FIGURE 4-10 The Overstock.com website offers great printer bargains. When shopping for a printer, here are a few other features to compare: Cost A printer is one product it pays to shop around for. Printers of the same quality can vary in price by as much as 30 percent. Speed Most printer manufacturers disclose how many pages per minute their printers are capable of producing. Sometimes they disclose speeds for both black- and-white and color output, so make sure you’re comparing apples to color apples. CHAPTER 4: Install Your Scanner and Inventory Your Hardware 79 4 Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. Print quality Generally the more dots per inch (dpi) a printer is capable of producing, the higher the quality of the image. (See Chapter 2.) Ease of use This is not a factor to be underestimated in any peripheral device. Look for smoothly running sheet feeds, external buttons, and lights that give you clear operational indications. Select the Right Paper for a Good Finished Product If it’s worth printing, it’s probably worth putting on good paper. Generally, paper is a pretty nominal cost in the grand scheme of things, and can really impact your finished product. There are dozens of different grades and brands of paper, but generally you can categorize them into three types: Standard-quality copy paper This is low-grade, inexpensive paper that works fine for text. However, if you’re printing a color image you’ve scanned, the result can be smeary or smudged. This is because this grade of paper is simply ill-suited to absorb all of the ink from the dots your printer needs to put out to reproduce an image at decent resolution. The solution, if you absolutely must resort to low-grade copy paper, is to set your printer on draft mode when producing a color image. Ink-jet paper This paper is slightly more expensive, but offers better ink absorption. It’s the minimum quality you should consider when working with high- resolution color images. Photographic paper It can be twice as expensive as other grades of paper, but it’s well worth the price if you truly care about what you’re printing. Use this type of paper for photographs you want to frame, greeting cards, and other finished products you expect to be examined in some detail. Other media You can purchase other interesting media for scanned images such as stuff for iron-on transfers, decals, and transparencies. The mySimon website, located at www.mysimon.com carries a wide range of papers and products that you can browse and order on line. 80 How to Do Everything with Your Scanner Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. Installation Made Easy Installing a scanner is painless, although some manufacturer’s instruction booklets seem to try their best to confuse you. They’re pretty cryptic, and offer only bare bones step-by-step instructions. It helps the process along if you understand what you’re connecting at each step and why. Although scanners come in widely varying shapes, sizes, and capabilities, the process of installing any of them is more similar than it is different. The tips and tricks in this portion of the chapter will have you up and scanning in less than 20 minutes. Step 1: Inventory Your Scanner Components There’s nothing more frustrating than starting a project—such as installing a scanner— only to find you don’t have everything you need. This is particularly irritating if you’re just about hooked up, and you realize the manufacturer has forgotten to enclose the film- scanning attachment or a disk for an image-editing program you’re supposed to receive. To save yourself the aggravation of unhooking, uninstalling, and repacking, run through the following checklist of what you should have before you begin the setup process: Driver disk Your scanner must have driver software to enable it to talk to your computer. Usually it comes on a diskette or CD labeled “installation disk.” If you lose or damage your driver disk, you can download the driver software by logging on to the manufacturer’s website. Look for a link on the website that says “drivers.” Cables You need to have a cable compatible with your computer interface to connect your scanner to your PC. There are two primary types of interfaces—USB and parallel port. A USB cable connection looks like the one shown in Figure 4-11, and a paral- lel port cable is shown in Figure 4-12. Make sure that the backside of your computer has ports to accommodate the type of cable you’ve received. Many vendors provide you with both types of cable, and you can choose which connection to use. (You can find more information about ports and cable connections in Chapter 2.) FIGURE 4-11 A USB cable connector CHAPTER 4: Install Your Scanner and Inventory Your Hardware 81 4 Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. FIGURE 4-12 A parallel port cable connector Power source It’s not enough to be able to plug your scanner into your PC. Your scanner needs its own electrical power source. Your scanner should come with a cord that plugs into an electrical outlet. Optional connection cables Some scanners include special types of cabling. You want to make sure those are in the box, too. For example, a high-end scanner might require a SCSI interface connected to a single port on your computer. The SCSI interface enables you to connect several peripheral devices in a daisy-chain arrangement, avoiding the requirement of additional ports. Bundled software The image-editing and OCR software that comes with your scanner adds value to it. In the case of the OCR software, you won’t be able to read text documents without it. So inventory the CDs that come with your scanner carefully, and request copies of any missing ones from the manufacturer. Step 2: Connect Your Cabling and Power Source Your computer and scanner communicate via a cable that runs between them. Image data travels through the cable, as well as messages to adjust and control your scanner. If you’re using a parallel port connection, you must first connect the cable and restart your computer before installing the software driver. When you shut down your computer, connect your power cord to the scanner by plugging it into the wall. If you’re using a USB connection, hook up the power cord to your scanner and start your computer. You’ll probably be prompted during the installation of the driver to attach your scanner to the USB port. With a USB connection, you don’t have to restart your computer before you begin scanning! Step 3: Install the Driver A driver is a software program that links your scanner to your Windows or other operating system software. You can’t do anything with your scanner prior to installing 82 How to Do Everything with Your Scanner Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. the driver software. This is because your computer’s operating system simply doesn’t know how to talk to your scanner without the driver. The driver is located on the installation CD that comes with the scanner. (The installation disc might contain help resources and other features as well as the driver.) If the CD-ROM drive doesn’t automatically read the installation CD, you can prompt it as follows: 1. Click the Start icon usually found at the bottom of your Windows screen and select Run from the pop-up menu. The dialog box shown in Figure 4-13 appears. FIGURE 4-13 Use this dialog box to start your driver software. 2. Enter the letter of the drive that contains the installation disc, followed by a colon. Alternatively, you can initiate the driver installation by locating and running the executable file on the CD. To do this: 1. After inserting the installation CD in your CD-ROM drive, click the My Computer icon on your desktop. 2. Click the icon for your CD-ROM drive. A list of files located on the installation disc appears. 3. Look for an executable file that has a name ending in .exe and click it. This should initiate the installation of your driver. CHAPTER 4: Install Your Scanner and Inventory Your Hardware 83 4 Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. . software. You can’t do anything with your scanner prior to installing 82 How to Do Everything with Your Scanner Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. the. cord to your scanner and start your computer. You’ll probably be prompted during the installation of the driver to attach your scanner to the USB port. With a USB connection, you don’t have to restart. software that comes with your scanner adds value to it. In the case of the OCR software, you won’t be able to read text documents without it. So inventory the CDs that come with your scanner carefully,