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Standalone scanners have been losing out to all-in-one MFDs (multi-function devices) for some time now.
And with MFDs such as Lexmark's X2480 or HP's own Deskjet F380 available for under £40, it's not hard to see why.
Although these are perfectly adequate for photocopying and basic scanning, if you're looking to print your scans you'll need to invest in something a bit more substantial.
HP's Scanjet G4050 is the latest standalone scanner to arrive on the market, and is the first to boast a six-colour scanning mode. Whereas most scanners use a single lamp to record levels of red, green and blue, HP's Scanjet G4050 houses two lamps.
If six-colour scanning is selected, the scanner will collect two separate red, green and blue readings, and then generate the final scan using both sets of information. In order to use both lamps, however, the scanner needs to make two passes over the document - one for each lamp.
See six-colour scanning in action in our image gallery.
HP's done a good job with the design of the Scanjet G4050, but you'll have to make room on your desk for its rather bulky dimensions - it measures 303x508x108mm (wxdxh). It's a sturdy piece of kit and the solid hinge on the lid feels as if it will stand the test of time. Four shortcut buttons sit on the top for quick access to scan, film scan, copy and scan to Pdf functions.
Scanning a 6x4 photo at a relatively low resolution of 200dpi takes a speedy eight seconds, while a slide scan (four slide templates are included to keep your slides in place) at the same dpi and enlarged 400 per cent will result in a 25 second wait.
However, if you want to print your scans you'll need to use a higher resolution, which means waiting a fair bit longer to the scans to appear. Upping the resolution to 1,200 (a maximum 4,800dpi is available) pushed the time per slide scan up to two minutes 30 seconds.
Turn on the six colour scanning mode, and high-resolution scans will really test your patience. A 1,200dpi scan took a staggering 13 minutes 30 seconds to appear on screen - if you've got a set of 36 slides to scan in you could end up waiting more than eight hours.
The six-colour scanning does improve the colour depth, although how much depends on the image you're scanning - we've posted some examples in our image gallery. And whether you'd be willing to wait the extra time for the scan to appear is another matter. The fact is, even without the six-colour mode turned on, colour reproduction is excellent.
HP includes a Dust and Scratch removal feature and, since we has some pretty scratched and dusty scans, we were eager to try it out. Again, this increases scanning time, but the results are very impressive. Take a look at our image gallery to see the dust and scratch removal in action.
When calculating total scan times, you'll also need to take warm-up times into account when starting a new totally new scan job. Although when scanning photos this process takes just 20-25 seconds, if the slide mode is selected this increases to almost one minute.
We were a little disappointed with HP's Twain software, which looks and feels a little dated. All the options are there, but you'll end up clicking into multiple windows to change the various settings and while some revert back to default when you start a new job, others don't.
Another disappointment was that despite Vista's launch back in January, and the Business edition's release in late 2006, HP still hasn't sorted proper Vista drivers for the Scanjet G4050.
It has rudimentary drivers for Vista on its website, but you'll only be able to use the scanner's basic features. For such a large company, the lack of Vista drivers for a brand new product is baffling and something that should have been sorted before launch. Full drivers are available for Windows XP, 2000, and Mac OS X v10.3.9 and above.
There's no doubt that the Scanjet's six-colour mode makes an improvement to your scans, although results will vary. But with all its bells and whistles turned on, you'll end up waiting an absolute age for your scans to appear. While this will be fine for those wanting high-quality scans, most home users will be happy to accept a slight drop in quality for vastly quicker scans.
See also:
Scan photos, documents and old negatives in three different positions 03 Feb 2007
A blisteringly fast scanner for high-volume users 05 Jan 2007All Scanners
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