Canon CanoScan 4400F Color Image Scanner (1306B002) Reviews

• CanoScan 4400F vs. 8600F

  
  By A7GWMKO4RE541 on 2006-09-24
  Its difficult to find comparison specs between some of the new CanoScans. After looking at both the 4400F and 8600F, besides the 8600F's ability to scan medium-format negatives and being bundled with a lite version of Photoshop, the 8600 is also simply a more heavy duty machine.
  
  A significant difference is the lid. The 8600 has metal hinges and adjusts vertically on metal supports. It will also stay open through 90 deg of motion. The 4400 has a plastic hinge. To accomodate books or thick materials, it has a "break-away" articulating hinge-- when you place something of thickness like a book on the flatbed the lid hinge snaps open to accomodate the item. The 4400 hinge will not stay open on its own.
  
  Both lids are rather heavy and solid (the 8600's more so) which is nice if you scan books or things that need to lie flat. But since the 4400's hinge is all plastic and has a small piece of plastic that locks the articulating or adjusting part of the hinge, it does not really seem to lend itself to lots of book scans. It seems like this latch or lock will eventually break; as is, it sounds like its breaking each time it snaps open to accomodate a book. (Since I make a lot of book scans I decided that the 8600 was better for this, because of its lid's adjustment and hinge construction and because of its heavy lid, despite the extra money. If I was typically scanning from photocopies or thin origins, the 4400 would have been fine.) A last thing about the lid construction: the 8600 also has a heavy-duty cable to power the light in the lid, while the 4400 provides power to the lid by a thin tape cable that is visible in the hinge and seems somewhat vulnerable to heavy use.
  
  Otherwise these scanners seem to have the same technology, with the except of FARE (film automatic retouching and enhancement) scratch and dust reduction filter on the 8600. The CanoScan Toolbox software works well. Both have programmable buttons which allow for semi-automated scanning. The multiple-page PDF scanning is great. (This was one of the main reasons that I bought one of these scanners.)
  
  As to speed, although the scans are fast when they get going, it takes some time for the scan to actually get going. (How this compares to other scanners I can't say.)
  
  A last feature is that the 8600 has an on/off switch, which the 4400 does not.
  
  All in all, although the 8600 is billed as a scanner for photography professionals, it has some features that make it attractive to anyone who does a lot of scanning.
  
  

• Excellent Bang for the Buck

  
  By A3Q1FVG9D6VFPK on 2006-12-25
  My best friend bought me this scanner for Christmas (at my request). I picked this particular model because of the low price, high resolution, and it being a flatbed scanner that can also handle negatives.
  
  I've been using it for several days now and I have to say, I LOVE this scanner! It has to be the quietest scanner I've ever seen. I was on the phone with my mom while scanning and she never heard it. It is also fast. At the highest resolution, previewing for negative scanning takes maybe 20 seconds. The actual scan takes less than two minutes. The quality of the scans is awesome, regardless of whether you are doing flatbed scanning, color negatives, or black and white negatives (true black & white at that).
  
  Software wise, the TWAIN driver is very very nice with tons of options. It works perfectly on my XP Pro system with a fairly low end graphics card. The bundled PhotoStudio sucks, however, and I don't use it. I find Irfanview (available free on-line) works quite nicely for most of my needs, including acting as a facilitator for batch scanning to file. I have not tried the included OmniPage, however I have used an earlier version so I expect it will work quite nicely.
  
  The other review here seems to dismiss this scanner as being more cheaply made. Personally, it seems nicely made to me. If you are abusive towards your equipment, then yeah, spend twice as much for something all metal. I, however, treat my equipment well. The plastic negative holder works just fine for me, and is very easy to use. I don't see anything wrong with the plastic hinge either. It works smoothly and seems well designed. Another nice thing about this scanner is that it doesn't not weigh much at all! I like this since I have a glass desk which can't hold a ton of weight. The design is nice too. It looks nice and sleek against my blue glass.
  
  All in all, I would highly recommend this scanner for anyone looking for a good, fast all purpose scanner for under $100. Well worth the money (and the free super saving shipping is a nice bonus). Best Christmas present I got.
  
  

• Great quality for the money

  
  By A18SUS6FTDRWV0 on 2007-01-04
  I bought this scanner to replace my Canon Lide 35. I wasn't happy with that one as the quality of the scans seemed only adequate, but it was the only scanner I could find at the time that was the right physical size to fit on the sliding shelf of my computer cabinet. I had to compromise and give up an excellent quality scanner to get one that fit.
  
  Although it only just arrived, I am already thrilled with the Canon 4400F. Not only is it smaller (narrower) than some of the other brands and fits on my shelf, I am extremely pleased with the quality of the scans at several different resolutions, color modes, and sources and with the speed that the scanner accomplishes each task. (The scans of negatives do take a little longer to complete.) I have already successfully scanned black and white documents, color prints, color photos, pages and images from books, and just had my first experience scanning negatives. I was shocked with the excellent quality and color of the scanned negatives and will now plan on getting them all scanned and saved on my computer in the coming weeks. I bought this primarily to scan sections of documents, artwork, and photos, and the negative scanner is an unexpected and very welcome bonus. I likely will not use the buttons on the front, preferring to use the advanced mode on the ScanGear software to have a little more control over the final product.
  
  I did have some problems getting the scanner to work properly at first. After a few scans the ScanGear software and my photoshop CS software would both apparently crash requiring control-alt-delete to force quit the program. I went to the canon website and downloaded their updated driver and installed that and the problem only got worse. I then uninstalled the new driver and downloaded it again, installed it again and rebooted my PC again, and despite my best efforts to get the software to crash, it is working like a dream.
  
  I am thrilled with this product because it works so well and am probably even more thrilled with it because it was relatively inexpensive. Definitely one of my better purchases.
  
  

• Okay scanner, terrible software (for Mac), some minor Leopard bugs

  
  By AQO0IC7P9NU4X on 2007-06-07
  This scanner is okay as far as the quality of images goes; nothing fabulous, but not bad for the price, either. However, the software that comes with the scanner is absolutely terrible. (I am using the software for Mac OS X, so maybe it's different for Windows users.) Some of the many glaring flaws:
  
  - There is an arbitrary limit of 20 characters for filenames when saving a scan. This might not seem like a big deal, but 20 characters is often not enough for a descriptive filename of any kind, especially when scanning multiple versions of a photo, for example, with different scan settings.
  
  - There is no preview mode, or any way to select a region of an image to scan. The user can only choose from a pre-set paper size, or type a custom paper size. Neither option lets you select something in the middle of the page, for example.
  
  - Application windows are filled with poorly-designed buttons of various sizes, strewn every which way, and with cryptic names. For example, in one window that comes up when the user chooses the "confirm scanned image" option, there is a button labeled "forward." What does this mean? Well, the button does the same thing you would expect from an "OK" or "continue" button.
  
  - When scanning, the status window (showing the progress of the scan) always stays on top of all other application windows. It can't be minimized, and doesn't move to the background with the rest of the program's windows when another application or window is selected. It can be moved, but the next time it pops up, it will be right in the middle of the screen again. This means that, when scanning multiple pages, it's impossible to use the computer for anything else, because the scan progress window will keep popping up every 10 seconds and getting in the way of whatever else you are trying to view/type.
  
  - Unlike many other scanner models, this one has no ruler markings on the scanner itself. So if you need to know the dimensions of the item you are scanning--to set a custom paper size in the scanning software, for example--you'll have to have a ruler handy.
  
  Bottom line: the terrible software interface makes this scanner almost unusable for me. (The included PhotoStudio software is no better.) It is unnecessarily complex, and some screens seem like they were translated from Japanese by someone not too familiar with English. The scanning software supplied for OS X looks and feels like a 1990s-era Mac Classic application.
  
  Incredibly, incredibly bad software. I wish I could post screenshots of some of the windows, so you'd see what I mean.
  
  UPDATE: Some minor flaws with Leopard have surfaced. The software often fails to scan, popping up an error message "failed to load driver." It usually goes away after several re-tries. Just more annoying behavior...
  
  

• super value

  
  By A1OLQB095FD7JJ on 2007-03-13
  Needing to replace my really ancient Visioneer scanner for importing 35mm slides and negatives into CS2 at a higher quality, I settled on the buying either the Canon 8600F or the 4400F. As I see it, the 8600F is an industrial-strength version of the lightweight 4400F, but costs about $70 more. The 8600 is somewhat bigger and weighs 50% more than the 4400F, but otherwise they're pretty much identical in capabilities and operation. In fact, Canon's website shows identical sales blurb for both the 4400F and the 8600F. The supplied software (CanoScan Toolbox, ArcSoft PhotoStudio, NewSoft Presto PageManager, ScanSoft OmniPage SE) are identical for both the 4400F & the 8600F. The PS Elements 5.0 included with the 8600F was not important since I use CS2. The only unknown is what exactly is the difference between the 8600F's "built-in FARE Level 3 retouching technology" and the 4400F's "built-in retouching technology." I suspect it's nearly the same. So I bought the 4400F from Amazon (best price).
  
  Installation was a snap and the first scan came out as expected. A bit slow, but all decent resolution scans are slow regardless of who makes the scanner unless you want to spend big bucks. The only negative is the lack of a power button on the 4400F (if you're like me, you'll always forget to pull the plug when you've finished scanning). Although it'd be easy to put a switch on the power cord, the switch would have to be located near the plug socket, so a switch really wouldn't be all that much helpful.
  
  The net of all of this is that if you plan to do some really heavy-duty scanning and also would like to utilize Photoshop Elements 5.0 for image enhancing, go with the 8600F. Otherwise, use the 4400F.
  
  My crude comparison of Canon's 8600F and the 4400F:
  -----------------------------8600F---------4400F
  Weight:-------------------- 9.3 pounds---6.2 pounds
  Height:--------------------- 4.9 inches---3.3 inches
  Width:--------------------- 11.3 inches--10.2 inches
  Depth:--------------------- 18.6 inches--18.7 inches
  On/off button------------- yes------------no
  Photoshop Elements 5.0- yes------------no ($43 @Vio)
  Built-in FARE Level 3----- yes-------------?
  retouching technology
  Cost:---------------------- $160--------- $92
  
  
  
• Decent scanner, but Canon left out an important product spec!
  By A29GFSTM9WRITT on 2007-11-12
  BEWARE: Unfortunately Canon left out an important detail in the product specifications (and now I'm stuck with a scanner that does 1/4 of what it says it can do on the box).
  
  Whatever is listed as the highest DPI in the listbox is THE highest the scanner will optically scan. For regular scans, it is LIMITED to 1200DPI. You can type in a higher number, but it simply scans it at 1200DPI then scales it up to the DPI you typed in (software interpolation is worthless, it just makes the image large and fuzzy). So if you are expecting this to scan normal documents at 4800x9600DPI (at this DPI, just a logo or something small) FORGET IT! Canon put a limitation in the scanner driver to prevent it from scanning higher than 1200DPI on normal scans.
  
  *** It ONLY scans at 4800x9600DPI when doing film/slides (which isn't what I bought this scanner for). ***
  
  I thought I was buying a Porsche and got a VW instead, sure it still gets me there, but it's not the same...
  
  
• Great scanner for images, slides or negatives!
  By AZI4I45HN3W3X on 2006-12-27
  I just got this scanner about 10 days before Christmas. I've been very pleased - it exceeds all my expectations.
  
  I got it for two reasons: (1) my old scanner does not work with Windows XP, and (2) I've been wanting a good scanner for slides and negatives for many years, but decided to wait until technology and price improved. Well, it was worth the wait! I've already scanned several dozen color slides as well as several negatives and other images. The quality of the slide and negative scanning was excellent! And the speed is great compared to my old scanner. I've not tried all the bells and whistles yet, but everything I've tried so far works very well. Using the slide holder is a little tedious, but for the price I am extremely pleased.
  
  I did considerable research before buying this scanner, and quickly learned that Canon is definitely the way to go for quality film/slide scanners. I first planned to order a Canoscan model that I later found out was discontinued, but this one is a newer model and seems to be as good or better, from what I can tell thus far.
  
  I'll supplement this review if necessary once I've used the scanner some more.
  
  
• Wow! I'm scanning slides from the 1940s w/in 10 min of setup!!!
  By A34EQDIZM94VSN on 2008-01-03
  I have been toting around a shoebox of my dad's slides since he passed away. There are about 500 Kodachrome transparencies of family vacations, army photos, and all us kids at Easter and Christmas. Even without cleaning the slides, I am completely amazed at how good these are coming out! I was only able to see these in one of those little slide boxes you held up to the light--until today. I'm finding great early photos of my mom from the 40s wearing a fantastic print dress and big curls in her hair! So far I'm extremely pleased with how these are coming out!!!
  
  The scanner is VERY easy to set up. I have an iMac running Leopard. I followed the quick-start guide, popped in the cd, clicky click click, plug it in, did a quick test with a cartoon, and worked like a charm. I mainly purchased it for scanning this bunch of old slides. It comes with a little plastic tray (for lack of a better term) to put 4 slides in. This tray is conveniently hidden behind a white plastic sheet in the lid of the scanner. This tray feels kinda flimsy, so I'm being very careful with it--that is my only concern so far.
  
  With the $99 price, there is no great software for correcting the dust and fuzz. You can however, play a little bit with the image settings. For most of what I have scanned so far, I have only set the Backlight Correction setting to Low or Medium; and you can do this on a slide by slide basis or do them all on one setting. This has made some of the older dark photos look fantastic. I have also used the Rotate to turn the photo right way up or flip it over.
  
  I'm really impressed with the quality and ease-of-use so far. My intention was just to get these into a digital format before they turn to dust, not do magic with them just yet. Like the Technicolor Ektachrome slides are red-red, and I'd like to eventually fix the worthwhile ones of those, as well as do the repair and hair removal needed on a bunch. Overall first impression is this is a great value, and the quality is better than expected overall. If you need to do a LOT of correcting of your slides/film/photos, you may want to jump up a few levels to one with a more advanced Photo-shop-like software to do this all at once.
  
  Update 1/27/08--
  I was in such a hurry to get slides digitized when I started using this scanner... Just wanted to pass on what I learned so far. I'm pretty impressed with the software that does come with it. At first pass it didn't seem all that impressive and I thought I was lucky that the slides scanned looked as good as they did! After taking more time--and slowing down to see what some of the other options really did in the panel after you have 'previewed' a batch--omg it does wonders!!! The Ektachromes that are way red, well now they look much more normal. I have gone back and rescanned a bunch of slides from the beginning mad rush I was in, and I have to tell you that they look even more incredible than before. A pretty good scan of a slide of my Mom dated May 1946 is brighter, skin color more natural... I'm very pleased with how this product is working, can you tell?!
  
  Another crumb of advice, get a good quality photo brush to get the dust and crumbs off the slides--I'm surprised how much can get removed with the soft natural bristles. I also got a photographic emulsion cleaner and pads for some of the tough spots. Whatever is in that bottle has removed quite a few of those black spots that always show up on someone's forehead!
  
  And I see the price dropped on this... I paid $99 and thought it was a good deal! Good luck!
  
  
• Great value, typical mediocre software from Japanese co.
  By A1O3LAET0L3BHU on 2007-02-18
  I bought this scanner to replace my ageing Microtek Scanmaker E6 flatbed color scanner. The Microtek unit worked just fine after many years (6? 8? I can't remember!) but it was slow, required a big, clunky SCSI cable and adapter, and the software (TWAIN Drivers) was quite dated and still buggy. I knew they'd never update the drivers again, so I decided to get this Canon as a replacement.
  
  I've been using it for about 2 months now, just for scanning documents, and a few photos. The scan performance seems fine. It's definitely faster than the older scanner, and it did plug and play just fine.
  
  The software? UGH. Why do the Japanese seem to have a problem producing good-quality, functional, well-designed intuitive software? This isn't rocket science. It's just a driver, folks. The thing is riddled with stupid little annoyances that really detract from the otherwise pleasant experience. For example, each time you scan a page, it forgets the settings you just used, and starts again from the same set of defaults. You can save settings by name, but each time the driver starts up, you must reselect the group of settings you want. If you're scanning 10 pages, this gets old fast.
  
  The integration of the front panel buttons with the bundled software is equally quirky and annoying. And, some of the applications that would normally be quite useful, aren't, simply because they failed to actually ask any REAL WORLD USERS for feedback on their stupid user interface designs!
  
  All in all, a worthwhile purchase. Expect to be annoyed by the software, but you will find it useable. Canon, if you are listening, try beta testing your designs before shipping your product. A little bit of tweaking will go a long way towards making a better product. I'm sure that's how Apple does it.
  
  
  
• Built for idiots
  By A3268EGZNETZPK on 2007-01-26
  Wayyy disappointing from the folks at Canon. The interface is made for morons...if you want configureable options, look elsewhere. Slow as all hell...think 5+ minutes for a "high quality" scan which is only roughly 220kb. I wanted a scanner, I bought a toy. If you are serious about scanning 35mm negitives or slides, this model isn't for you.
  
  
• Low Cost, Lots of Features, Bundled Software Good, Quiet, Fast
  By A1A0J2TAG223O9 on 2007-02-09
  I love the one touch buttons on the front that loads software and scans all in the touch of a button. Excellent photo quality scans. The software for scanning color photos has a fading correction feature that works great. I never realized how much my old color photos had faded until I used this feature to correct for that. Excellent and easy to use other photo correction capabilities as well as many other scanning options. The lid for the bed has the ability to flex at the hinge pivot point to allow for placing of large books or photo albums. Easy to install software and hardware. Just plug the power cord and USB cord in, run the install and it's ready. Driver support for other software programs works well too.
  
  All around, excellent price and quality!!
  
  The only possible down side is the bed size is basically letter size, so scanning legal size documents is out. That's okay for me, just make sure it's okay for you. Canon has similar larger scanners that I would trust after using this one.
  
  By the way, I had to call their support number because I thought an item was missing in the shipment (it wasnt, just my mistake in un-boxing the scanner) but they were ready to send me a replacement part right away. Excellent support!!
  
  
• Don't get in a hurry
  By A3H7FOLI94QGO2 on 2007-05-07
  Though I have only had my 4400 a few hours I can already point out some weak areas, too much cardboard and parts to keep up with. If you are scanning negatives or slides then you use the "built in" removable film holder. It is part of the inner lid and very thin plastic. There is a cardboard cover over it for scanning documents, etc., this is part one you must keep up with. (remove it to scan film, replace when you are not)
  
  Part two is a small black cardboard "shield" you use when your film is shorter than the holder.
  
  The cover is just a piece of white cardboard with double edges. When you replace this after scanning film you must TRY and line up the inner lid cover to slide this piece in front of it so that the edges lock together. By the way the inner document cover attached to the lid is cardboard also.
  
  Now for the good part, the scan quality is outstanding and the software is very good.
  
  Don't expect to get in a hurry the process is slow. If you don't have a lot of film/negatives/slides to scan then it would be great. If on the other hand you plan on scanning a lot of film/negatives/slides then this scanner is NOT for you.
  
  
  
  
• Cannon 4400F scanner
  By A30U78NM8SRDFE on 2007-09-12
  The ability to scan four 35 MM slides at a time is nice. It takes about 4 minutes to do the scan and the software used to edit and clean the images up is very good but not as good as more expensive software packages. Occasinally it seems to fail to see the slides and generate images that are not useable or, it may see only 2 or 3 of the four slides. In these cases, it can usually be corrected by deleting the unuseable images and rescanning. The photographic scan and copy functions work very well.
  
  
• digitizing 35mm slides
  By A3VIGE5CG59TMD on 2007-05-12
  I purchased this scanner for the immediate purpose of digitizing old 35mm slides, some as old as 60 years. I have digitized over 500 slides and am very happy with the results. Eventually, i plan to copy these slides to a CD for giving to my six sons. For a relatively inexpensive scanner, I think I could not have done any better than the 4400F, CanoScan.
  
  
• Vista and CanoScan 4400F Scanner
  By A9SGSRAA4X3RD on 2007-08-09
  I could not get this scanner to work with Vista. Their tech support was very good but it just would not work.
  The OCR left something in my computer and now when I run Word for windows
  It will not close until it runs visual basic and trys to debug omipage and Text bridge. I have tried all i can think of to get these two ocr programs out but I have not been successful. I have searched the registry and have deleted all refernce to to these programs. Now even though omni page and textbridge are not on my computer visual basic stills will not allow me to exit word without having to close a couple of boxes.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• No good for negatives
  By A3D0PV8Y6577NN on 2007-12-07
  I bought a CanoScan 4400F primarily to use to scan in 35mm negatives. I should have done more research. While the 4400F includes a negative holder, it lacks the FARE feature which removes dirt, scratches and other artifacts from negatives. Even when I used compressed air to try and remove all the possible artifacts, it didn't provide good results. Returned product. Will try and find a comparably priced scanner with FARE or better yet, ICE technology.
  
  
• Just What We Needed
  By A13YM335PTWTR8 on 2007-03-08
  We're a small graphics agency and the generic 600x2400 scanner in a multifunction doesn't come close to cutting it for our needs with film or artwork. This was a great, inexpensive addition with 2400x9600 resolution. Would have bought a Brother if they'd had a similar standalone product, but Canon was a decent alternative with TWAIN and OCR.
  
  Software install's a little quirky if you're an experienced user and don't want to install the entire package. It will shut down (in WinXP), so you're left with no choice but to install it all. We're an Adobe shop and, frankly, don't need everything included...so, had to do an uninstall of some of the software. Just an annoyance, not a big deal.
  
  One exceptional plus is that we use it in conjunction with a Brother MFC-665cw and this is where TWAIN comes in. We can copy from the Canon by pressing ONE copy button and it automatically comes out the Brother. No further gymnastics necessary. It can't get much easier than that.
  
  The only inconvenience, as we use surge protector/power strips, is that Canon still uses a big ol' 1990s wallwort that covers a perfectly good outlet. I'd like to see them upgrade a bit to a standalone transformer like in the Pixma IP90 or Brother's machines.
  
  
• Relive memories on "old fashioned" film or slides
  By A37UU7LD4MWAJQ on 2007-05-12
  I had a fantastic picture of my dad that I wanted to share with people after he died. The film adapter works amazingly well and allowed me to relive some great memories. A definite must have if you have!
  
  p.s. Have a can of compressed air on hand to dust off negatives. The tiniest speck of dust can appear as a white line or spot.
  
  
• excellent scanner
  By A33XZCY0ZCQ6KY on 2007-01-14
  The 4400F is a great flat bed scanner. Canon includes a user friendly software package. Excellent scanner for the money. It imports scans into Photoshop CS2 with no problems. It's what you would expect from the people at Canon.
  
  
  
• Works well with Windows Vista...
  By A1LFOYG8FNMUYK on 2007-01-25
  I just setup the 4400F on Vista Enterprise Edition system and used the Canon driver and tools from their site. The fact that Canon had a Vista driver since December and the other reviews were the two main reasons I purchased this model.
  
  Everything is working as advertised. The 4400F is smaller than my previous Acer flatbed but the Canon model is much faster and the quality has been excellent!
  
  My only question is where is the power button? I'm betting that it puts itself in sleep mode - I will break down and read the manual :-)
  
  
• Great for the money!
  By A14LLAZOPYWB03 on 2007-05-09
  I bought one of these just to scan my old photos (of which I have a lot). Works great with my Mac G4. Has a cool feature where if you put several pictures on the scanner (as long as they're not touching eachother) they'll scan in as seperate images! That's a big time saver.
  
  It also has negative scanning capabilities. I've used it and it's OK, good enough for me. But if you want to scan a lot of negatives and want great quality, WRONG scanner.
  
  Oh! Also, the lid is made so you can fit a big book on the scanner and it'll still close.
  
  
• If I had that much patience, I'd still have dialup
  By A39I6D8FJU0C4R on 2007-07-06
  I decided to write this review while I wait for my CanoScan 4400F to save the document I just scanned. I won't go into the features of this scanner because others before me have done that. Just want to add that this scanner is painfully slow. It takes too long to "adjust the lamp" in preparation for the scan. It takes too long to complete the scan. It takes too long to save to a file after the scan. While all this is going on, I get to watch the Mac color wheel spin... and spin... and spin (the color wheel is Mac's equivalent of the PC hour glass). At work, I'm fortunate to use the Canon all-in-one MP160 ink jet printer-copier-scanner (also with a Mac). It is faster, more intuitive, and less expensive (at our campus store, the MP160 retails for $60). Maybe I'll buy the MP160 and sell this 4400F.
  
  03/17/2008 update: I did buy the Canon MP160 and it is great. It scans quickly, saves files quickly, prints faster than any other ink jet printer I've used, and it has a very user-friendly, intuitive menu.
  
  
• does it all with ease
  By A1IZDEU2N3MAIJ on 2007-01-03
  Couldn't be easier. In minutes you're set to do all the things you wished you could do when these machines cost 10 X as much. Simply press a button for emailing a document/photo; easy pdf's. Intuitive software. Images reproduce just fine. Copies not anywhere near as good as a dedicated copier (in fact, so disappointed with the time it takes and low resolution, I bought the personal copier--just takes up more space but it's instant on and fast) If I had to gripe, it is somewhat slow and the machine is bulky. However, for the price, it is a huge value and it gets a lot of use.
  
  
• Very slow scanner for negatives ...
  By A2MCPGNK2BKDU on 2007-09-11
  I bought this scanner for scanning several old negatives. Although it serves the purpose, the performance is poor. It is extremely slow. The parts to load the negatives is a cheapy plastic. It does not snatch properly when negatives are loaded. It is painful to load negative roll with 4 frames and leaving the remaining two as empty. The software that comes with the scanner is ok. Installation was awful...
  
  I would definitely recommend some other fast scanner if you have lots of negatives to scan. For all other normal scanning needs, this one would do a great job.
  
  Overall performance is good - I would give 4 star. For negative scanning I can only give 1 star....
  
  
• CanoScan 4400f
  By AHGZQUWVO1DL4 on 2007-10-11
  I am amazed at the quality of the negative scans. I purchased this unit to scan & archive photographs. Throw your photo's away & just scan the negatives, they scan much clearer than the photos!
  
  Only downside is that the scanner is slow. It took me almost 30 minutes to scan two years of tax returns w/supporting documents.
  
  
• Be sure to upgrade the software
  By A1X3BXQHEZM1ZT on 2007-12-09
  I bought this scanner to digitize all our family's photographs. Some are printed but most are transparencies so I wanted something that could do both. Given the limited use, I didn't want to spend a lot of money necessary to get something super fast but wanted something that could gang scan 4 pictures or slides at once to at least take a dent out of the scanning time.
  
  The Canoscan does a very good job of scanning given the price. However I had a lot of problems with the gang scanning. Sometimes it would separate the pictures, sometimes it would only find three of the four pictures, sometimes it would combine them all into one.
  
  Transparencies had a similar problem. Also, unfortunately, it does not seem to have a checkbox to tell it you are scanning a transparency instead of a negative and it doesn't always guess right.
  
  Before giving up, I decided to check for software updates and found one for the driver. After installing this, I have had much less problem with gang scanning although it still occasionally inverts the picture on transparencies (which I can manually correct with the provided software).
  
  Some other interesting points:
  
  non rectangular slides
  
  I discovered that some of my slides, for whatever reason, were square rather than rectangular. Given the way slides are scanned with this unit, the top and bottom will get cut off. I have no idea if this is a developing anomaly but you might check if you have square slides and if you have a lot,see if you can find a scanner that won't cut them off.
  
  Inability to set EXIF date
  
  Photo album programs use the EXIF date to determine when the photo was taken and automatically arrange them chronologically. The scanner, of course, has no way to know when a picture was taken so puts the scanned date in this field. It would be very nice if the scanner manufactures made sure that the included scanning software allowed you to set the EXIF date manually, preferably by selecting a group of photos and entering a date once. Unfortunately, this software doesn't appear to allow you to do this.
  
  Note: I bought Corel's Photo Explorer 8 to do this based on its advertisement saying you could do this. Unfortunately it has a serious limitiation. It will only allow you to enter a date past 1980. Not useful when scanning a family photo collection that dates back to the early 20th century.
  
  
  
• great scanner, great price
  By A1G1VRDZQR5QHD on 2007-01-16
  Just what I was looking for! I wanted to archive 35mm negatives that are 5-10 years old. The resolution is great, and I especially like the software that is included with the scanner. Great price too!
  
  
• Solid scanner at an excellent price
  By A36I5QI57MCF93 on 2007-04-26
  Prior to purchasing this scanner, I was quite content with using an Epson Perfection 1670 scanner for all my scanning needs. After five years of heavy use, the Epson suddenly died. This precipated the decision to purchase a new one. After careful research, I ordered the CanoScan 4400F flatbed scanner from Amazon. I'm pleased to report that the scanner works as advertised. Set-up was flawless on my PowerMac G5. The scanner software integrates nicely into Photoshop, streamlining my workflow.
  
  The scanner feels durable and looks sleek. The only thing I wish I could have with this scanner is the abiility to fully detatch the lid, as I could with my Epson scanner. I use my scanner primarily to scan pencilled art - and for that purpose it works extremely well.
  
  
• whubble
  By A3E5P1R37PVZJ3 on 2007-01-09
  This scanner is top notch. The software is very easy to use, the results are high quality. The only downside is the fact that it doesn't have a feeder. But I can't even take a star away for that. I love it, it saves me time because I never have to scan anything more than one time.
  
  
• good film scanner for the price
  By A9106BUSWB2T1 on 2007-01-03
  I purchased it to scan negatives and its good in that..Very good resolution and software is also user friendly.
  Only concern is it accepts only 6 neg per scan. I think 12 should be more productive. But for the price its nice tradeoff..
  
  

• Monster Cable MP-HTS200 2-OUTLET Home Theater Power Center with Coax and Phone Line Protection
• Max 2 2outlet Wall Mount
• Monster MP PC800 RP Computer PowerCenter¿ with Surge Protection

• Belkin F3U133-16 USB 2.0 A/B Cable (16 Feet)
• Belkin F3U133-10 Hi-Speed USB 2.0 Cable (10 Feet)
• Canon Pixma iP4500 Photo Inkjet Printer (2171B002)
• Pana-Vue #2 - Slide viewer
• D-Link DUB-H7 High Speed USB 2.0 7-Port Hub