Customer Reviews
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2004-04-13
I have had my scanner for over three years and it really saves me a lot of time. But I do wish that their was a customer service line to help with problems that are not available.
I have tried everything to make my faxes come out in black and white but to no avail.
The background is always gray. Even when I just print to copy.
Are their manuals that I can purchase?
Visioneer is the easiest to use of all scanners I've tried! 
2003-08-01
Everything is relative. I see other reviews stating difficulties with software and support. I cannot vouche for their support because I have never needed it. I've found the software to be pretty straight forward and actually quite simple. Of course I had to mess around with it a little to get the hang of it like anything else. When you get it all set up, the one touch buttons make a quick fax or copy simple as pie (not pi). The image quality is excellent and it works great with Photoshop too.
Problems with Visioneer 
2003-03-18
I had technical problems with my Visioneer scanner and severe problems with their customer service department - everything from a 17-21 minute hold on the phone before getting a human to a 3-month (so far) wait for a replacement machine. Visioneer refuses to refund money because my customer service problems have gone on longer than 30 days and because I didn't purchase the machine through their website. Take great care in purchasing a Visioneer product. Dealing with Customer Service can be stressful and totally unrewarding - no money, no machine.
8600 is a defective design 2001-12-02
I have had 2 8600 scanners fail with the same problem. The scanner will stop scanning because it detects the lock is locked eventhough the lock is disabled. Visioneer replaced my first scanner and the replacement failed 9 months later with the same issue. They then would not back up their product.
I recommend buying elsewhere.
One Touch Is Great! 2001-09-16
I love my Visioneer One Touch 8600 Scanner by Visioneer. It's been flawless in operation and produces excellent copies of documents and the OCR feature functions very well.
Disappointed with Visioneer Company 
2001-06-07
The Visioneer OneTouch 8600 Scanner is a collection of impressive machinery in a compact package. With its JPEG Enhanced Technology, the 8600 scans up to twice as fast as many leading SCSI scanners, yet it still produces high quality results, and is easy to use.The 8600 offers a resolution of 600x1200 dpi Optical, while software enhances that to 2400 dpi. With a high-resolution, 36-bit color, a 12-bit grayscale, and a scan area of 8.5x11.69 inches, Visioneer's scanner is versatile enough to handle a large variety of business and personal scanning needs. The top of the scanner even lifts up to allow scanning of books and bound documents. Two new buttons have been added to the collection of 5 buttons originally offered on Visioneer's scanner control panel. Scan and copy easily, and send a scan directly to e-mail, to your word-processor, or to your fax software, each with only one touch of a button. There is also a stop/cancel button, and a custom programmable button that allows you to send scanned pages to one of your preferred applications or devices. Visioneer includes ScannerSuite 2.0 Software in the OneTouch 8600 package. Within ScannerSuite 2.0 are PaperPort Deluxe 6 and TextBridge Pro 8. PaperPort Deluxe 6 facilitates document management on the Local Area Network, while TextBridge Pro 8 allows you to scan text-based documents into a word processor to edit without having to retype them first. PageMirror technology copies your documents exactly as they were, down to fonts, column layouts, and tables. The OneTouch 8600 has both USB and parallel port interfaces. The USB interface works with Windows 98, while the parallel interface works with Windows 98/95, and NT 4.0. Just plug in the scanner to the appropriate interface, and scan away.
A Disappointing Scanner 2000-12-31
Visioneer states that the custom button may be customized to scan to a destination application of your choice. I found no way to add to or change anything in the One Touch premade icon display list of destination applications. This was also true of the Paperport Deluxe software which was included. For example, when I attempted to add Microsoft Picture It, the message on the screen said that if my choice was on the list below, it was supported and I wouldn't need to type in the name. It was on the list. However, the program icon did not appear with the other icons on Paperport's main screen showing scan destinations, and, as with the One Touch software, I could find no way to add it. The booklet that came with the scanner wasn't helpful.
The Textbridge OCR software was supposed to allow scanning into your word processor without the loss of tables or columns. The scans I tried lost both--in both MS Word 97 and MS Word 2000. When scanning to copy/print the tables & columns were retained.
The 8600 showed no advantage over the 6200 model which my husband has (but costs more,)and what's more--the 6200 has a scan mode of 42 bits, while the 8600 has a 36 bit scan mode. Thus, I decided to return the 8600 model.
Excellent Scanner and a great buy 2000-12-26
I love this scanner! This is my first scanner and I am very happy with it. It installed with no problem and scans are a snap. Fast and easy. I havent had any problems with it at all and would highly recommend it to others. Its a great product.
Difficult install 2000-08-16
The Visioneer 8600 proved difficult to install. I had The Visioneer 5300 and liked it very much but after installing the 8600 I wished I had tried the Epson 1200. First the system crashed and I rebooted everything seemed fine until I installed the MGI Photo Suite. It cause my program Second chance to crash and refuse to enter after rebooting. After I took of MGI Photo Suite it worked just fine. I am now downloading updates for both the 8600 driver and MGI Photo suite. I hope it corrects the problem. After scanning my first image I didn't notice any difference in scan quality over my 5300 Visioneer. However the 8600 was much faster probably 3 times as fast. Now if I can just get the rest of the software to work I can tell you how it all runs as a unit.
