The cheapest of the six scanners in this group, the CanoScan 3000F is surprisingly well-equipped. Although little bigger than an A4 sheet, it uses a proper cold cathode lamp for illumination, as do all the scanners in this group, rather than the LED strip employed by some entry-level devices.

It uses what Canon calls a Z-hinge to enable the convenient scanning of thick books and it has a transparency adapter built in. This is revealed by sliding off a white plastic cover from the underside of the lid and you can then scan a slide or a single frame of 35mm negative. Three buttons on the scanner's front edge provide one-touch scan, copy and e-mail functions.

Installation is straightforward; install the software, connect the USB 2 cable and plug-in the power supply. Canon's flexible ScanGear driver has both beginner and expert modes and ArcSoft's PhotoStudio editing software and PhotoBase for image management are also supplied. PhotoStudio, although not one of the best-known editing packages, includes a good range of tools and filters.

The CanoScan 3000F is not the fastest scanner in this group, taking 18 seconds to scan an 8 by 8-inch colour print and nearly a minute for a 35mm transparency. It's also not the quietest, making a variety of whizzes and clunks during the scanning process.

Scan quality is in general acceptable, though flesh tones can come out with an over -pink tinge. This is easily adjusted for, though it would be more useful to have the defaults correct from the start. Overall, this is a neat, high-spec scanner for its asking price.