Home > Consumer Reviews > Agfa SnapScan 1212U Color Flatbed Scanner (Blue)

Wow, I have been waiting for many years to afford a scanner. Now there are a number of inexpensive models to choose from. I chose the Agfa 1212u for a number of reasons:

1. small form factor.

2. mac compatibility- of course!

3. after comparing the rated speeds of other scanners (from manufacturer's web sites), the 1212u compared well.

4. I read an online article (somewhere?) comparing cold-cathode scanners versus the newer contact image sensor (CIS) scanners. The light source of CIS scanners fades much quicker than cathode tubes, this article said, in as few as 1000 scans the light source dimmed by a significant amount. And finally, cold cathode tubes are easy and inexpensive to replace. The 1212u, uses cold cathode tubes, as you may have already guessed. It strikes me that CIS is one of those new "technological marvels" that is actually a step backwards in order to make more profit.

I was not dissappointed after receiving my scanner. For less than a tenth of what scanners cost a few years before, I was expecting a cheap piece of plastic that mostly got the job done. The 1212u is actually quite nice and robust. The glass is thick, important for puting pressure on books to flatten them out for scanning. And by the time of this writing, I have scanned over 1000 pages! It still keeps chugging along like new and I do not expect it to break down any time soon.

I received foto-look software with my scanner (sent out before the newer ScanWise). Fotolook's interface is a little rough looking, but it offers a full range of options and is fast. You can set all the nitty gritty options you want. I particularily like the optimize for speed or quality options. When optimized for speed, and set to monochrome 300 dpi, I can scan the entire bed in 10 seconds! FotoLook is also fast to start up from my imaging programs. The last nice feature of FotoLook is that you do not have to do a preview to scan: set the scan area to the full bed, and you are off to the races. Later on, you can crop the images in your editing program. This is very efficient for scanning a large number of pages.

Then came ScanWise, and I beleive FotoLook is no longer shipped with these scanners. ScanWise is one of those "new age" programs with a spiffy, although a cumbersum, interface ala photoSoap. It is big, 6MB installation, comparitively slow to start up, is slow and clunky, offers some new features over fotolook, but omits some important ones. For one thing, you must do a preview to scan- bad for batch scanning. Being an application rather than a TWAIN plug in, it is slow to launch- bad for batch scanning. And it omits the optimize for quality/speed option- bad for batch scanning.

If you plan on scanning lots of material, the 1212u may not be the best buy. If you only plan on scanning a couple of photos a year, it is definitely a very nice package.

The only problem I had with this scanner is that the drivers wouldn't load from the CD that comes with the scanner onto my IMac. I had to download them from AGFA's webpage, it was easy to do, but maybe not so easy for the non techie. Once I got the driver loaded, the scanner works great. The images are clear, the scan time is very quick and the machine runs very quitely. I do alot of graphic designing, and this scanner has been great. Now I need to find a good and inexpensive color printer.

After installing this scanner and seeing it listed on my system as functioning properly I was unable to scan. Any software I tried said that the scanner could not be found and gave me some information and suggestions for my SCSI ports. As this is a USB scanner the references to SCSI were disconcerting. After much seaching I located a couple threads in a newsgroup that the scanner only works on one of the two USB ports. Weird I know but after switching the USB connector to my other USB receptacle it was recognized.

Great right? No. The arm wouldn't move and any program I tried said that the scanner was locked. I made sure it was unlocked more than a few times.

This scanner is being returned.

I thought I'd write this review as a counter punch to those who wrote bad reviews about the scanner. I purchased mine when I bought my first iMac back in 1998. Here it is 2005 and the scanner is still working as good as it did from day one. I have used it on every Macintosh I have purchased since my original iMac and it has worked flawlessly under Mac OS 9 all the way up to Mac OS X v10.3.9. I am finally replacing it because I bought an all in one printer (printer/scanner/copier) to replace a printer that quit on me today. But the scanner will be given to someone who can appreciate its ease of use and great quality scans. I was looking for a source of information on the scanner so I could send it to the person I want to give the scanner to and this link came up first in my Google search. Perhaps people who are using Windows are having issues with the scanner but this scanner works great with a Mac.

I've had mine for over a year now and one similar to it before. It's very easy to operate and the scans come out great. It's also very quite and did I mention cheap? Buy this scanner!!