Labs

The Microtek ScanMaker 5900 is another product that put in an appearance in our last scanners Labs. Our first impression of it were good, as it has a small but useful light box built into its lid, which also houses its built-in transparency scanner. Its transparency capability is one of this unit main selling points: covering everything from 35mm slides up to 4in x 5in film, it challenges some of the more expensive products on test with the range of media it supports. Also unique to the ScanMaker 5900 is good printed documentation for both the hardware and the software - something that's pretty hit and miss with the other products on test here. The ScanMaker 5900 also boasts an impressive resolution of 2400ppi x 4800ppi.

However, when we actually got down to using the unit we were immediately

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disappointed: the latest version of its ScanWizard software would only operate in Mac OS X 10.2 and refused all our efforts to get things running under OS X 10.3.

Despite this, once the device is up and running the software provides a good range of professional options and, if these are surplus to requirements, there's a straightforward Standard mode as well. A separate configuration application allows you to set up its seven quick-launch buttons. While some are preconfigured for particular tasks, these can be changed to suit your particular needs.

Unfortunately, the ScanMaker's test results didn't quite live up to its impressive feature set. Colour recognition on our IT8 target matched the rest of the field with cyan but fell down with magenta and yellow. Middle-of-the-road tonal recognition and resolution performance also let down this scanner. Overall, the results tended to be dull and slightly washed out. ScanWizard, in common with all the other scanning software we looked at, featured tools to easily correct deficiencies of the kind we were experiencing, but the ScanMaker 5900's scans needed significantly more tweaking than those from the other scanners.

If you're on a budget and want the range of transparency options offered by the Microtek ScanMaker 5900, then it may be worth considering. If not, there are better products here for less money.