Astra 4000U
Company: Umax
http://www.umax.com
Price: $249.00
I am an aspiring cartoonist. A few times every year I send some drawings off to the major syndicates and get soundly rejected. It’s a lesson in humility that I count as a character building experience. Still, there is a less rational part of my psyche that insists my stuff is, in fact, good enough. This part insists my toons just need to be presented a little better.
Since I have a persistent fantasy (hey, maybe myMac could use a cartoon or two?) I’m always looking for a way to get a little bit better. I reasoned that if I could scan a complete cartoon into the computer and clean it up with an image-editing program I would be that much closer to my goal of working at home. The rub was (note past tense) that I draw on legal paper and most scanners are letter sized. I had looked around for a legal sized scanner and found them to be a bit on the pricey side. Apparently a legal sized scanner is equivalent to a round trip ticket without a weekend stay: They assume it’s for business and charge accordingly.
At least that what’s I thought until I ran across the UMAX Astra 4000U. At less than 200 dollars it was in my price range. Hmmm, thought I, this will put me over the hump. So I bit the bullet and placed the order. A few days later I had the goods, much to the chagrin of my wife who rightfully regards such expenditures as a waste of money.
Installation was easy, the thing is USB so it’s a simple matter of plugging it in. I would say plug and play but for me it was mostly plug and wait. The problem wasn’t with the hardware; the problem was with the software. Sure UMAX sent a whole bunch of software with the scanner, but I wouldn’t know cause my CD was bad. I tried it in my factory-installed drive. I tried it in my Iomega CD rewritable drive. No luck. So it was off to the internet to download the necessary software. Perusing the UMAX site I noted they would send me a replacement CD… for a fee. I opted for the twenty and a half megabyte download. It’s a fairly large file, it would probably take a minute or so on a cable modem but I have a 56k modem. I started the download and went to bed (I pay for unlimited usage for a reason).
The following morning might as well have been Christmas as far as I was concerned (and was after my wife saw the bill). I had a shiny downloaded installer. It worked seamlessly as did the scanner. Or at least I think it did. Here we are going to have to enter the shadowy area of personal opinion. I remember those Macworld articles about scanner resolution and color fidelity, tests timed with a stopwatch (53 seconds for a legal sized scan, but I counted one Mississippi, two Mississippi) and head to head comparisons. I did not do any of these. I scanned a cartoon in, manipulated it a bit, printed it out and thought, “That should get me a nicer rejection letter than usual”. The scan seemed pretty faithful to the original, which is a problem if you’re not a very good artist, but nice if you’re after accurate scans. What I’m trying to say, and fumbling with, is that the UMAX gave quite a lovely scan. I tried it in color (scanned some postage stamps, hey you save money where you can) and I was amazed by the output.
I don’t think that quality is unique to UMAX yet it was considerably better than my Agfa. I suspect scanner technology has advanced in the last year to the point where last years best consumer scans are this years average scans. Heck Apple crammed a movie studio that would’ve cost more than my house and the five nearest neighbor’s abodes ten years ago into a three grand box, so it shouldn’t be much of a surprise. Think of it this way, when you were a kid you thought the effects of the original Star Wars were pretty darn realistic. In comparison to one of the latest digitized monster movies someone might as well have been running around with a blue shirt holding a x-wing model and making mouth noises. Point being what we call “acceptable” or “average” today was called groundbreaking a few years or months ago.
So let’s recap: The Astra 4000U is a nice cheap scanner if you do regular (albeit oversized) stuff. I wouldn’t recommend it if you’re trying to digitize five years worth of legal documents but if you’re one of the folks who scans an occasional image (one or two per day) that is a bit bigger than letter size I’d say this scanner would be an ideal choice. The color depth and speed is probably not something a professional would put up with but if you’re emailing Aunt Millie the ASTRA is more than adequate.
I can’t recommend the ASTRA under any circumstances if you’re the “average” scanner user. The average scanner user uses the scanner once or twice and never touches the thing again. The ASTRA would be a terrible choice if this describes you. The ASTRA footprint is, predictably, a bit larger than a standard scanner. So if it’s basically a desk ornament, save the space and get a smaller model.
Which leaves me on this note, I have a scanner AGFA esscan 20 that needs a home. It’s a nice scanner. I did all the cartoons on www.sealclubbing.com/cindex.html with it. It’s not for sale, it’s not a collectors item, but it is free for the price of shipping. Drop me a note, first check wins.
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