UMAX 1220P scanner 

Jan. 18/99

On Dec. 26/98 I bought myself an inexpensive UMAX 1220P (parallel port) scanner for the occasional scan from a photo for video & other misc. stuff (I only have occasional professional need for a scanner). This one had recently come down to $175. Canadian less a 5% boxing day special, less a $45. ($30 US) manufacturers mail in rebate which brought the total cost to $121. Canadian plus tax. By the way, the rebate has been extended until Feb 28/99. Scanners have come down in price so much recently that I didn't know what to expect, especially at this low price. Well, I was quite disappointed & wished I had tried a different brand at a higher price. The time I spent sorting through the problems & coming up with workarounds was not worth the money I saved by buying this particular inexpensive scanner. A consumer would probably be frustrated too, but would likely consider the picture quality worth the money spent. If you're planning on buying any scanner, read my experiences below & it might save you some grief. By the way, I will be returning the UMAX 1220P scanner & I have subsequently bought a Canon CanoScan FB 620P scanner for just a slight increase in cost & it gives a much crisper scan & doesn't have most of the UMAX problems mentioned below.

1/ PRINTER DOESN'T WORK: The first problem I noticed was that my HP Deskjet 500 printer doesn't work when looped through the scanner. I learned from the store that sold me the scanner & from several industry professionals, that disabled printers from parallel port scanners is a very common problem (some models will work & others may not). One store said the return rate is 6 times higher for scanners than any other product. Funny that UMAX doesn't mention this possible printer problem on their web site or any workaround or any list of compatible printers! Canon mentions it in their documentation. The only suggested workarounds were to buy the more expensive SCSI version (1220S) which I didn't want to do because of an additional 7 foot cable run on my SCSI chain, or to buy a card to give me a second parallel port, which I couldn't do because all my motherboard slots are full. For the test period, I put the scanner & printer on a parallel port passive switcher box so only one or the other would work at any given time (not a very elegant solution).

2/ MANUFACTURING DEFECTS, SLOPPINESS & TECHNICAL SUPPORT: Next I noticed that there was a major vertical defect in the scans about 1/4 way from the right that looks like a fold in a book. I got no help on this problem from the IBM store in Whiteoaks Mall where I bought the scanner (they didn't even acknowledge my email) & technical support at UMAX said "Your problem is too complicated to trouble shoot through email, so you will need to give us a call." They didn't mention what their phone number is but they do have a toll free service number (1800 468-8629) though they do not publish it on their web site (which by the way is a very slow site) or in the literature that comes with the scanner. The 1800 number is usually busy & when you finally do get through, it only allows you to wait on hold for a maximum of 14 minutes at which time it cuts you off. Presumably the long distance number for technical support (510 651-8883), allows you the privilege of waiting on hold indefinitely. To date I have still not been able to reach a person in UMAX technical support. I took the scanner apart & found that a thin hair size piece of plastic from the injection molding was lodged between the lens & mirror. Click here to see a sample of the image defect. Apparently they don't test these things before they leave the factory in Taiwan. I also noticed that the underside of the scan glass had finger prints & a hazy film of dirt on it (even though the unit is sealed to outside air). Apparently the monkeys who assemble these things don't bother to clean the scan glass on the underside. Interestingly, I noticed that PC Magazine found the same thing when they were evaluating this series of scanners. Here is what PC Magazine said "Unfortunately, we noticed considerable dirt, debris, and even tiny scratches on the underside of the scanbed, which showed up as spots on our images." "Also, we found that the 1220U's innards were even dirtier than those of the 1200S". I guess these scanners are just thrown together for a low price point.

3/ SOFT FOCUS OPTICS: I had a photo scanned on a friends old HP Scanjet 3C scanner at 200 DPI (not too demanding), so I scanned the same photo on the UMAX 1220P & noticed significantly softer results. Even when I scanned this photo at 600 DPI on the UMAX & scaled in down to 200 DPI in PhotoShop, the results still weren't nearly as good. I can only speculate that the lens or other parts of the optics in the UMAX 1220P scanner are of inferior quality. I've also included a comparison scan from the new CanScan FB 620P. Click here  to see a picture comparison between these three scanners.

4/ LONG SCAN TIMES: Scanning an 8.5" X 11.7" original at 300 DPI took 2:25 minutes regardless of whether I set the computer motherboard parallel port for Standard, ECP, EPP or any other position. I don't know if that's normal or too long for a parallel port scanner, but it was similar to the Canon scanner. The UMAX web site says that scan should be done in 49 seconds, so we have quite a discrepancy here. It wouldn't be the first time UMAX deceived (read on). I later came across a magazine article review where they got slightly longer scan times than I did at the same size & resolution.

5/ UMAX CONVICTED FOR FALSE ADVERTISING: The UMAX 1220 series scanner is advertised as being a 36 bit scanner (12 bits per channel) but on Dec. 8/98 the U.S. District Court Ruled that UMAX Engaged in False Product Claims. Apparently, this scanner is really a 30 bit scanner & it does software interpolation to try & emulate 36 bits which is not an industry standard way of achieving 36 bits & therefore UMAX is attempting to deceive it's customers. Now I could care less about 36 bits because it's overkill for my application (which typically uses 24 bit files) & even 30 bits is really good. However, I am concerned that if UMAX has lied in this area, perhaps they are lying in other areas too (like scan times). Despite a Dec. 8/98 court ruling stating that UMAX & it's resellers must cease using the term ``36-bit'' to advertise, I noticed that as of this writing (Jan. 18/99) UMAX was still advertising this series of scanners on it's web site as being 36 bit, see http://www.umax.com/scanners/standard/product.cfm?model=Astra+1220P  This kind of disregard for the law & for industry standards, suggests to me that UMAX is a company worth ignoring when shopping for a scanner.

6/ NEW SCANNING SOFTWARE TAKES A STEP BACKWARDS: Although I had just bought this scanner & it was not from old stock, I knew that sometimes hardware ships with older versions of software so I checked the UMAX web site to see if I could upgrade the 2.43 version of VistaScan. Sure enough there was a newer 3.1 version which I downloaded & installed over top the old version. Unfortunately it did not uninstall or copy over unneeded files from the older version (about 40 megs including utility applications) & just bloated up the space wasted in my hard drive with about 23.4 megs more of files (you should uninstall the old version before installing new version). I also found that the UMAX software placed a large amount of files in my operating system directory (usually the C partition) even though I directed it to install the software in another partition. I found that the newer version of VistaScan software had dropped several features that were in the former version (probably to make it more user friendly for the home consumer market) & there was only one new feature (an RGB recolor balance control that was wrongly labeled as a hue/saturation adjustment) that didn't work very well anyway & was too sensitive to be useful (also couldn't save settings). Here are the features that I noticed were dropped:

A/ No more nudge control to fine tune the slider controls.

B/ No more eye dropper to manually set exposure to lightest & darkest areas.

C/ No individual RGB gamma curve controls & no more ability to save the main gamma control.

D/ No more ability to SAVE over default settings if you come up with your own preferred settings.

E/ No more ability to SAVE AS for separate job settings.

F/ No more information window that tells you position & RGB levels as you cursor over preview.

7/ NO UNINSTALL: This scanner also comes with Presto's Pagemanager 2.30 & ImageFolio LE 4.1.0 for picture manipulation after the scan, as well as Omnipage LE 5.1 character recognition software from Caere (25 uses before you have to register it). Unfortunately none of these 3 programs come with an uninstall routine & Windows NT add/remove programs wouldn't uninstall them either. So if you installed these programs & want to uninstall them, you must blow away the directory they are in, knowing full well that there are still lots of files left in your systems directory that you can't uninstall. This is clear evidence of poor planning & leaves your hard drive bloated with unnecessary files. I have a real problem with programs that don't come with an uninstaller. Only the VistaScan software had an uninstall. By the way, I have now tried several times unsuccessfully to reach UMAX technical support by phone & email for over 3 weeks to see if they know another way to uninstall these programs.

8/ CRASHING: I also observed that with 2.43 version of VistaScan software that came with the scanner, if I scanned a page at 600 DPI (the maximum optical resolution) which would take more available ram than I actually had left (I have 96 meg in this system), rather than start to use virtual ram, it simply locked up Windows NT 4.0 (with service pack 4). I couldn't end the task or even gracefully close down NT, but had to do a hard reset. Scanning a full page (8.5" X 11.7") at 300 DPI didn't cause this problem because there was enough real ram. The newer 3.1 version of VistaScan that I downloaded did not crash NT, but gave me a message which said "Not enough virtual memory. Please resize your screen". The VistaScan program doesn't even bother to try & access virtual memory. It only accesses real ram memory.

9/ WHITE & BLACK BALANCE ARE OFF: Next I noticed that the black & white balance is noticeably off (although a consumer user would probably not have noticed). Items that should have been uncolored black, weren't even close in level (i.e. R27, G15, B36). Those of you in the video industry will know that white & black balances are designed to adjust for any nonlinearities in the RGB channels at the dark end & the brightest end so that white, black & any shade of gray in between do not take on a slight hue (this also helps color accuracy). There did not appear to be any ability to adjust for this in version 2.43 VistaScan software that came with the scanner, other than perhaps extensive customizing of the individual RGB channels in the gamma curve area. That feature (& several others) were deleted in the new & "improved"  3.1 version I downloaded from the UMAX web site. Click here to see a stepped gray scale comparison of white & black balances between the UMAX & Canon scanners.

By Doug Hembruff.
Last updated Feb. 20/99