Visioneer OneTouch 8900 USB Scanner

Dont Waste your time or money that you think your saving, spend a little more on quality like an Epson. The age old saying You get what you pay for applies double here. The worst drivers/Quality Etc. You cant unplug it (USB) without it wanting to reinstall the drivers again,

This scanner is a few models up from the best scanner I ever had. Easy to use, good quality, and long lasting thus far. Even if it breaks in a year, dont be silly... 35 bucks? Throw it out and get the latest model. Keep the USB cable and sell it for 5 bucks... to anyone who has recently bought a USB Printer... they almost never come with the cable. hahah.. Whatver, I have the Visioneer 8100 and its almost exactly the same as this one and it rocks. PEACE OUT.

I bought it from a reseller and was easy to install and worked great for about 6 months and one day for no apparent reason I started getting The scanner optical module is locked error. Since then I have tried reinstalling drivers as well as software with no results. People I have read recommeding reisntalling OS. But to me if you have to reinstall the OS to make a scanner work, the piece is not worth having. I will just look for another scanner.

I bought this refurbished and its a good thing too because I missed the locking problem a lot of people have been mentioning. The scanner worked decently in the beginning when I was using it in Windows 98, sometimes Id have to fight with it to get it to work right, but it usually did. Then when I upgraded to XP Pro SP2, it installed fairly easy. But intermittantly, and with increasing frequency, their XP driver crashes (usually in mid-scan), and I constantly have to reinstall the driver to keep working on my scans. The scans I have made with this were all beautiful, and when its working, its a pleasure to use. But Visioneer writes really crappy drivers. Theres no way their XP driver got a real Designed for XP rating from Windows Hardware Quality Labs, no designed-for-xp software would work so poorly and place all the blame on SP2. I have been wondering whether to go to the hassle to dual-boot to Windows 98 whenever I want to use the scanner, or to buy a new scanner. I think Im going to buy a different brand, and you probably should too.

For about $100, I got the Visioneer One Touch 8900 USB flatbed scanner, have used it on my older computer for many years running, and have been satisfied with its performance. My operating system is Windows ME (yup, there are a few of us still around) and Ive utilized the PaperPort Twain software bundled with the scanner. While it takes some getting used to and you may have to repeat the scan several times, by then you know what youre doing without making further mistakes and the results obtained are acceptable most of the time and occasionally downright excellent. A high quality print obtained with film technology is usually not going to yield anywhere near the same result when transferred to digital information because some degradation is unavoidable, but if you up the resolution from the preset level, adjust exposure and color balance as needed, sharpen with restraint, then crop and size carefully, you can do pretty well. In the darkroom, particularly the color darkroom, youll put far more effort into making a high quality enlargement and the results obtained will be eminently superior in several ways, but thats to be expected. In the last few months, I used this unit to scan a number of high quality photographs, several of which were decades old, in order to embed them in the text of desktop published books. In so doing, I achieved pretty darn good results, considering the limitations of the equipment. Im now looking for a dedicated film scanner to scan medium format and 35mm color negs directly, hopefully giving me darkroom quality results, but nonetheless, this workhorse economy flatbed scanner has more than paid for itself over the last several years and I therefore must give it an enthusiastic thumbs up. Ill agree with the critics who point out that Visioneers support leaves much to be desired because I tried to contact them regarding a software upgrade (for scanning film -- obviously bundled with the 8920) and couldnt get anywhere at all, but a bad attitude in the computer world combined with lackluster or nonexistent support is hardly unique to Visioneer.

One star is too good for this product.. ive had a visioneer 8700 USB about a year.. it just died..the scanner keeps telling me to unlock the scan head.. i physically removed the lock.. despite restarting the pc, reinstalling etc etc.. the fault persists.. The online help is useless, there are no specific references to the fault though i have found a large number of references ( but no solutions to it) on the web.. I cant reccomend the scanner.. there are equal and better second hand scanners on the market.. that dont suffer this fault. I cant recommend the visioneer online support.. i still have a dead scanner.. I cant really think of anything good to say about visioneer.. i wish i had never wasted money on it...

I have the 8920 which is the same scanner with a slide scanner...it is entirely possible that they have COMPLETELY different hardware under the hood, but I doubt it. No problems...but one curious issue. The glass lid is not designed for being pushed on, and the holders (on the left side as you look at it) can come loose. If they do, or if you press down on the glass...like if you are scanning a book...that can stop the scan head, and of course the computer will assume the lock is still on. This has happened to me a couple of times. If you shake it (gently) you will hear the holders (little plastic pieces) on the bottom. Yes it is a silly and sloppy design, HOWEVER, put them back in place and press on...mine didnt drop loose until after 2.5 years of use.

I had demoed Visioneer scanners for 3 years at a computer store and was always impressed with the speed, quality and price of them. I happily bought my own Visioneer 8900 as I liked the quick access buttons, the quality, and the price. The installation was quick and simple and I was scanning right away. Did about 5 high quality scans and everything was great. I hadnt used the scanner for a couple of months (it was off) so I fired it up again and I got these ugly green lines all throughout the scan. I rebooted and tried again and the same thing happened over and over. Then it would lock up on me saying the scanner lock was locked but I checked and it was not locked. Downloaded the latest drivers, installed them, and tried again. It still has those ugly lines. (I use Windows XP Pro) I dont know why after only a couple of months it died on me but I am disappointed in Visioneer. I cant recommend this scanner based on my experience with it but with only two reviews I would research it more.

I no longer have this scanner as I donated it to the church for their use - but when I did have it I used it quite often and had good results, especially for oversized items that could not be scanned by other means.

I dont know what the heck everyone else is complaining about. Ive had this scanner for more than two years and the only problem Ive had is that I now have to jiggle the cord to get the power supply to stay on. Thats probably because Ive used the thing so darn much. Ive scanned hundreds of pictures that came out extremely crisp and sharp and have used the TextBridge (OCR) software to scan chapters of books into Word. The software that comes with this Visioneer 8900 is definitely not intuitive but thats okay with me because I use Corel to do all my photo editing. All it takes is a little patience the first time to learn how to adjust the scanning quality and color. After that, it should be a breeze. One the downside - this scanner first came out three years ago so its a bit bulky and there are slimmer, sleeker models now available. But, if you can purchase one used for about $30-$40, its definitely worth it.