Epson Perfection V600 Photo - flatbed scanner

I am using this scanner mostly for old photographs (some dating late 1800s) and negatives (going back to 1909) through to the 1970s.It is excellent for both. The only limitation has been with large, very high resolution negatives. It has struggled with one or two of these, but it has been unusual.

las fotografias quedan geniales en alta resolicion

It worths the money

Para digitalizar negativos y diapositivas.

My primary concern when buying any computer hardware is whether or not it will work with Linux. This is because i have used Linux (openSuse) exclusively for the past 10+ years, and have no intention of using anything else (read Windows/Mac). Keep this in mind when reading the rest of my review.Delivery and packaging:I found the packaging adequate. The outside box had received some blows in transit, but these had not affected the inner box. The package was delivered to me on the second day of the delivery window, so I see no reason to complain.The hardware itself:it works as expected, and I cannot fault it. I have not tried using the transparency function yet (ie scanning negatives and slides), but have noticed that the lamp for this does not cover the entire glass of the scanner. I get the impression you can only scan a few slides/negatives at a time. On the other hand, the holder for negatives/slides is meant to position your negatives/slides under the lamp, and hold them there while scanning, so I don't know if you would need a bigger lamp.The software:the necessary files are not included on the CD, as a Linux user you have to download them from Epson's web site. And when you do, you can run into the problem that the installation script does not work, it didn't for me. This was not a major problem, I have installed RPMs manually before, but for a beginner it might be off-putting. I did not have to install anything other than the files provided by Epson to get the scanner to work.As for the scanning process itself, it works for me. I am scanning several hundred of my mothers pictures, to enter into my computer as much information as she can remember about each picture. preferably I would be done before she dies... Because of this, a smooth workflow is important to me. And Epson have succeeded, in part.I can set up the software to scan a picture every time I press the "Start" button on the scanner (I have only tried using the button farthest to the right, I don't know about the others), and this works: put a picture in, press the button, wait ten seconds, change the picture, press the button, wait ten seconds..... This way it takes some 10-15 seconds per picture, after setting things up.But there are three shortfalls in the software, in my opinion.Firstly, living in Sweden, using the Swedish alphabets "strange" letters (åäö) is second nature to me, and could be nice when handling files in a computer. When it comes to photographs, being able to name a folder by eg the town from which the pictures come, would be practical. But Epson's software cannot handle folders with any letters outside the English alphabet! If mum has a bunch of pictures from eg Göteborg (the Swedish name for the city known in English as Gothemburg) I have to name the folder "Goteborg" in order to have scanned pictures saved into it. This is one thing I really on't understand, sine the operating system itself can handle these "strange" letters with no problem at all. In fact, although I use a standard Swedish keyboard, I can name files and folders using eg the Russian alphabet, and to the operating system they are just another file. Why is Epson's software different?Secondly, I find the choice of file formats a bit restricted. I can choose PCX, PNM, TIFF and PDF. In the list of file formats I can choose from there is also JPG and PNG, but they are greyed out and I cannot choose them. Why? Surely it can't be so difficult to have the software convert from the scanners native format to JPG or PNG.Lastly, one thing that would come in handy if I were to scan a lot of slides/negtives (I might some time in the future, I have some 4500 slides of my own...) is the ability to scan several parts of what is in the scanner and have each part made into a separate file. Imagine filling the slide holder with four slides, and having to scan all four into one file, and then using Photoshop (or similar) to chop this one file into four... Heaps of work, which could have been avoided if the software would let me scan separate parts into separate files. Maybe the Windows version of Epson's software will do this, but I haven't tried it. What I do know is that I have not found any way of doing it with the Linux version of Epson's software.The option of scanning one slide at a time is practical only with a very small number of slides, but as an amateur photographer I do not have a small number of slides.------------------To sum up: good hardware that is rather let down by the software.-----------A small addition to the above, written after scanning some 1500+ pictures:when scanning straight to a file, you have to decide where to save the file(s) and what to call them. Setting a name (and number series) is no problem, but every single time I start the process, the default location for the file(s) reverts to /home/USERNAME/. I have not found any way of changing this, despite having scanned 1500+ pictures into /home/USERNAME/pictures/mums_pictures . When you have to set this after every roll of film (and there have been close to 100 of them...) it gets very irritating, for no good reason! Being able to set a default location to save the pictures to should not be a major software obstacle. The same goes for other settings: they all revert to some "factory default" every time you start the program. And I change the scan density and turn off the Unsharp Mask option every single time I turn the program on.... It gets irritating, for no good reason...Another update, in November 2020:since last using the scanner over a year ago, I had to reinstall my operating system due to a crashed hard drive. And after that, the only software I can get to communicate with the scanner is Epson's own software, which is so laughably bad it looks like it was put together by a bunch of computer science students as a one-term project at university.I cant scan anything other than pictures on paper (is no slides or other transparent things), and the program is so hard to use I gave up and bought a cheap second hand laptop with Windows on it just to see if the software was a bad on Windows. It wasn't: it's unbelievably better! I haven't had a chance to give this setup a thorough testing, but it seems to have everything I lacked in Linux! Shame on you, Epson!!Just for the record: before the HD crash, I was using openSuse Tumbleweed, and since the new install I am using openSuse Leap, which is considered a stable version, whereas Tumbleweed is "bleeding edge".

Tras volvernos un poco locos, hemos tenido que desistir. Desde el primer momento, enciende y pasa a "error" perdiendo la conexión con el ordenador. Hemos probado todos los drivers habidos y por haber, y en máquinas diferentes con Windows 10, así como ordenadores Apple (iMacs y MacBooks Pro, tanto con Mavericks, Big Sur y Monterey). Leyendo algunos foros, parece que son varios los usuarios que reportan este problema.