Umax AstraSlim

Author: Ian Cunningham
Published on: 24-06-2002
Views: 54910


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Introduction

A brief introduction to the Umax AstraSlim

Umax have designed what can arguably be one of the thinnest scanners on the market today, only 34mm thick! What is surprising about this scanner is that it is one of the cheapest A4 scanners available, and it is totally USB powered - which is a very uncommon occurrence.

Scanner Dimensions

The scanner weights in at 2.3kg making it an ultra-portable solution, as well as having a trendy colour scheme of a silver/grey base and a deep blue lid. The reason the scanner is so compact and low powered is because it uses a CIS imaging scanner (Contact Image Sensors). This method of scanning uses an array of sensors located very close to the document surface, and feeds the image straight to the PC for processing, this eliminates the need for the lens, mirrors and CCD chip. The disadvantage of this process is that resolution, clarity and colour fidelity will all be sacrificed.The build quality of the AstraSlim is as you would expect from a reputable company, very good. The scanner comes with a 2 year warranty, as is standard with all Umax scanners.

Specifications

Minimum Requirements / Specification for the Umax AstraSlim

• Optical Resolution : 600x1200dpi
• Interpolated Resolution : 3600x3600dpi
• Colour Depth : 48 Bit
• Greyscale Depth : 12Bit
• Maximum Scan Area : 216x297mm
• Interface : USB
• Weight : 2.3kg
• Power : 2.5W

This scanner was testing on a PC (Duron 750, 128 MB RAM and Windows XP) and a Laptop (P266MMX, 64 MB Ram, Windows XP) and it installed and functioned perfectly in both cases.

I strongly recommend having at least 64 MB RAM and 500 MB free disk space (more memory would help a lot!), as image processing can cause huge temporary files, as well as consuming all available memory. Even with 128 Megs of RAM my system will crawl when manipulating images, especially when multiple images are open.