Accessories

Lamps goes out, No Microtek repair service. AVOID!
The Microtek 9800XL gives OK scans at a large size. However, as many others note, very often the lamp will go out (I understand it's a hardware problem with the lamp driver board).
Microtek will replace it if you are within the 1 yr. warranty. They will NOT repair it out of warranty. They will helpfully offer you a small discount on a new $1000 scanner.

Let's recap that: I should buy from Microtek because their expensive scanner breaks just out of warranty and they offer no way to fix them. R-i-i-ght.

Please don't waste your money!
I had the exact same problem as many others. Used the thing for 1 year and the bulb died, this was after Very light use. Maybe a dozen or so scans.. very very dissapointing.
We had to have a working scanner though (I work in a university Music Library and faculty need it) so we actually sent the thing in for repair. It cost $300 + shipping to CA and back, and when it came back, it died again in 6 mos.
I'm buying an Epson this time. I won't let the lower price lure me..it's simply not worth the headache.

Microtek is going out of business
I cannot tell you how crumby Microtek is. You must avoid Microtek products like the plague.

I bought this scanner 9800XL for about $1000. After one year, I started getting blurry scans. Microtek's solution? Buy another scanner from us, we don't repair anything.

Now I have upgraded to Leopard. New drivers are only available on Microtek's website, which is perpetually down. I called tech support and
a sleepy girl answered the phone and didn't know anything about computers in general, much less my driver problem. She kept referring to "my website". I said, "What does my website have to do with anything?"

I asked to speak to her supervisor and I got patched into a message that said the supervisor was at home, and to please leave a message.

I wish I could faithfully express how unprofessional this all is.

After my dealings with the Microtek Corporation and manufacturer of mediocre products with zero tech support, I can only conclude and sincerely believe that the Microtek must be run out of a shipping container somewhere in Oakland.

MICROTEK MUST BE GOING OUT OF BUSINESS. Why else would they treat people like this?

Google them if you don't believe me. There are hundreds of threads about how lame Microtek is and how crumby their support is. I have to "rate" this product based on Amazon's review process, so I am giving them one star, but I would give them zero stars if I could...

"The Beast" - hate this scanner
We use this scanner in a professional environment and we have dubbed it "the Beast" because we groan whenever a job requires oversize scans and we actually have to use it. It has the most frustrating and nonsensical user interface I've ever seen. (Just one instance of many - the auto numbering feature cannot be reset except by hitting an up or down button - so if is up to 958 and you want to reset it to 0, you have to go down to 957, 956, etc.) It is extremely slow and also has a LOUD annoying whine while previewing and scanning - don't try to talk on the phone while scanning in the vicinity. The Mac driver has never worked properly - and calling Microtek only resulted in their instructing us to re-load the drivers, so we have to do this every time we use the scanner! The auto correction features seem to be weird, but we can't get the driver to calibrate the scanner, so we have to do all corrections in Photoshop after the fact. We have a $150 Canon scanner that is so far superior to the Microtek; I only wish Canon made an oversize scanner.

It's ALIVE!!!
I recently bought this scanner. As an illustrator, I was tired of chopping up my drawings and scanning them small.

My needs are simple, line art scanned, and this scanner does a BEAUTIFUL job.

Admittedly, I would have purchased the Epson, but I am on a Mac and the Epson in this price range isn't compatible. (Only the $2300 one is. What a scam.) With the guys who say they can fix the issues with it, I went ahead and purchased it.

Like the day I went from my mouse to a WACOM tablet, it's a defining one in my production process.