>

  Please don't send HTML to this or any other mailing list.

  The current inexpensive scanners flooding in from Asia don't seem
to be any slouches in the resolution department.  It's possible that
more expensive customers will provide truer colour input, but most of
us will never see the difference.

  What *is* perhaps significant is that they use a parallel (EPP,
ECP) port rather than a SCSI connection.  On the plus side, this
means you don't have to buy a SCSI card to use the scanner.  On the
negative side, there may not be much CPU left over for other tasks
while scanning.
  Not that I expect to do much more while scanning than stare
hungrily at the image as it forms on the screen....

  There's some slight chance that the scanner and your printer won't
be happy sharing the parallel port.  [ISA cards with one or two
parallel ports are terribly overpriced at $20-40.]
  Barring that, the only other risk is that you may start finding
yourself wishing for something a bit peppier than a 120....

David G

         The PCBUILD web site always needs good submissions.  If
          you would like to contribute to the website, send any
               hardware tech tips or hardware reviews to:
                           [log in to unmask]