SHOWING IT's TRUE COLOURS 
 
The Migraph ColorBurst Colour hand scanner is not cheap, even though it has come down £100 
recently (See Key Facts section), so the question on every Falcon owners lips is "What do you get for 
your money ?". 
 
Upon opening the package, you will find enclosed the following items: 
 
	ColorBurst Colour Hand Scanner 
	Scanner Interface & Falcon Adapter 
	Power Supply 
	ColorKit Software & Manual 
	Scanning Guide (included free with my package) 
 
STURDY 
 
After examining the hardware (which certainly seems sturdy enough), it was time to install the 
software onto my hard disk. The software itself comes on one double sided floppy disk (Why not High 
Density c/w sample graphics files ?), and after a quick look at the manual there is no installation 
program supplied (even though they recommend the use of a hard drive). I have to admit, the software 
was easy enough to install;
 
	i.e.	i.	create folder on the hard drive partition 
		ii.	copy ColorKit.PRG & COLR_TC.PRG from the master disk into the new 
			folder. 
 
Maybes I am being a little pedantic, but I can't understand why software producers don't spend the 
extra time writing a simple installation program to help the inexperienced users. 
The manual itself is a 49 page A5 booklet, fairly well structured c/w an index (thank goodness). For 
the impatient users, (myself included), the manual also includes a quick start tutorial, which again, I 
feel is essential with this type of kit, after all nobody wants to read a manual thoroughly, no matter 
how short, before seeing the results of their hard earned investment. 
 
SIMPLISTIC 
 
Upon booting the software, I felt a bit cheated. This is mainly due to the simplicity of the program 
both in features and user interface. Yes, it is simple enough to scan an image fairly quickly, but after a 
couple of scans you start thinking of all the other features that could have been included, or maybes I 
was spoilt by using Touch-Up and Merge-It software with my old £109 greyscale hand held scanner. 
 
There are two versions of the software, as can be seen from the installation routine. The standard 
version of ColrKit (COLORKIT.PRG) can be used for all types of scans, colour, greyscale and 
monochrome. ColorKit can scan and save the same images that the TC (true colour) version can, not 
all of the colours can be displayed because of the 256 colour screen limitation. This version is the one 
recommended by Migraph to use whilst running under MultiTos because of the higher resolution 
available. 
 
TRUE COLOUR 
 
ColorKit TC (COLR_TC.PRG) utilises the True Colour mode of the Falcon and offers two advantages 
over the standard ColorKit. First, in TC mode, it can display over 65,000 of the quarter of million 
colours that the scanner picks up. Second, the colour scan is displayed instantly, so there is no waiting 
whilst the program builds the optimised screen display. However, this version may not be used for 
greyscale or monochrome scans due to the lower resolution of the True Colour video mode. 
 



AMAZED 
 
The very first scan that I tried was a normal size photograph of my two daughters and I was pleasantly 
amazed at the quality of the scan (within 5 minutes of booting up the software). 
 
VERDICT 
 
The ColorBurst scanner looks good initially and actually improves with use. The results that can be 
expected are of a high quality and even though it's not cheap, it is a welcome addition to any Falcon 
owners collection, and vital to anybody interested in the graphics side of the Falcon. So whether you 
need to scan images for video, multimedia, DTP, clip art, OCR, the ColorBurst is capable of the 
required resolution. 
 
KEY FACTS 
Product		ColorBurst Scanner 
Company		Migraph 
Contact		xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
 
SYSTEM 
Minimum Memory	4Mb 
Resolution	Any (see review) 
Computer	Falcon (Hard Disk Recommended) 
 
PRICE 
£299		Gasteiner, Compo