HP SCANJET 5490CXI

WHAT'S HOT: At $399, the HP Scanjet 5490c is one of the better one-stop scanning stations on the market. It comes with a 25-page automatic document feeder and a well-designed transparency adapter capable of scanning multiple 35mm slides and negatives. The 5490c boasts healthy 2400-by-2400-dpi resolution and provides sparkling 48-bit color. Both print and on-screen tests displayed bright, saturated colors with sharp focus and noticeable details in both shadows and highlights.

WHAT'S NOT: As a scanner designed primarily for business rather than casual users, the 5490c's biggest limitation is that it doesn't offer a FireWire or SCSI interface option. Instead, it supports both USB 1.1 and parallel port connections, neither of which may provide fast enough performance for busy offices. On our test that's most similar to scanning for OCR--a 300-dpi scan of black-and-white line art--the 5490c took 25 seconds, compared with the 16 seconds that its $700 sibling, the HP Scanjet 7450c, took. (We tested both using USB 1.1.) When we scanned a test photo at maximum resolution and bit depth, the 5490c was slower than all other scanners in our test batch except one, the small-office Microtek ScanMaker 4900. The 2400-dpi FireWire scanners in our batch blazed past the 5490c (and the other 2400-dpi USB 1.1 scanners) on this test, with times that were more than a minute and a half faster.

WHAT ELSE: The 5490c includes a host of buttons on its front panel for starting common tasks automatically (scan, copy, print, and e-mail), as well as an LCD screen that displays the number and quality of copies when you're printing scans. The 5490c has more quick-start controls than most other multibutton scanners. The software bundle includes HP Precisionscan Pro 3.1; an easy-to-use scanning TWAIN driver that provides integrated optical character recognition; Corel Print Office 2000 for image editing and printing options; NetObjects Fusion 5 for Web site building and management; and several other useful utilities.