Mustek puts its BearPaw forward

Capable of scanning in 24bit colour at top resolutions of 1200x600dpi, the stylish and inexpensive Mustek colour flatbed is simple to operate and a good choice for novices thanks to its range of bundled software.

It has an attractive appearance, with an 'iMac blue' frame surrounding a 216x297mm scanning area, and while it only weighs 2.8kg it seems robust. The hinge can be adjusted to accommodate thick media such as a magazine; alternatively, the whole top panel can be detached from the hinge if you're scanning material that's more than 1in deep.

The USB interface makes connection simple. BearPaw 1200 is designed to work with Photo Express SE 3.0, Mustek fax utility software and TextBridge OCR only, all of which installed without any problems. For advanced features however, you'll need to use the supplied TWAIN driver to connect more sophisticated third-party applications.

This scanner is very user-friendly thanks to the handy panel on the front of the case, sporting buttons for scanning, copying, fax, E-mail and optical character recognition (OCR). All the relevant software automatically boots up when the scanner is turned on. The device can be operated from the Windows desktop where the resolution and scanning modes can be altered. There's also a green function, which prolongs the lifetime of the scanner by shutting down the lamp after a certain period of inactivity. This can be set to between one and 20 minutes.

At normal (600x300dpi) resolutions, one scanning pass of an A4 document took only 12 seconds, compared with 21 seconds at 600x600dpi and 40 seconds at the super fine (600x1200dpi) setting. Of course, the speed of your system will affect how quickly an image is processed and how fast the software loads and operates.

The E-mail function allows you to send images to your friends by converting your scans into JPEG file attachments. The software includes Photo Express 3.0 SE, which is a handy package that supports trimming, focusing and image manipulation, and even lets you save your scans into an electronic photo album or Web page.

Graeme Wearden

For details, please refer to PC Direct, issue July 2000. http://www.zdnet.co.uk/pcdir/content/2000/07/first_looks/mustek.html