Software Bundle
Visioneer included
an interesting bundle with the 8100 Scanner. Similar bundles are distributed
with all of their scanners. PaperPort Deluxe software easily manages all your
documents and images and works with most popular applications. TextBridge
Pro 8 OCR turns scanned documents into editable formatted text.
MGI PhotoSuite II
SE Lets you easily capture, touch-up, transform, organize, create, show and
share photos with family, friends and business associates. High quality templates
create everything from calendars to business stationary. MGI PhotoSuite II
SE delivers unparalleled functionality, productivity and entertainment to
home and business users.
PaperPort Links™
let you drag and drop your documents and images instantly onto linked applications.
WebPublisher Creates HTML links to post your scanned image to the Internet
with WebPublisher link.
Technical Impressions
The Visioneer 8100
features scanning at an optical resolution of 600 x 1200dpi, the 42-bit color
capability is achieved through an internal 14-bit analog to digital (A/D)
converter that recognizes over 4 trillion colors. Each dot in an electronic
color image comes from a blend of red, green, and blue (RGB). You can enhance
it to 2400dpi through software interpolation.
If you take a closer
look at the specifications of both units, you will notice that the 8600 scanner
offers 36-bits and is using a 12-bit converter recognizing 68 billions of
colors. Compared to the 8100 that features a 14-bit A/D converter and supporting
up to 42-bits of color, that’s over 4 trillions colors. These differences
could be hardly distinguished when compared, as it’s very hard to notice a
reasonable difference. The 8600 remains to be the best choice for the professional
user cause of its high-interpolated resolution that goes up to 9600 dpi.
Compared to the 6200USB scanner who was only offering USB support, the 8100
offers both, parallel and USB support, NT users would definitely appreciate
that feature as NT based computers don’t support 98% of USB devices on the
market. At this point, you might already be able to tell that the 6200USB
and the 8100 OneTouch unit are using the exact same scanning engine, the single
difference between both units are their exterior features.
Conclusion
The 8100 is available for sale at $179USD with a $30USD Mail-in-rebate. At
149$ the 8100 is hard to beat. The 8100 is the definitive solution for the
home or small business. If you don’t plan on using the OneTouch Panel on the
8100 unit, we would then have to recommend you to go with the 6200USB scanner
which offers the exact same specifications but doesn’t include the OneTouch
features. 
Oleg Mitskaniouk
00/07/03
