by M. David Stone, pcmag
Five years ago, many predicted that the days of inexpensive standalone scanners were numbered. Yet largely thanks to the need to preserve photos, flatbed scanners are doing just fine. When inkjet-based all-in-ones (AIOs) first started taking over from single-function inkjets in a big way—starting about five years ago—lots of people predicted the end of the low-cost flatbed scanner. Ironically, however, it's the single-function inkjet printer that's all but disappeared, while flatbed scanners are surviving just fine.
What happened, in large part, is that scanner manufacturers started focusing on photos. In many cases, they've added the ability to scan film (slides and negatives), and have increased scan resolution and other features so they can scan film reasonably well. The result is that although any flatbed scanner is potentially an all-purpose scanner—simply because you can scan anything that will fit on the flatbed—standalone flatbed scanners today tend to focus on photo scanning. More important, they tend to do the job better than inexpensive AIOs.
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