Low-cost is, in this case, a relative term. The CanoScan FB310 is not as cheap as some of its rivals, but is certainly one of the least expensive scanners that Canon has ever made. Inevitably, that means some sacrifices have been made, but fortunately not in the area of build quality, which is pretty high. Rather than connecting to a high-speed SCSI adapter, as is the case with more expensive scanners, the CanoScan FB310 uses the parallel port. There is an extra port at the rear of the scanner for the connection of a printer, which most users will require.
Power is drawn from the mains via a two-pin lead.
The actual colour scanning process occurs in 30-bit mode, to provide extra accuracy. Physically smaller than some flatbed scanners, and larger than others, the CanoScan FB310 has a scanning area that's just slightly larger than A4, and has a removable lid that will be useful for scanning items such as pages from an open book. If you don't already have such an application, the copy of U-Lead iPhoto Express is a competent enough image editing package, while Caere Omnipage LE will suffice for basic OCR work. For more advanced document recognition, however, a more professional software package will be essential. Verdict This scanner's output quality is undoubtedly good, as is its build quality.