Tech Insider: David Wolfgang-Kimball

If you spend a lot of time on the Internet, sooner or later you'll want to have a scanner to digitize your photographs or papers so that they can be shared with your family, friends, and associates.

Until recently, this meant plopping down a large amount of money for marginally capable equipment. The good news of late is that even in the world of computer hardware, where prices continually fall and power and quality continually rise, scanners stand out as a peripheral that has become far less expensive and far more functional, enabling most computer owners to afford one. Many inexpensive yet capable scanners can now be found for under $100, and a top-of-the-line machine can cost over $2,000.

When shopping for a scanner, the range of choices and options can be bewildering--a morass of obscure specifications and arcane terminology. TWAIN, for instance, provides a humorous example--it stands for Technology Without an Interesting Name, and it is the language that many scanners use to communicate with the computer to which they are attached.

Below, we look at five of the most crucial scanner features you should understand and hopefully make some sense of the terminology, too.

Resolution
Bit (or Color) Depth
Software
Form Factor
Interface

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