Hewlett-Packard has an enviable reputation of manufacturing award winning scanners, and has set the standards for others to follow. The Scanjet 6300C has SCSI and USB interfaces supplied as standard. The SCSI interface card and cable are not included and need to be purchased separately. The interface card and 5 meter length of cable could set you back £60.00 ex VAT approximately. Setting up the HP is a simple matter of plugging the USB to your computer unlocking the transportation lock, and installing the TWAIN drivers when prompted by Windows 98. We were up and running in no time at all.

HP supplies a quick start guide in the form of a A3 poster, enabling the first time user to get up and running with ease. The documentation supplied is comprehensive and allows the user to fully appreciate the capabilities of the scanner. There is a detailed section on how to use the scanner for emailing, copying, and faxing in conjunction with the buttons located to the front of the scanner.

HP has gone for functionality in a big way, the 5 programmable buttons located at the front of the scanner are controlled by the key programming software supplied. By default, these integrate well with the software installed on your system. Hit the email button and up pops Outlook, hit the fax button and your faxing software deals with your fax request easy. Another feature we haven't seen before is the share scan facility, which lets you share the scanner across a network with other users, all you need to do is ensure the software is installed in the system locally and the share function is enable. Ideal for a small workgroup environment.

The software supplied with the scanner is generous. HP Precision Scan Pro is a comprehensive image-scanning program which enable full control over the final scanned image, PageMill ver 3, allows you to prepare images and build HTML pages ready for publishing on the Web, Photo Deluxe will handle most of your photo-editing requirements, ReadIris is a easy to use, and very accurate OCR character recognition software, which integrated well with Word 2000, Caere's Pagekeeper is a document management software enabling you to organize all your scanned images and documents.

The HP was faired reasonably well in our test, both the review and final scan times were acceptable. What does matter is the quality of the scanned image. When you see the image you then begin to understand as to why the HP range of scanners have been winning awards for so many years. The Epson, HP and Microtek were difficult to tell apart.

HP has a lot going for it, the companies reputation for manufacturing State-of-Art scanning technology cannot be ignored, with an eye for detail, and many functions build into the Scanjet 6300C make it an ideal buy for professional home user, and any Business requiring the excellent share option.

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