CARSON, Calif. -- May 30 -- Microtek, a world-leading manufacturer of digital imaging products, today announced the availability of the Microtek ScanMaker s450 with a suggested retail price of $99. Compatible with both Windows and Macintosh computers, the Microtek ScanMaker s450 has a new slim design and a broad set of features to meet the diverse needs of a home office. With this scanner, Microtek continues its tradition of providing outstanding scanning solutions at an affordable price.

"The Microtek ScanMaker s450 is a versatile scanner designed for the home office," said Parker Plaisted, manager of product marketing for Microtek. "With both photo imaging and document imaging features, this scanner fully supports the needs of a digital lifestyle."

Photo Scanning Capabilities

The Microtek ScanMaker s450 makes duplicating and sharing photos easy with several features specifically designed for high-quality photo scanning. The built-in 35mm transparency adapter enables easy scanning of positive and negative 35mm slides and filmstrips. And Microtek's exclusive FilmView light table in the lid of the scanner provides the uniform light needed to sort and select the film images to scan. Scanning photo prints is even easier on the 8.5x11.7 scan bed and old faded photos can be restored with Microtek's ColoRescue automatic photo restoration feature in the ScanWizard 5 scanning software. With an optical resolution of 4800 dpi and 48-bit color, the Microtek ScanMaker s450 captures the full range of color and detail in film and photo prints.

Software Bundle

Included in the box with the ScanMaker s450 are Microtek ScanWizard 5 with ColoRescue color restoration technology, Adobe Photoshop Elements, ABBYY FineReader Sprint OCR, Adobe Acrobat Reader and InterVideo MediaOne Gallery.

Document Imaging Capabilities

With the included ABBYY FineReader Sprint OCR software, scanned documents are converted to editable electronic files through Optical Character Recognition. This feature greatly improves office productivity by eliminating unnecessary typing to enter text or numbers from a printed document into a computer. After OCR, the electronic files require less storage space making them easier to manage. The Microtek ScanWizard software is capable of saving scanned images as Adobe PDF files that can be viewed with many software applications, including Web browsers, which support the PDF document format.

Zero Boundary Design

Microtek's Zero Boundary design extends the scan area closer to the edge of the scanner to facilitate scanning bound pages in a book. With Zero Boundary, the scanner can see more of the page when the spine of a book is resting on the edge of the scanner. The result is a sharp, uniform scanned image across the entire page.

Automated Functions

The most common scanning tasks are automated and assigned to hardware buttons on the front of the scanner. These automated tasks include: scan with default settings, scan and print, scan and attach to Email, scan and OCR and scan and save to PDF. An additional button is available to assign to a custom function chosen by the user.

Pricing and Availability

The Microtek ScanMaker s450 is available now for a suggested retail price of $99 through distribution, mail order, online stores, specialty camera stores and selected retail stores.