Lide 50 Review: Consider Carefully (Rating: 3.00)
Review : Well after accidently dropping and smashing my previous Canoscan 1240U which I was completely happy with, EXCEPT for the speed. Superb image quality, but painfully slow, I looked at the canon site to checkout the new range.I considered 3 canoscans, the Lide20/30 and 50.
I selected the 50 primarily because it was USB2 and more than twice the speed of
my old scanner (the 1240U's are renovned for slow scans). Unfortunately this scanner just doesnt live up to any of the hype or my expectations. I did expect the image quality to be as good as the lide 20 or 30. The images as other people have also said are grainy and drilling down on a 600 or 1200dpi scan easily shows this. I am very dissapointed with the image quality.
The dust button must be enabled otherwise dust imperfections are shocking. The speed is certainly faster especially on preview. But on some scans depending on what you are scanning at etc its not alot faster than my old scanner. I get the
feeling that this scanner is geared around the 300dpi, as some scans other than
300dpi eg: 150 take an unexplainable long time. The updates of the scan software are nice, but not alot better in my view.
I did end up having to uninstall all of my older Canoscan software to be sure
that there wasnt some wierd software issue causing the poor quality. If I had to choose again, I think i would again suffer the slow speed of the Lide 30 (updated 1240U) and choose it even the lide 20 is better quality than the 50. Having said all this even though the scanner is usb2 capable i have it plugged into a usb1 only port, but this shouldnt make any difference.
Cool design with no ON/OFF switch that went lights out. (Rating: 2.00)
Review : I first pick this scanner because it was nice and compact looking, with an eye catching silver slim design. It had USB 2 and good resolution, but like most scanners doesn't have too many other features. It ran fine on my PIV XP laptop with 512mb, the driver and software install perfectly on the first try. People, who say they have software issues, should reformat their machine, because there are some software or memory conflicts from human error. Usually people install thing and erase system files improperly or accidentally. Performances:
Scanning images on this machine is fast and the scans look great. Its actual scanning perform is a lot better then the machine that replaced it. The HP 6110 all-in-one scanned a lot slower and produced very grainy images. Canon's scans were much smoother quality. Bad bulb that went lights out:
I like everything in this little scanner, but Canon cut corner on two major issues. The first, which was the reason I had to return it, is: there is no ON/OFF switch. The scanner power up through the USB cable when the computer turns on. Sometime I leave my laptop on for whole day, which also leaves the scanner on for a whole day: this is how I figured the light bulb died within the first month. At first, I unplugged the USB cable, but over time you forget or get careless. Maybe there is a setting to control this, but it was too late. Canon cut corner on the ON/OFF switch simply to save money. The other smaller problem, but annoying feature is the driver software doesn't let you customize scanning sizes. After using a HP for years, I would like to pick my own scan size, sometime like 72dpi or 350dpi. Canon preset dpi in increment of 100s is annoying. The return to the store
Good thing the bulb died on the 28th day so I got to return and exchange for a more feature HP 6110, but with lesser performance rating. I stayed away from Canon's cool but cheaply constructed design, until the overly impressive Canon's I960 photo printer changed my mind.
LiDE 50 on Linux a no go (Rating: 2.00)
Review : If you plan to use the Canon CanoScan LiDE 50 on Linux, you're currently out of luck. Of the LiDE scanners, the Sane (Scanner Access Now Easy - http://www.sane-project.org/) project only supports the LiDE 20 and 30. That's why only 3 stars. BTW, though this is labeled as a USB 2.0 product, it also works with USB 1.1.
Does NOT work at 1200dpi (Rating: 2.00)
Review : The LiDE 50 will not scan at 1200dpi. I'm running a 1Ghz Athlon with 256MB of RAM and plenty of system resources in Windows 2000 Professional. The scans just "hang" at 20% or 90% and never finish. Also, parts in the internal mechanism of the scanner I recieved appear to have minor corrosion on them. Whether it is this or a compatibility problem that is the cause of the scanning problems I will never know because there is no way I'm wasting my time with another unit.
Beautiful scans, great value, fast... just as advertised (Rating: 5.00)
Review : This scanner is all that Canon advertises:
* BEAUTIFUL SCANS: I scanned over 1,200 photographs with the LiDE 50: Black and white, color, newsprint, etc. The color, shading, and texture of the originals was retained. No added marks or lines from the scanner.
* GREAT VALUE: The software that comes with the scanner is actually stuff you want to keep and use (for a change). Unless you're looking to go pro, Photoshop Elements will be everything you're likely to need (I'm comparing it to features in PaintshopPro 7.0, but Elements is far easier to use). Add to it a bundle of other software that may be just as useful to you, depending on your project.
* FAST: Suffice it to say that I needed to scan a lot of snapshots at 300 dpi and waiting for the scanner was not a problem. See some of the other posts for time measurements. * I used this on a machine that supported USB 2.0, running WinXP Pro. Installation and set up basically took care of itself. I'd buy it again.
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