Bundled Software

Before I cover software, I will briefly say that the install is a breeze and should not be a problem at all.  However, while their software does instruct you to ensure that the printer is one and connected prior to installing drivers, I have always recommended that you install the drivers prior to turning your printer on.  This resolves many install issues under different system settings.

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After years of owning a number of similar products, I will honestly say that the software itself is what will make or break a product.  This especially applies to scanning support.  Most products in this class come with bloatware, most of which are more annoying and troublesome than useful.  Samsung manages to include a simple yet fairly feature-rich application they call "SmarThru".  What you see in the screenshot above is what you get.  It may not look like much, but is indeed loaded with all the features most would take advantage of.  The software is quite good but I discovered one minor but highly annoying issue with it when using it on a Vista machine.  Let's cover its features in detail before we get to that though...

The main application consists of four main menus.  They are Scan, Image, Copy and Print.  Each will be covered here but let's first begin with the most useful and what I personally think is the most important, the scan options and features.

Scan Menu

I always highly recommend a pre-scan before actually scanning any document, image or other source.  While Samsung's SmarThru Software oddly jumps straight to scanning by default, you can tab back to the pre-scan menu.  Like a very unique and impressive visual hardware look at any scan that I will demonstrate later, the software also provides a live status of the whole scanning process from beginning to end.  The scan options are excellent and they cover just about everything you would be looking for.  The first option is to scan directly to an application.  A couple are preset for you already but you can add just about any executable file supporting the document you are scanning.  This is great for advanced image editing users looking to easily transfer them to your favorite program such as PhotoShop.

The next scan option available is Email.  From here, you can conveniently give the scan a name, choose the desired format and most importantly, choose the size of the image.  Upon entering your desired settings, hitting the scan button will automatically load and attach your image and/or document on a new message composition window.  This actually works extremely well and a feature that novice users will take full advantage of.  The next option is to scan directly to your hard drive, allowing you to choose the destination and/or folder and format of choice.  One important thing to note here is the image quality choices.  While the printer itself will scan images at 24-bit True Color, you actually have the option of saving an image in 32-bit from only this menu.  Now, I scanned a number of images during testing and while most will not notice any difference at all between the two, there were some scans where the quality was slightly noticeable when comparing them in Photoshop. 

Moving on, you also have OCR capabilities built-in, which is always nice.  From here, you can set the file name and file format of choice.  We will test its OCR accuracy with text documents in the next section.  The final option is a web menu that will allow you to actually scan directly to your web server.  Personally, I wouldn't use this feature, but for some, it may be convenient.

Image Menu

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Not much to brag about the Image Menu and personally not one I would use.  However, Samsung does include a built-in image editing tool for novice users looking to tweak their photos and/or scans a bit...

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From the Image Manager, you can simply double click on any image and it will load it in the built-in editor.  For what it is, it does have a respectable amount of features, including those of which would be most useful.  This includes brightness, contrast and color levels.  You also have a couple of basic effects such as blur and sharpness.  As far as other features go, the one most would probably make use of is the button on the top menu bar for red eye.  It works fairly well.  In addition, you have a mosaic tool and a button oddly labeled as "Makeup", which will basically function just like the Eyedropper tool in Photoshop.  You can also add text to your scanned images and crop or size them to your liking.  Again, very basic features most would use.

The last two main menus are Copy and Print.  I will only briefly cover both because I just don't see why anyone would use them.  Both menus have a "quick" submenu, allowing you to quickly perform each task without any extra options.  However, copying can be done via the excellent touch panel on the printer and don't see why you need to copy via the software itself.  As far as printing goes, it does have some nice paper layouts that would definitely be useful if you were printing pictures.  However, since it is a monochrome printer, the aren't really useful.

Software Settings

Each of the main menu options have their own settings submenu.  However, the SCX-4500 doesn't offer much here, especially when compared to other scanners or MFC products on the market.  With that said, I will only cover some of the main options here considering it doesn't really offer much to begin with. 

At first, I was appalled by the lack of scan settings available.  The reason for this is because I have used only Microtek Scanners, which come bundled with their excellent ScanWizard Software.  This scan tool, especially the old-school version, have built-in scan filters in place that actually do significantly make a difference when scanning certain types of documents or images, such as a magazine filter for magazine scans that works extremely well.  Now, while the Samsung SCX-4500 has no on-the-fly filters via software, I quickly found that all is done from the scan engine itself.  On the email settings though, you can actually specify the maximum attachment size for those who can't receive large attachments. 

Smart Panel Software

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Now, if there was one area that did frustrate me highly and took way too much of my time, it's the result of this particular optional application.  Note the emphasis on the word "optional" because you'll really want to take note of this to avoid what I went through. 

Another nice thing about the Samsung SCX-4500 is that "Scan to PC" button on the printer/scanner itself.  However, what most will quickly find is that this touch-sensitive button will do absolutely nothing, regardless of what measures you take to ensure its functionality and whether you have loaded all bundled software.  In fact, I'm one who never installs from bundled discs and go directly online to grab the latest drivers and software.  After installation, I still couldn't activate this button, regardless of all extreme measures taken.  After wasting a considerable amount of time, I decided to uninstall the downloaded software and just load the complete software suite bundled with the product.  To my surprise, this still did not solve the problem.  Even manually browsing the disc for subfolders with executable files did not yield success.

It turned out that both the latest downloaded software and the bundled disc itself did not include a utility called "Smart Panel".  In fact, if you go to their website to attempt to download their updated software, it is not even listed.  What you need to do is go back to their driver tab on their website and scroll all the way to the bottom of the page.  It is here where you'll find the application.  Why the hell they didn't incorporate this in the driver install or even failed to include it as a separate installation on the bundled software CD is beyond me.  Just doesn't make any sense at all.

Now, frustrations aside, let's cover this sys tray utility in detail.  Basically, this is the tool that will show toner status and where you have plenty of settings for both the printer and driver. 

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The Printer Settings menu has some settings you'll already have access to from the main SmarThru application.

The Driver Settings menu is where you'll find some neat stuff.  You have your common layout and paper options but two particular tabs offer some useful settings.  The first the the Graphic Tab, which allows you to set the print darkness and even set it to Toner Save mode.  This mode actually works quite well with some high end laser printers, but you'll have to test it out to see if it is to your liking.  The Extras Tab has one neat feature for watermarking printed documents.  You can choose from a few listed or edit one to your liking.  A useful feature for business users.

Finally, I'd like to end with some comments regarding the software itself.  While I can confirm it installs and works as it should on both Windows XP and Windows Vista, there's one slightly annoying issue with their proprietary SmarThru software.

When you open the SmarThru 4 application and attempt to click any of the available main tabs to get to the settings and actions, there's quite a delay for this to happen.  At first, I thought it was solely a connectivity issue.  However, the result is due to a delay in activating the device for such use.  While the delay was slightly longer on a Vista machine, it was still an issue in WinXP as well.  Installing the latest drivers and software did not improve this in any way.  You'll just have to wait several seconds.

Next:  Performance