About This Particular Macintosh 6.04 - eDisk
About This Particular Macintosh 6.04 - eDisk About This Particular Macintosh 6.04 - eDisk
There is little to report about the casing. At therear, you will find the mains and USB connectorsand a connector for the transparency adaptor(mini DIN—like an old Apple modem port connector).On one side is a neatly designed lockingcatch for use when transporting the unit. At thefront is a conveniently placed on/off switch. Ofcourse, being a USB device, this switch is actuallyuseful. SCSI devices have to be switched on asthe computer is started, but USB devices can be switched on and off as required.In the front top corner is a small button that is potentially very useful, but which reveals thescanner’s major weakness—its bundled software. The button is intended to be used like the‘copy’ button on a photocopier. Put something into the scanner, press the button, and thesoftware loads, enabling you to say what you want done. It offers all the obvious choices,such as print it on paper, OCR it to text, and load it into Photoshop.What actually happens is that it loads an application called Presto! PageManager. Over theyears, I have come across many poor quality ports of applications originally written for PCs.I can’t recall ever having coming across a more irritating port than this one. Not only does itignore most of the interface conventions developed by Apple, but it performs poorly andslowly.Examine the screenshot; it looks quite ghastly. To say it is utilitarian would be to give falsepraise, as utilitarian implies usefulness. Note that there are two separate Help menus at thetop of the screen. One offers access to the help system; the other turns balloon help on andATPM 6.04 ← 82 → Stuff: Epson Perfection 1200 Photo
off. Pressing F1 for help is not implemented, nor is pressing the Help key on an extendedkeyboard. If you access help, you will discover references to features that are not available inthe Mac implementation. It warns that rotating the scan is not available either, although inreality there is a button which does that! I don’t want to dwell too much on these points andcountless similar ones, as it distracts from my main criticism, which is that the software failsto do its real job adequately.I tried it out with a full letter-sized scan at 300 dpi (you can also scan up to 1200 dpi, orbeyond that for those who are impressed by interpolated resolution figures). The TWAINdriver is needed for all scans and is reasonably fast, but using PageManager to transfer theimage to Photoshop took 91 seconds (25.6 MB file size). The same image acquired directlyfrom Photoshop via the TWAIN driver took 49 seconds. These differences are even morestriking at higher resolutions. PageManager seems to spend ages slowly loading and savingthe image file. I started to repeat the test at 1200 dpi, but abandoned it as it was painfullyslow.ATPM 6.04 ← 83 → Stuff: Epson Perfection 1200 Photo
- Page 32 and 33: Anyway, for the sake of a good stor
- Page 34 and 35: Columns: DSL and the MacSlices From
- Page 36 and 37: get their heads together and resolv
- Page 38 and 39: Overall, I think the Mac is a smart
- Page 40 and 41: Columns: RumorsAbout This Particula
- Page 42 and 43: or developing a similar and compati
- Page 44 and 45: Rumormonger TakeoverDisappointed by
- Page 46 and 47: the message will be bounced back to
- Page 48 and 49: DogDoo.comWeb Address: http://www.d
- Page 50 and 51: Genetic Savings & CloneWeb Address:
- Page 52 and 53: Columns: Digital Audio and the Mac(
- Page 54 and 55: mat converter, and I can work with
- Page 56 and 57: But that’s just my stuff…there
- Page 58 and 59: “Done!”Good! You’ve destroyed
- Page 60 and 61: Dragging Sarah Michelle Gellar onto
- Page 62 and 63: on them like a ton of bricks. (We
- Page 64 and 65: Politely write to the ISP, explaini
- Page 66 and 67: Columns: Networking Guru (VII)How T
- Page 68 and 69: MacLAN for Windows 95, 98, and NT.
- Page 70 and 71: If you haven’t seen the older par
- Page 72 and 73: Stuff: Shareware RoundupAbout ThisS
- Page 74 and 75: they’re accessible from the new O
- Page 76 and 77: Process Manager is a far easier way
- Page 78 and 79: FM Egg TimerAuthor: Dave NaultWeb:
- Page 80 and 81: evisions are substantial enough to
- Page 84 and 85: With Photoshop already loaded, pres
- Page 86 and 87: supplied for single and 4x 35mm, 6x
- Page 88 and 89: There are five ways to change icons
- Page 90 and 91: ut if all you’re interested in is
- Page 92 and 93: wanted Microsoft’s Web fonts inst
- Page 94 and 95: For instance, Macintosh sites that
- Page 96 and 97: The final citizenship problem I sho
- Page 98 and 99: the trash. I have mixed feelings ab
- Page 100 and 101: limited to holding single pages. Pr
- Page 102 and 103: Finally, although IE 5 now supports
- Page 104 and 105: hand cursor. This is the kind of fe
- Page 106 and 107: the better browser for people who d
- Page 108 and 109: Starting With the Notes on the Page
- Page 110 and 111: Or My Microphone?Melody Assistant d
- Page 112 and 113: Stuff: MP3 Player Roundup (II)About
- Page 114 and 115: Tactile12000 2.0Company: Tactile Pi
- Page 116 and 117: tude of different streaming servers
- Page 118 and 119: host, and its ping time (how quickl
- Page 120 and 121: Stuff: ViaVoice Millennium EditionA
- Page 122 and 123: FAQFrequently Asked QuestionsFAQWha
- Page 124 and 125: • Try turning Font Smoothing on a
- Page 126 and 127: een stewing in the back of your min
- Page 128 and 129: Trivia Challenge 6.04—Potpourri P
- Page 130: Apple CoresCan you guess why there
off. Pressing F1 for help is not implemented, nor is pressing the Help key on an extendedkeyboard. If you access help, you will discover references to features that are not available inthe Mac implementation. It warns that rotating the scan is not available either, although inreality there is a button which does that! I don’t want to dwell too much on these points andcountless similar ones, as it distracts from my main criticism, which is that the software failsto do its real job adequately.I tried it out with a full letter-sized scan at 300 dpi (you can also scan up to 1200 dpi, orbeyond that for those who are impressed by interpolated resolution figures). The TWAINdriver is needed for all scans and is reasonably fast, but using PageManager to transfer theimage to Photoshop took 91 seconds (25.6 MB file size). The same image acquired directlyfrom Photoshop via the TWAIN driver took 49 seconds. These differences are even morestriking at higher resolutions. PageManager seems to spend ages slowly loading and savingthe image file. I started to repeat the test at 1200 dpi, but abandoned it as it was painfullyslow.ATPM <strong>6.04</strong> ← 83 → Stuff: Epson Perfection 1200 Photo
Change language