Early Adopters Pick: October 2003. One of the fastest flatbed scanners available, the CanoScan 3200F delivers impressive 1,200 x 2,400 dpi scans in 48-bit color, and it corrects scratches and other aging effects.

A film adapter lets you scan negatives and transparencies. The scanner also boasts sleek lines and a gloss-finish lid with a textured surround to prevent finger marking. The CanoScan 3200F can scan an A4 page in just 17 seconds (at 600 dpi, using Windows XP with USB 2.0 and a Pentium 4, 1.7 GHz processor and 256 MB RAM), making it twice as fast as its predecessor, the CanoScan 3000F.

A super-fast USB 2.0 Hi-Speed connection transfers image data from scanner to computer up to four times faster than standard USB connections, while an ASIC controller chip takes advantage of increased memory to process large data files in record time. The scanner engine is both faster and more powerful than those in previous models.

The scanner's Fast Multi-Photo mode creates separate de-skewed files from a single-pass scan of multiple photographs, while Canon's QARE Level 2 technology automatically removes dust and scratches from scans of reflective originals; it also corrects for color fading and graininess, saving you hours of manual retouching.

Four customizable "EZ" buttons can be individually configured to perform commonly used functions. These can include scanning straight to a PDF file, scanning directly to a printer (copying), and scanning automatically to a ready-to-go e-mail attachment. Since not everything can be scanned in single-sheet form, the 3200F's special Z-lid accommodates very thick items and applies equal pressure across the entire document, ensuring great quality when scanning from books, magazines, and manuals.

The CanoScan 3200F comes with a host of powerful applications: Ulead DVD Slide Theatre creates DVD playable slide shows and writes these to CD-R. It's ideal for converting photo or transparency sets into television viewable slide shows. ArcSoft PhotoStudio 5.5 is an image-editing program that handles color adjustment, labelling, and album storage and retrieval. OmniPage SE 2.0 is a powerful Optical Character Recognition application that allows scanned text to be converted into recognisable text characters/data.

What's in the Box
Scanner, USB cable, AC adapter and cord, setup poster, user's manual, CD-ROM