The Epson GT-2500 , a 48 - morsel color flatbed scanner , is geared toward small businesses that want to glance over papers easily . With its reflexive document feeder ( ADF ) and gamy - resolution capabilities , it delivers , but its high - ending features may be overkill for some business professionals who only plan on digitalise plain paper documents .
To practice the GT-2500 , you put as many as 50 varlet in the top - feed document feeder , launch the Epson Scan software system on your Mac ( there ’s also a green Start clit on the scanner that will launch Epson Scan for you ) , set your preferences in the software , and sink in the software program ’s Scan clit . The scanner sucks in the pages one by one and spits them out of the bottom of the unit of measurement , below the input tray . When the scanning is finish up , a dialog drink down up on your Mac ask you to edit or save the page .
Alternately , you may pinch the lid and scan right on on the ice surface . The electronic scanner has an extra - long 8.5 - by-14 - in scanning field to accommodate legal - sizing document . This savorless bottom can be a fillip , and certainly make the image scanner more flexible if you want to glance over cartridge holder article or books , or fragile document that you do n’t want to lam through the robotlike written document feeder .
A higher - end version of this scanner , the GT-2500 Plus for $ 900 , includes Adobe Acrobat 7 Standard ( a $ 299 time value ) and a construct - in connection card that lets calculator on your LAN use the image scanner — useful in a lowly power . Because Mac OS ecstasy facilitates PDF creation through the Print dialog , Acrobat ’s value is n’t as ripe for Mac users as it is for Windows users . Acrobat does allow for the foundation of PDF - based radical review of documents and other squeamish PDF - centric features , but if a PDF - based workflow and networking capabilities are not of import to you , the standard GT-2500 will beseem your needs quite nicely .
The image scanner is fairly large for a desktop machine at 23 pounds and 18 - by-15.5 - by-8 column inch — but that accommodate the legal sized flat bottom . If space is at a insurance premium , you might consider the Fujitsu ScanSnap ( ) , which has a footprint diminished than an 8.5 - by-11 - inch piece of paper .
Your papers do n’t have to be in unadulterated condition to scan by rights using the GT-2500 ’s ADF . In fact , many of mine were just snippets or were somewhat ding along the edge .
The GT-2500 ’s trope - timber is impressive . I scanned documents both in mordant - and - white and grayscale , and both looked very clear on screen , especially when I used Epson Scan ’s Text Enhancement feature . print of those scans looked very much like the master . I also scanned a plenty of 4 - by-6 - column inch photos using the ADF , and the resulting TIFFs had very good contingent . The ADF scans at up to 600 x 600 dpi ; flatbed resolution is 1,200 x 1,200 dpi , while maximum interpolated firmness is 9,600 x 9,600 dpi .
The ADF removes some of the tedium of scanning , but the full process is still very slow . Epson say that the ADF scans at 11 Page per mo in color and 27 page per minute in black and white , and my examination with fatal - and - ashen scans using a 1.42GHz G4 Mac mini lived up to the speed call . However , my literal - cosmos color scanning charge per unit varied : Scanning aim anywhere from three to five pages per min bet on whether I used the text enhancement feature article . Grayscale scanning rate were about nine pages per minute .
After you scan your document , you must delete and save the pages — the save procedure alone take about a minute . If you want to glance over both sides of a page , scans will take doubly as long , as the electronic scanner feeds the paper back through the ADF . The slowness probably wo n’t trouble you when you need to scan a few pages here and there , but if you ’re rake the message of your file cabinet , expect to limit aside a considerable amount of fourth dimension to complete the problem .
The GT-2500 ’s other major downside is the software . It lets you delimitate your own presets , but you have to habituate its numbering scheme instead of being able to name the presets yourself . It ’s just unacceptable that one ca n’t delimit presets with descriptive name . And the default sight of the package ( Office Mode ) assumes that users mechanically sleep with the correct dpi set to select and what a descreening filter is or when to use one . These terms are define in the Help data file and User Guide , and there is a ready to hand reference that notify users on which colour and dpi background to use for dissimilar types of CAT scan . However , the software itself should allow better guidance .
Macworld’s buying advice
The Epson GT-2500 document scanner is cracking if you involve a combination of high - quality photo scans along with scans of regular schoolbook documents , and the flat bed for specialized scanning , but it may be overkill for some normal business users . If all you need is a electronic scanner with an reflexive feed for text documents and the occasional low - resolution photo designate for due east - mail , the Fujitsu ScanSnap , which offers the same resolution as the GT-2500 ’s ADF , is small , quicker , less expensive , and scans text just as well .
[ Jennifer Berger is a formerMacworldeditor , now an editor and author in San Francisco , who is interfering scanning the contents of her filing cabinet cabinet . ]
