Buying a scanner

[blackeye]

Im looking at buying a scanner and I would like to keep it under $150. (over $150 is ok because I would rather buy a quality scanner and not some POS that I will end up breaking after a while, but under $150 is prefered unless the $180 one is that much better) I was just wondering if you guys would be able to help.

One option would be this scanner.
Link
It is 2400 DPI and 48 bit Colour.
It is $150

Another option would be this scanner.
Link
It is 2400 DPI and 48 Bit Colour.
It is $100

Yet another Option.
Link
This is 4800 DPI and 48 bit Colour.
It is howevor $180

Both of the cannon Scanners say that you can achieve a 9600 DPI if it is software enhanced. Howevor I dont realy understand what they mean buy this. If someone can explain this it would be helpful.

I also understand that the higher the DPI the better but is 4800 DPI worth the money? I know when I am scanning my drawings into photoshop at school the maximum we can use is 300DPI and to be honest it looks fine to me. But that may be because there is not colour and it is a pencil drawing with just lines.

I like the look of the HP one, I dont wont some eye sore that I will hide under the desk and be impossible to get at. The cannon one doest look that bad either.

Mainly I am going to be using this scanner for Drawings, taking all my old photos that arent digital and saving them as tiffs for cd's and backup, documents, scanning reference pictures (modelling) and some other day to day things.

Oh and if It helps when I scan a photo I always save the original as a TIFF and then if I need a JPEG i make a copy of the TIFF and save it as a JPEG in photoshop.

 

[StardogChampion]

What does "software-enhanced" resolution mean?
The scanner actually scans the image at 300 dpi and then the scanner's device driver provides the option of mathematically decreasing or increasing the number of dots per inch that are stored for that image. You also see enhanced resolution stated as "interpolated" resolution.

Got that from a website.

Interpolated:
1. Estimate the value of
2. Insert words into texts, often falsifying it thereby

I'm told that about 300dpi too, I'm sure I was told that that's the standard for printing, but maybe that's just for A4/A3. I guess I was told that about printing though, not scanning.

 

[blackeye]

Does all the scanner scan in at 300 DPI then and just automatically enhance it to 2400 DPI? Or do the cannon scanners scan in at 2400 DPI and then enhance it to 9600 DPI?

 

[Stonecat]

You don't need to spend alot on a scanner to get good results. I just got the cannon LiDE30 on boxing day for $60 (CDN at Staples) and it is great. I basically use it for home office stuff and scan at resolutions anywhere from 300dpi-600dpi with no real need to go higher. My old scanner was a cheap Umax, also bought on boxing day about 5 years ago for $40. It worked awesome all this time, just using the plug and play features in MS Office (meaning the old Umax software wouldn't work in XP) and the only reason I bought a new one was to save desk space.