Microtek Is Back in N. America

[Colin Graham]

Have you ever dealt with Epson's voice tech support? It's not wonderful.

I've had good luck with Epson. Usually the issue is resolved with one phone call. Microtek, even when they had operations here, took a dozen emails and three weeks to work out. On two separate occasions, so it wasn't just one bad experience. Hopefully they will have phone support this time around so it won't take a week just to get through the basic troubleshooting.

[Preston]

I've not had any issues with my 1800f scanner. It has been a reliable workhorse. I did have a problem with the Scan Wizard driver that was resolved with a couple of e-mails with MT tech support. I use Siverfast AI these days, and it fills the bill.

When my 1800f finally croaks, I will likely buy an Epson unless Microtek really gets back in the game in a big way. I had a minor issue with my Epson R2400 printer that was quickly resolved through tech support.

-Preston

[Brian_A]

I've had good luck with Epson. Usually the issue is resolved with one phone call. Microtek, even when they had operations here, took a dozen emails and three weeks to work out. On two separate occasions, so it wasn't just one bad experience. Hopefully they will have phone support this time around so it won't take a week just to get through the basic troubleshooting.

Wish I had your luck, Colin. The person I was talking to almost seemed like he had no idea what an Epson V750 was and did.

[Greg Blank]

I really wanted to like the 1800f but Microteks support was horrible and after the third defective shipping damaged replacement I gave up. They had lots of problem with internal carriage getting jarred.

On the advice of experts, I purchased an 1800F for my 4x5 scanning a number of years ago and as a sample of one, it has worked well, it's solidly built and has the significant (?) advantage of having no glass in the scanning pathway as I believe does the M1. Were it to die, however, I am pretty sure I'd replace it with an Epson V7xx. An awful lot of photographers whose work I admire are happy with the Epson, it has a huge installed base and the company has been around and will likely be around for a while, at least in the printer business. I suspect there will not be a lot of hardware development in the scanner business. Film is becoming a niche marketplace.