Epson intros V500 Photo Scanner

Epson has introduced a new intermediate step to its photo scanners, the V500. The major difference is the addition of the company's new ReadyScan LED technology, which is said to completely eliminate warm-up delays both when turning the unit on, and when switching between film and reflective modes. The LED also switches between white and blue colors for positive and negative film, and turns off completely when the scanner enters standby mode.

The unit can handle up to four slides or 12 35mm frames at a time, as well as medium format film, sized at 2-1/4", 120/220 and 6x12cm. An automatic document feeder is available as an accessory. Bundled software includes Adobe's Photoshop Elements, and ABBYY's FineReader 5 Sprint Plus OCR for capturing text. The V500 is shipping to retail now, at a cost of $250; Macs require Mac OS X 10.2.8, while Windows systems must be running Windows 2000/Me or later.