Visioneer OneTouch 8900 USB Scanner

I had demoed Visioneer scanners for 3 years at a computer store and was always impressed with the speed, quality and price of them. I happily bought my own Visioneer 8900 as I liked the quick access buttons, the quality, and the price. The installation was quick and simple and I was scanning right away. Did about 5 high quality scans and everything was great. I hadnt used the scanner for a couple of months (it was off) so I fired it up again and I got these ugly green lines all throughout the scan. I rebooted and tried again and the same thing happened over and over. Then it would lock up on me saying the scanner lock was locked but I checked and it was not locked. Downloaded the latest drivers, installed them, and tried again. It still has those ugly lines. (I use Windows XP Pro) I dont know why after only a couple of months it died on me but I am disappointed in Visioneer. I cant recommend this scanner based on my experience with it but with only two reviews I would research it more.

I bought it from a reseller and was easy to install and worked great for about 6 months and one day for no apparent reason I started getting The scanner optical module is locked error. Since then I have tried reinstalling drivers as well as software with no results. People I have read recommeding reisntalling OS. But to me if you have to reinstall the OS to make a scanner work, the piece is not worth having. I will just look for another scanner.

This scanner is a few models up from the best scanner I ever had. Easy to use, good quality, and long lasting thus far. Even if it breaks in a year, dont be silly... 35 bucks? Throw it out and get the latest model. Keep the USB cable and sell it for 5 bucks... to anyone who has recently bought a USB Printer... they almost never come with the cable. hahah.. Whatver, I have the Visioneer 8100 and its almost exactly the same as this one and it rocks. PEACE OUT.

For about $100, I got the Visioneer One Touch 8900 USB flatbed scanner, have used it on my older computer for many years running, and have been satisfied with its performance. My operating system is Windows ME (yup, there are a few of us still around) and Ive utilized the PaperPort Twain software bundled with the scanner. While it takes some getting used to and you may have to repeat the scan several times, by then you know what youre doing without making further mistakes and the results obtained are acceptable most of the time and occasionally downright excellent. A high quality print obtained with film technology is usually not going to yield anywhere near the same result when transferred to digital information because some degradation is unavoidable, but if you up the resolution from the preset level, adjust exposure and color balance as needed, sharpen with restraint, then crop and size carefully, you can do pretty well. In the darkroom, particularly the color darkroom, youll put far more effort into making a high quality enlargement and the results obtained will be eminently superior in several ways, but thats to be expected. In the last few months, I used this unit to scan a number of high quality photographs, several of which were decades old, in order to embed them in the text of desktop published books. In so doing, I achieved pretty darn good results, considering the limitations of the equipment. Im now looking for a dedicated film scanner to scan medium format and 35mm color negs directly, hopefully giving me darkroom quality results, but nonetheless, this workhorse economy flatbed scanner has more than paid for itself over the last several years and I therefore must give it an enthusiastic thumbs up. Ill agree with the critics who point out that Visioneers support leaves much to be desired because I tried to contact them regarding a software upgrade (for scanning film -- obviously bundled with the 8920) and couldnt get anywhere at all, but a bad attitude in the computer world combined with lackluster or nonexistent support is hardly unique to Visioneer.

This is by far, the biggest piece of garbage that it has ever been my misfortune to buy. If everything Visioneer makes is like this, they deserve to go out of business. I cannot believe they can foist off this kind of junk and get by with it. I will never buy another product with Visioneer on it. Period. This scanner was a HUGE waste of money, not to mention a very good source of frustration. It worked long enough to scan about 5 items...but none of those consequtively. It will scan one, then if youre lucky you might get another scan out if after about 25 hours of fooling with it and its pathetic connections, (lots of luck getting any decent drivers or updates) and countless reboots of your computer. Buy a real scanner, send this one to your enemies.

Out of the box it had an intermittant problem. You get an error box that says the optical module is locked. Only it isnt. Go to the web site and they have a virtual troubleshooter that is absolutely of no use. Call the company customer service and they tell you to call tech support,(at $2.00 per minute on a 900 line. Because this is out of production, they dont care. Definitely dont buy this for a quarter. It would be a waste of a good quarter