This is a useful feature and does mean that you can move the scanner between different machines with the minimum of fuss. Acer provides a Quick Start guide to get you up and running, alongside a decent manual for more technical information, and the company also supplies a reasonable selection of software. This includes the ability to switch between transparency and reflective scanning methods depending on the type of item you're scanning. Other software includes Ulead's PhotoExpress for general image editing and FineReader, a surprisingly competent OCR package. In use the 1240UT is relatively quick, but you have to remember to reset the resolution after scanning smaller film documents - an A4 sheet scanned at 1200dpi could well fill up your hard drive.
Image quality is high, with a good level of detail.
Colour rendition is always down to personal perception but the scanner produced well-saturated colours across the board. Default contrast is on the low side but this is correctable in the software and colours tended, if anything, towards the cold end of the spectrum. This is probably preferable to bright vivid colours and does produce a very natural colour scan. There's a lot of competition in this area of the scanner market. Agfa, for example, produces a similar specification machine, although it's limited to 35mm film.