Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Its difficult to find comparison specs between some of the new CanoScans. After looking at both the 4400F and 8600F, besides the 8600F's ability to scan medium-format negatives and being bundled with a lite version of Photoshop, the 8600 is also simply a more heavy duty machine. A significant difference is the lid. The 8600 has metal hinges and adjusts vertically on metal supports. It will also stay open through 90 deg of motion. The 4400 has a plastic hinge. To accomodate books or thick materials, it has a "break-away" articulating hinge-- when you place something of thickness like a book on the flatbed the lid hinge snaps open to accomodate the item. The 4400 hinge will not stay open on its own. Both lids are rather heavy and solid (the 8600's more so) which is nice if you scan books or things that need to lie flat. But since the 4400's hinge is all plastic and has a small piece of plastic that locks the articulating or adjusting part of the hinge, it does not really seem to lend itself to lots of book scans. It seems like this latch or lock will eventually break; as is, it sounds like its breaking each time it snaps open to accomodate a book. (Since I make a lot of book scans I decided that the 8600 was better for this, because of its lid's adjustment and hinge construction and because of its heavy lid, despite the extra money. If I was typically scanning from photocopies or thin origins, the 4400 would have been fine.) A last thing about the lid construction: the 8600 also has a heavy-duty cable to power the light in the lid, while the 4400 provides power to the lid by a thin tape cable that is visible in the hinge and seems somewhat vulnerable to heavy use. Otherwise these scanners seem to have the same technology, with the except of FARE (film automatic retouching and enhancement) scratch and dust reduction filter on the 8600. The CanoScan Toolbox software works well. Both have programmable buttons which allow for semi-automated scanning. The multiple-page PDF scanning is great. (This was one of the main reasons that I bought one of these scanners.) As to speed, although the scans are fast when they get going, it takes some time for the scan to actually get going. (How this compares to other scanners I can't say.) A last feature is that the 8600 has an on/off switch, which the 4400 does not. All in all, although the 8600 is billed as a scanner for photography professionals, it has some features that make it attractive to anyone who does a lot of scanning.