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Review
Created:
February, 2000
There are a plenty of good flatbed scanners on the market. While Hewlett Packard did not exactly score with its ScanJet 3300C, a model noticeably tailored towards home personal use, the ScanJet 5200C sets its sights on the professional office.
This is a durable, strong unit intended for heavy use, with better image quality and an operating speed that is quite competitive with market leaders. But with other units priced lower and offering the same or better quality output at the same rate of speed, it's safe to say that, while the 5200C hits its marks, it's not exactly turning heads.
The 5200C is compliant with both USB (Universal Serial Bus) and parallel ports, which is a good thing. One of the computers tested with it could not recognize the scanner when plugged into the USB port. As a result, the set-up process, heralded among others as quick, efficient and convenient, did not meet expectations.
On the other hand, the installation software is easy to use. PrecisionPoint, HP's solid scanning software, comes bundled with Caere PageKeeper, Adobe PhotoDeluxe and an integrated optical character recognition (OCR) program. The resulting package is a suite of scanning utilities to enhance productivity.
Scanning with the 5200C is quick. A very elaborate full-color magazine cover scanned to disk in 45 seconds. Black-and-white text pages scanned even faster. This easily beats the speed of HP's other units and keeps this scanner competitive, if not superior, to others in the price range.
The scanned results are beautiful. With 36-bit color and enhanced resolution of 9600 dots per inch, full color scans could be edited and magnified while retaining sharp color and nary a bitmap. The OCR technology kicked in immediately on text page scans, with accuracy that is by no means superior to available OCR on-the-shelf utilities, but was effective nevertheless.
The scan area is larger than others in this price range, at 8.5 by 14 inches, but for legal-size pages you'll need to purchase an automatic document feeder. The addition, at $199 US ($298 Canadian), will push the price on this unit to $498.95 US ($748.50 Canadian) -- beyond reach for many small business users.
The bottom line on this scanner is cost. If your budget can handle the $299.95 US ($449.95 Canadian) price tag, the 5200C offers very good quality scans at competitive speeds. It is not a small unit, but it is durably built and will withstand the pressures of a growing small business.
Reviewer's
rating: 4 / 5
Comments: The price of the Hewlett Packard ScanJet 5200C is the only barrier to buying an otherwise very good scanning unit.
Platform: PC
Maximum Optical Resolution: 600 x 1200 dots per inch
Maximum Scanning Area: 8.5 inches x 14 inches
Color: Yes
Interface: USB, Parallel
Software Included: HP PrecisionScan, HP ScanJet Copy Utility, Adobe PhotoDeluxe 3.0, Caere PageKeeper, Hemera NetGraphics Optimizer
Sheetfeed: Optional, at a cost of $199 US ($298 Canadian)
Price: $299.95 US, $449.95 Canadian
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