Umax Astra 6400

Just like USB solved the interface hassles of parallel-port scanners, FireWire has the potential to answer USB slowness. This is the thinking behind the Astra 6400, Umax's first FireWire (IEEE-1394) flatbed scanner intended for the busy office and serious consumer.

The Astra 6400 is an entry-level product designed for affordability and ease of use. For £200, you get a standard A4 reflective flatbed area with a white-backed lid made from sensible grey translucent plastic, plus lots of useful image capture and optical character recognition (OCR) software. Also available for this model is a transparency adaptor for an extra £50.

At the front of the machine are three launch buttons - Scan, Copy and Custom. With the VistaScan driver installed, pressing any of these buttons will conduct the relevant task. For example, one push of Scan runs the scanning module and carries out a prescan. Pressing Copy scans whatever is on the bed and sends it to your printer automatically. You can choose what the Custom button does, but most people are likely to set it up to scan directly into their preferred OCR package. You'd be surprised at how much time these three buttons can save on a day-to-day basis.

The scanning software itself, VistaScan, is designed with Beginner and Advanced modes within the same inelegant user interface. The intention was obviously to make using a scanner more attractive on-screen, but the effect is rather puerile. On the other hand, it does allow you to conduct colour correction with curves and other custom settings, apply sharpen filters and descreen printed material to specific line screen values. VistaScan will also work within any TWAIN-compliant program, as a Photoshop plug-in and as a standalone program.

The star of the show is the FireWire connection to your PC. As with SCSI, FireWire is still rare in PCs. The connection is inevitably fast, and the Astra 6400 skips through even the largest of high-resolution scans. FireWire is also hot-pluggable and supports daisy-chaining, all of which leaves SCSI, USB and bi-directional parallel connections looking dowdy.

However, despite its speed, this is still essentially a machine built to a low price. Image quality is good, but not outstanding, and every scanning operation is accompanied by a noisy mechanical whirring. The lack of rubberised feet underneath is also a shame, as it causes the scanner to slide around your desktop when so much as pushed by one finger. Sometimes this happens when pressing the launch buttons at the front. I was also disappointed to find that the hinge on the lid doesn't raise up to accommodate thick materials like books.

On the other hand, there's still much to recommend the Astra 6400 beyond speed and price. The scanning software might appear childish, but it's undeniably easy to use, which is something you can't underestimate in an office environment. Umax also offers a one-year on-site replacement warranty as standard. Add to this the generous software bundle and the Astra 6400 is pretty good value all round.

Author: Alistair Dabbs