Sharp images are everything when you're dealing with film scanners. The Polaroid SprintScan 45, a multiformat film scanner, handles all your images at high resolution, whether they're color slides and negatives from 35mm to 4 by 5 inches in size, or transparencies.

The SprintScan 45 can capture 24-bit color images sampled at 12 bits per color with up to 2000x4000dpi optical resolution in a single pass. The unit automatically corrects and sharpens fine details to produce cleaner images. The SprintScan is compatible with the standard SCSI-2 interface and ships with an Adobe Photoshop plug-in module. It provides 4,096 shades each of red, green and blue for more than 69 billion true colors.

The scanner comes with five accessory film holders: single and four-at-a-time 35mm holders, plus 6-by6-centimeter, 6-by-7cm and 4-by-5-inch holders.

$9,995
Polaroid Corp.
800-816-2611 x509, 716-256-4436 x509

If your business involves printing slides, photos and negatives, you need a big-shot scanner. Lack of desktop space and a small budget are no excuses to be without one. The 600dpi Canon CanoScan 600 flatbed scanner achieves an enhanced interpolated resolution of 2400dpi. It operates in 30-bit color (256 levels) and either 8-bit (256 levels) or 4-bit (16 levels) gray-scale modes. The CanoScan 600 scans a color page in 60 seconds at 400dpi and monochrome in 15 seconds. It performs RGB masking, negative-positive reversal and mirror images.

For home use, the 300dpi Canon CanoScan 300 scans at 1200dpi enhanced resolution and a 24-bit color mode.

CanoScan 600, $899 (street); 300, $449 (street)
Canon Computer Systems
800-848-4123, 714-438-3000

The Ultima Artec ViewStation AT3 24-bit, single-pass, true-color flatbed scanner with a 64KB internal cache memory can scan at 4800dpi and deliver images of up to 16.8 million colors. Its long-life cold cathode fluorescent lamp lasts longer than traditional hot cathode lamps. Because of the AT3's SCSI-2 interface, it can work with both PCs and Macs. Bundled software includes PhotoStacker Pro, Wordlinx OCR and the MediaHouse file manager.

$369 (street)
Ultima International
510-659-1580, fax 510-440-1216

Is the mouse as we know it an endangered species? Not really, but you're no longer stuck with one if you don't like it. The Kensington Mouse in a Box is a two-button device you might find more comfortable to hold and use. You can use the mouse if you're left-handed or right-handed, and it works with existing mouse drivers.

$29.99 (street)
Kensington Technology Group
800-535-4242, 415-572-2700

The Canon PowerShot 600 digital camera looks like a film camera and works much the same way. It delivers 24-bit color or 8-bit high-resolution monochrome images, and stores up to 18 images in internal memory, 72 in an optional 4MB flash memory PC Card and 480 in an optional 170MB hard disk PC Card. The camera weighs 14 ounces without batteries and the PC Card.

$949 (street)
Canon Computer Systems
800-848-4123, 714-438-3000

The Leadtek WinFast S250V+MPEG graphics and video accelerator card includes an MPEG decoder built into the PC board. The card speeds applications for PCs with 32-bit PCI local-bus compatibility. It's based on the S3 Trio 64V+ 64-bit controller chip.

$199 (direct)
Leadtek USA
510-490-8076, fax 510-490-7759