HIT: TECH: Scanners and Digital Cameras

[Kathleen Olsen <KatieDid12@AOL.COM>]

Dear LM_NET,

Here are all the responses to my request for information on Scanners and
Digital Cameras (finally!).  I hope they help you!
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We are very happy with our Apple ColorOne scanner and Ofoto software. Very
easy for our kids to use.
Also, we use the QuickTake 100 for the Mac and find it easy to use, also.
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If you are using MACs we really like the Mac scanner from Apple and the
QuickTake150 from Apple in our building. Both elementary students could
easily use.

I just attended a workshop for HTML Writing Home Pages and the discussion
came about the best scanners. Our instructor said the you can forget
about all those cool digital cameras and just use a camcorder with an AV mac.
I believe that he is right because I have been scanning since 1988 using
a variety of discarded video cameras and now a neat Ken-A-Vision, Video-Flex
camera (looks like a desk lamp) video camera to scan pictures. I was using
"FrameGrabber" software and an Amiga 2000HD Computer but the AV MAC should
work as well by now and I am going to try it out today or tomorrow on
another teacher's computer providing she has the right software to make it
happen.
----------------------
I did not see your original letter as we have sporadic phone service here
in the Phillipines. We run Intel based labs of 386 and 486 computers
grades K-12.

We used to have hand scanners but we moved to Full color (64 bit) flatbed
scanners.  Hewlett Packard makes very reliable ones at around $600.  Our
first is five years old and still running without repair. Currently we
have a no-name brand twain compatable and I am very impressed.  With
limited budgets we have a three pass color one.  The OCR software is good
and the resolution is excellent.  The cheaper ones do take longer to
process 64 bit color but since we have only 256 color video cards (1MB)
we are not affected by this.  Large graphics do use a lot of memory when
scanning in three passes, and we found a minimum of 8MB memory was
essential to prevent software crashes.  If you save with TIF compression
(software handles it) 8MB of memory is fine.

Our Digital camera is a Logitech Photoman.  It is rechargeable and sits
plugged into it's recharger on the desk.  It holds 36 pictures of super
vga quality before it needs to be dowmloaded into a computer via a very
simple Windows point and click program where you can choose the pictures
to save and clear the rest.  It looks like a large Fisher Price toy but
its point and click simplicity is perfect for all grades from K-12. It has
a limited battery and can not go a weekend without recharging.  If the
charge is lost, so are all the pictures, of course. P.S. A video
camera-grabber
will not replace this for several years because this is simple enough for the
youngest child to use without the help of an adult!

If all you need is a scanner to scan pictures and graphs, take a look at
the EasyPhoto reader picture scanner. It is sold by Circuit City ($250)
and it is VERY easy to install and use. (if you can plug in a printer in
the back of the computer, you can install this yourself!)
There is a Web page that explains all about it. Unfortunately, I don't have
the URL with me right now, but if you point your AOL browser to my
homepage:
http://www.afn.org/~coral/
you only need to look at the bottom of the page to find a link to the
Photoreader homepage.
This page:
http://www.sbac.edu/~shell/yearbook.html
has examples of pictures scanned with the photoreader.

It is available in both Mac and IBM versions.

---------------------
        I wrote yesterday in answer to your query on LM_NET
about scanners and digital cameras.  The camera I wrote about
then was the QuickCam, $99 in black & white and $149 for
color.  I have not seen the color camera.
        The reason I am writing again today is to tell you that
there is an article on digital cameras in the Dec. 1995
Multimedia World.  5 cameras are profiled, one of them for the
Apple.  The prices range from $800 to $1099.  These are
considerably more than the QuickCam, but also are probably
better cameras.
-----------------
Here is the URL for the Photoreader Web page (picture scanner):
http://www.stormsoft.com/storm/Pages/EasyPhotoMain.html
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We have an Apple Quicktake digital camera with battery booster and case.  It
is extremely easy to use and takes good pictures.  We download them to a
floppy diskette and show them on our Windows computer.  We also have a
Hewlett Packard color scanner.  While the QuickTake camera could easily be
used by K-4'er's I can't see the scanner being used by anyone other than the
teacher.