Love It For Document Archiving, Photo Albums and Avoiding Faxing and Postal Mail

My Epinions Philosophy
When I make a purchase, epinions is one of my most valuable resources for non-biased experiences and information. When I come here to research a product I read all of the reviews and the product specifications and details on other sites as well. You will find that my reviews try to focus on my personal experiences and research discoveries that I think are not easy to discover through pre-purchase research. I will also highlight any differences between actual product features and performance and what the vendor's marketing states or implies. This means that my review will not spend a lot of time on basic specifications, procedures or stock commentary that you can read in other places.

Vendor and Product Info Links
Here is Canon's webpage with the specs and details: http://consumer.usa.canon.com/ir/controller?act=ModelDetailAct&fcategoryid=119&modelid=6624

My review may also be applicable to most of the scanners in the CanoScan LiDE (20, 35, 60, etc.)series because it focuses on hardware aspects of the entire line (USB powered) and the main canon scanning software that comes with every scanner in this line.

My Purchase
I purchased this product at www.zipzoomfly.com for $50 with free 2 day shipping.

My Relevant Product Background
I have had 5 scanners. This is my second Canon LiDE. I use a scanner mostly so I can email documents and forms that normally require snail mail or faxing. I also have ongoing projects scanning photo albums and archiving some documents.

Undeserved Bad Raps
PDF scanning functionality is actually excellent for archiving documents - I tell you why down below.
TIP - the scanner is very light and the buttons require a firm press to click so pushing a button can cause the scanner to move. I simply place my index finger on the lid and press down lightly and then press the desired button with my thumb - once in the habit you do it without thinking.

What I Don't Like
Sometimes when the computer has been in standby I have to start CanoScan Toolbox to do the first copy or scan. It might also have something to do with the scanner going into power save. It only happens when I've not used the scanner for days and the buttons work fine once I have started the first scan operation by starting up the CanoScan Toolbox.

Hidden Gems and Tips

No Power Supply - "So what" you say? I have had to replace at least one scanner power supply and I know of at least one friend who has two scanners he has sidelined because the power supplies died. I'm not sure if there is something unique about scanners that causes unusually high power supply failure - but in my experiences it has been a trend. A generic replacement power supply that is powerful enough to drive a standard scanner can be between $18-25.

Portability - although I don't generally worry about this in a scanner, I discovered the LiDE series while looking for a scanner I could on vacation to my parents to archive family photos. The size, weight and lack of external power supply make the LiDE excellent for such projects.

Scanner Software and Driver Rocks
Canon does an execellent job of their drivers. I have similar good experiences with their printer drivers - they generally never do something that leaves you wondering what happened or what to do next to get your task done. I did not install any of the bundled software because I already have other programs for my scanning projects.

Archiving DocumentsFirst I'll cover archiving documents. The scanner allows direct scan to PDF with no additional software. It has a couple excellent features for PDF scanning. One is the ability to scan a multipage document. So you can scan page after page and put it in the same document. It also supports PDF compression. The "high" setting creates documents as small as Acrobat 6.0's "Reduce File Size" command on the "File" menu - but without having to have Acrobat. Finally, it allows you to create indexed PDFs. Using these last two features together allows one to generate very small, searchable PDF copies of documents or books. I have been using it to scan old student year books for a project. I have been very impressed with how accurate the PDF indexing is on the old and sometimes wrinkled pages I am running through.

Scanning Photo Albums - the multi-crop feature is excellent if you have to scan photo albums of any type. TIP the automatic cropping detection only works with multiple photos on the glass - if the scanner cannot see the reflective back of the lid, it does not seem to do autocropping. TIP - you can manually put the scanner utility into "multi-crop" mode to create multiple files from multiple scan regions in one scan. Very handy for scanning photo albums - saves hours over what I was doing with my old HP scanner.

Paperless OfficeMany times I scan documents or forms that would require postal mail or faxing. Even if I have to fax a document, I scan to PDF so I have a copy. The scan to PDF feature is very handy for this - especially with the high compression setting which makes emailing a breeze.

This scanner is much smaller and more intelligent than the HP ScanJet it replaced.