Epson Perfection 1260 Photo Scanner

I got this as part of a special offer with my Mac G4. I have been using scanners for almost 20 years, and this is *the worst* I have ever had the misfortune to be stuck with. There is no off button; the only way to shut it off (and prevent its big green light from illuminating the room) is to unplug it; if it has one-touch copying, I have never succeeded in getting it to work; the software is terrible -- at least fifty per cent of the time it stops making copies for no apparent reason; I use Adobe Photoshops twain acquire function to avoid having to use the software which comes with this thing, but -- again -- half the time it does not work; it is not working now although it worked fine two days ago with the same connection and the same software. DO NOT waste any time or money on this thing. Even if you receive it for free, dont bother with it -- it will waste so much of your time that you may just grab it and throw it against a wall or something else valuable. I give it one star because it *does* work every once in a while. That is the only good thing I have to say about this piece of junk.

This is my first scanner but it has been a pleasure. It has never caused any trouble and has always done what I asked. Sometimes I struggle to get the 35mm adapter to work (the optional attachment) but other than that, this scanner has proved to be a very good purchase.

When my HP Scanjet 3200C refused to work with Windows XP on my new computer, I decided to try the Epson Perfection 1260. The installing the scanner drivers were extremely easy. I didnt bother with the additional software since I have Photoshop 7. After quickly getting the scanner up and running, I noticed problems. When pictures or color documents were scanned, they were usually a bit blurry. Sometimes they had a red line going through them, however, I didnt think much of it. I pretty much used the scanner for line art. That however should have been a warning sign as the quality of photos, magazine articles and covers I scanned seemed to get progressively worse. To make them look clear, I often had to clean up the lines in Photoshop. Then came the final straw, when trying to scan a color drawing, the scan came out way too dim. Instead of a clear picture (or even a slightly blurred one) all I got was grayish fuzz. When I tried to scan a DVD cover as a test, all I got a lot of red and no color. All of this, and Ive only had it for a few months, moderately using it from time to time. All in all, Id say my money was wasted. So far Id say if youre looking for something easy to install and use, that also scans clean line art, then go for it. For anything and everything else, the low price isnt worth it.

One Saturday morning my old scanner bit the dust. I needed a scanner that weekend, so some research, store visits and reading were required. I finally narrowed my choice to this model and a Canon that didnt do photo negatives. The rebate on this model swayed me along with the capability (although will I use it?) of doing negatives. Well, lets sum it up by saying that after 10 frustrating days, I took it back and got the Canon. Functionally, the 1260 worked fine...quiet and quick. But the software was [horrible]. The Epson Control Panel had text that showed up in different fonts if it showed up at all (I had to constantly open the help file to see what a panel should look like and to figure out what the buttons and text boxes should say). Also, although some functions worked fine, I was unable to save a scanned file as a TIF or BMP and have it import with any quality into PageMaker. My old ...scanner did this just fine at 200 dpi for the size I needed. Anyway, I contacted the help sites for the scanner and a separate site for the software (even though its got Canons name all over it, they dont support it), and after 9 days had heard nothing from either of them. Think twice before you purchase this dog. In fact with that type of customer service, maybe Canon isnt a good choice at all.

I am a computer and printer tech for a living so I get to use a lot of products! Recently I needed a scanner so I got the Epson 1260 after reading all the bad reviews about HP Scanners. I have always liked HP products and I also had an Epson printer was not so good, so I was a little leery about going with Epson. I had NO problems setting it up and found all the functions to work properly, even the copy function worked with my HP LaserJet! Also the OCR software that Epson provided seemed to work great in my tests. Overall I am impressed with this scanner and for the price I think the quality would be hard to beat.

Well ive read the reviews here and i here what youre saying. I agree its not the fastest on the bloc nor is it absolute satate of the art, and the Software could have been better, but it does do everything its supposed to do , and the features are pretty good espically the ability to scan a mix of images on the glass and put them in individual files. May i say that most of the negative comments here relate to setting up and installing the scanner correctly, all those wierd colours and stripes are most often caused by wrong proceedures and plugging & unplugging usb hardware , switching off everything & restarting the Computer will in most cases get things on an even keel. The Twain software in the Manual mode works better in some applications than others, Ulead PhotoImpact did a good job as did Paint Shop Pro also,and even Arcsoft Impression which is on the installation CD .Photoshop CS2 worked though in my opinion not as well as i would have expected. Also how many people have downloaded the latest Twain driver from Epson, its easy to find and download. The other bit of info,this is one of the few Scanners that will work in a Linux Operating system (Debian based distros in particular) but you have to download & install Sane to get it working.A few last tips try installing the software first,then close down the PC & connect the Scanner ,then start the PC, chances are it will be fine. Make sure the Scanner is powered up first then switch on your PC, not the other way round,even though XP is plug & play compliant it works better with the first option ,Messages like Scanner could not be found or Scanner could not be initalised is because Windows is not seeing it you can check this by right clicking on EPSON in C Drive and see if Properties are available,in some cases EPSON may not even be there at all,in which case you know that the PC hasnt found it!, Have a second look at this Scanner and you may be happy yet. Good Luck.

I have had this scanner for about three years - use it moderately, but a lot at the moment. It has always done what is said it would, never any hang ups or errors and the Smart Panel equally seems to do what it says. Apart from the long warmup time, not a bad buy (although not obsolete) Those with problems may well have configuration difficulties or whatever.

The quality of the picture is great. Unfortunately, the people that wrote the software for this scanner had created a great deal of glitches; the interaction (if you get any) between the software and the scanner is user unfriendly.

Please do yourself a favor and dont purchase this scanner. It is by far the WORST scanner Ive ever owned. I think my scsi scanner from the early 90s was better, at least it worked. Epson also is notorius for providing terrible support for their products and as far as I can tell no longer provides an updated driver for the 1260 model on their site. You need the full driver to scan slides.

I could not install this scanner in my new computer. There were problems with the software with windows XP. The bundeled photo editing software that came with it was the only part that did install; did not need it as I have much better ones now. The drivers and the smart scan function would not install. After many tries and several frustrating days, I returned it to the place I bought it on advice from some other experts in computer science.I cannot recommend this to anyone as one other person rated here, It is a dog. I then bought an HP unit that installed easily with no problems and it works great. My advice is to spend a few extra bucks and avoid the hours of frustration that I had.