Today is our intern Michael Gil’s last day. He’s done a great job helping out the business staff here at the Register. Here is his last post for the Gadgetress:
Epson, based in Long Beach, just announced a new consumer scanner, the Perfection V300 Photo. This scanner boasts a variety of features and a seemingly low price tag of $99. I wondered just how low that price really is so I did some research and found out.
Among the Perfection V300’s numerous features are 4800 x 9600 dpi, one touch photo restoration, built in transparency unit for 35mm film and slides, and a low energy LED light source which has no warmup time.
But for only $59.99, Canon, which has a research and development office in Irvine, offers the CanoScan LiDE100. This scanner also offers built in photo restoration and low power consumption. While it only has 2400 x 4800 dpi, provided software can enhance images to 19200 x 19200 dpi.
Epson offers an older Perfection scanner for $89.99, the Perfection V200 photo. Save ten dollars and you can still restore photos and scan film and slides. This scanner has only 4800 dpi compared to the 4800 x 9600 dpi of the V300. It is also missing the low energy light source.
Another option consumers may want to pursue is the HP Photosmart C4280 All-in-One Printer/Copier/Scanner. At $99.99 it costs the same as the V300 but in addition to scanning, it also prints and copies. The trade off is that the All-in-One offers only 1200 dpi (that can be enhanced to 19200 dpi) and it lacks the photo restoration, transparency unit and low energy light source of the new Epson printer.
All these printers are compatible with Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows 2000 and Macintosh OS X 10.3.9 or higher so no matter what computer you have, the scanner choice is yours.
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Here's a list of TV/mobile companies helping consumers one tweet at a time. 
