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Searching for a Decent Scanner?
Stumped about Scanners asks: "My little sister's scanner is acting up, so she's in the market for a new one. However, the software she wishes to use it with (some funkadelic 'music OCR' thing that lets you scan sheet music and transforms it automagically into MIDI files) claims that it doesn't work too well with HP scanners. And, truth be told, I've never known much about which scanners are good and which are crap. So, which scanners lately are decent? Which are crap? I know that DPI matters very little (just like it does in printers)-- it's quality that matters. Could the SlashDot community provide some info on which scanners (some from HP and some not from HP) are decent? Are there any quasi-reputable sites (a la Tom's Hardware?) that have reviews on such things?"
Just remember: "TWAIN" not "WIA" not "All-in-one"
what? what I thought we were in the trust tree in the nest, were we not?
HP tend to be very easy to hook up, and integrate well with Windows. Aside from that, I can't help you.
And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
...One old ACER (A4) and it still works. I bought it for 50 bucks 4 years ago :)
sex is better than war!
Actually, All-in-one's are still sitting on and old reputation from when there were alot of crappy ones that liked to crap out after a year.
But now a days, plenty of companies make all in ones that are really nice pieces of equipment.... I'd specifically mention HP & Canon in this category myself... the laser ones anyway, no experience with the inkjet ones.
What is so wrong with using Google to find an answer?
for a second there, I thought you meant frequency scanner. Not image scanner :P
Not on topic, but I can't be the only one!
Which ones are well-supported by SANE, so us Linux (etc.) users can use it?
I generally find that the models on the shelf in CompUSA and the like are not supported by SANE (at least the ones that are on the less expensive end). Meanwhile, the ones that SANE says they support are all more than a month or two old. I don't know why so much of the computer industry feels the need to put out a new model number with essentially the same functionality every couple of months, but printers and scanners in particular seem to suffer from that. It makes it difficult for those of us using free drivers to keep up with.
What's a good, low-end, *current* scanner that you can get that works with SANE?
-Rob
For my money, I'd make sure it was SANE compatible. Screw TWAIN.
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
AFAIK the quality is top, the price correct, and it plays very nice with any OS (espacially p'n'p under linux with xsane).
aurelien
I don't know what sort of price range you are looking at, but as far as semi-professional scanners go, I use a Kodak i60 and it does a bang-up job in relatively high usage situations (ie 500-1000 sheets per day). It's pricey, though.
... do you want to run it on linux ?
Plastic & Metal. Is this sh*t worth livin' 4?
Is diz sh*t worth dyin' 4?
TWAIN... that's got to be the funniest acronym ever for something mainstream
Technology
Without
An
Interesting
Name
I have a Microtek 6800 and a Fujitsu grayscale duplex scanner right now. I've owned Umax too and helped install HP scanners for others.
Epson and Microtek are probably the best 100-400 scanners. You get what you pay for if you go less than that.
I don't like Epson's drivers. They didn't give me as much control over the scan as the Microtek ones do. The Microtek drivers have a few annoyances, but are full-featured.
Overall, for a good average user, a $150 scanner from Microtek or Epson would be a good investment.
Don't steal. The government hates competition.
the first one where that dude's head explodes!
Are there any quasi-reputable sites (a la Tom's Hardware?) that have reviews on such things?
c ategory=consumer&words=scanner
e x.html
Well, Tom's Hardware does have some scanner reviews. Although I don't know if they have the detail you're looking for:
http://www17.tomshardware.com/search/search.html?
http://www.tomshardware.com/consumer/20020327/ind
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Stay away from UMAX. They have horrible support issues in that they obsolete support on scanners that are still being sold. HP products aren't as good as they used to be. Canon is the best buy for you money. I have had 2 Umax and 2 HP scanners but the one Cannon I bought has lasted longer, been more reliable and accurate than any other. They have a good line that only needs a USB cable and no external power supply which makes it the easiest to hookup.
Athiesm is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
Save yourself time and money. Get a good keyboard, synth module, and a sequencer and do it that way. Scanning it to midi just doesn't ever work right.
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
I happen to be very happy with most of HP's products. They make some inexpensive scanners that work very well for OCR and music OCR scanning. My little brother and his music classes used $79 HP scanners with music OCR software on handwritten sheets and it worked great.
I would think that it is more the OCR software that would have more of an impact on the quality of the output of music to the computer.
Just my 2 pennies.
I'm happy with my LIDE 20 from Canon. It's not high-res, but it's teeny and powered from the USB cable so you can easily store it when you're not using it. It's also lasted a lot longer than the old scanner I had (a HP 3400 that died after only a year.)
Comment of the year
If you go HP and install their scanner software, make sure you do not have My Computer in the Start Menu. I wasted several hours a few days ago trying to figure why when I tried to scan a document the floppy would start thrashing or it was start scanning my hard drive.
The HP website and tech support was no help for figuring out the problem. Ironically the solution was on HP's website, but it took a google search to find it.
It is some issue about the software wanting to scan your start menu or something.
I bought a random $50 scanner at OfficeMax. I use it with Finale (quite possibly the same thing that your sister is using). Works swell. For OCR, you don't need to go nuts.
--I'm so big, my sig has its own sig.
-- See?
My little sister is acting up, too. And I'm looking for a new one as well.
bp
...I'd suggest a scanner that doesn't run exclusively on Windows, but one that is compatible with the SANE API (in case you can turn your sister from the dark side.)
I've never gone wrong with canon products - I often heavily researched which camera and which printer to get, and ended up getting Canon both times. When I wanted to get a scanner, I went straight to Canon, and have not been disappointed.
Combining my US$100 Canon scanner (cant remember the specific model; think it was a 4200F) and my Canon Pixma iP5000 printer (US$200), I can copy printed material and get very good reproductions.
If you want to go cheaper, they have a good selection of Photo scanners from $50 to $80.
If you have one of a few supported Canon printer models, you can get a 'scanner' cartridge that turns your printer into a sheet-feed scanner.
Hunt your preferred prey at Aliens vs Predator MUD. Join the war at avpmud.com port 4000
I use the cheapest Canon scanner available. Admittedly I typically scan in black and white or grayscale so I get pretty good speeds, but even the colour scans are pretty quick up to about 300dpi. It captures the lineart of my comics nice and sharply, and the few times I've used OCR it's worked pretty well with only a few mistakes that mostly stemmed from the original document. For light users a cheap scanner usually suffices nowadays, and Canons get my vote.
Umax used to be some of the best scanners around.
My last Umax scanner (with both USB & SCSI connections) was fantastic until XP came out. Then >boom, no free driver support. You can get a driver but it costs you $20 to order a CD from their website. No download version of it either.
I still have the Umax scanner on a shelf,waiting for them to release a free driver, but I'd only buy HP at this point.
If you have a digital camera, try that instead. Many digital cameras, even middle-of-the-line ones like a Powershot S400 or similar, are perfectly good replacements for document scanners, and normally much, much faster.
Ahh, TWAIN...
Technology without an interesting name...
Mods and Editors. Driving /. into the ground, one day at a time...
Ocean is land, covered with water.
Uh, can somebody explain to me why they consider all-in-oners not to be TWAIN compatible? TWAIN is after all a software protocol, and my wife's Epson scanner/printer/copier/fax seems to be TWAIN compatible (in that I can hook up to it's driver as a TWAIN source in Paint Shop Pro and get a picture back).
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
You will get better quality from CCD sensors than CMOS ones, all other things being equal.
h tm
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/question362.
I have a friend who has a load of documents to scan and he wants to be able to feed them into a scanner and have them just go.
I'd also like the ability to link an image of a bill to a line in Quicken or Money so I don' thave to store the original paper forever. Any ideas there?
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
the Radio Shack Pro-89.
I can easily program all of my favorite drivers in in no time. But the Bearcats can be programmed for you at the track at the Race-Scan trucks.
This
They are TWAIN compatible, have excellent quality and good software (TWAIN driver interface is nice too). Plus, they have models that aren't too pricey.
As a bonus, the 3170 I have (since disco'ed - but new ones are similar) actually do very well at scanning Negatives/Slides. I have a $2,500 dedicated slide scanner from some years back, and my Epson flatbed give me better quality - something I did NOT expect.
Hope that helps, trust me - you won't be disappointed.
DAMN YOU OCTODOG! DAMN YOU TO HELL!
Quote: I know that DPI matters very little (just like it does in printers)-- it's quality that matters.
Well, you know wrong.
DPI is to all intents and purposes, the same as "resolution" which is not something you do at New Years.
If you want to scan something, the more of it's surface you can scan, the better.
So yeah, I'd say it DOES matter.
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
I don't know anything about current models, and largely it will depend upon your sister's needs, budget, and limitations.
Here are a couple of sites to get you started: http://www.viewz.com/shoppingguide/scanner.shtml (not my favorite, but it's alright as far as learning the very basics. You just have to realize the site is aimed towards mom-and-pop).
here's the wikipedia entry:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_scanner
Not any info on specific scanners in either of these, but should be a good jumping-off point to understanding the benchmarks.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
See thru top, small, light, cheap, reasonable quality. One of the cool things is you can scan 'anything'. If needed, you can flip it over or lift it up and scan the side of your face. Or any other 3D object.
Labels for the front edge buttons are printed on both faces of the lid.
I have an epson scanner, like the poster above, and it works great. I also have an excellent epson printer from way back when.
But don't buy HP. Although their big time commercial offerings may be good, because of having compaq and Digital Research, their consumer product line sucks and breaks. More or less disposable too, because its too expensive to fix, owners of older pavilion desktops know about the horrible motherboards they had, I'd guess they still do.
Anyway, DON'T BUY HP!!
What I'd like to find is a scanner that will do 8.5x14" paper. They could be found back before the scanner wars, when they were all SCSI and cost $1200 and up.
I haven't seen one in years. My company once had a very pricy HP scanner that had a document feeder. Even that one wouldn't scan 14" paper. It only got the first 12" or so and tried to do the rest as a separate sheet.
These people looked deep into my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined.
and can do color or black and white copies without ;)
the computer being turned on. Well, who turns off
their computer anyway?
-- Programming with boost is like building a house with lego. It's a cool but I wouldn't want to live in it
Check out some good all in ones because u r paying close to that for a good scanner and just get high DPI and also look at the other measurements.
Or, put another way, why can't people coming up with names for new software technologies at least do a quick google search to make sure they aren't already using a fairly well-known acronym? Sheesh.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I haven't kept up with the "state of the art" scanners. I still have a pretty old AGFA SNAPSCAN TOUCH scanner that I really need to replace.
...
So what I need is something with larger dimensions, because I have a lot of artwork that is bigger than a regular sheet of paper. I wonder if there's a good set of "oversized" scanners that are not too expensive to buy
- sigs are for wimps.
While it's expensive (~$1000 USD) this is IMHO a great scanner. I know the article author is probably looking for something more moderately priced but for small business it's a great unit. I have many dental office clients that use it daily to scan xrays (you can get a full-sized transparency adapter for film negatives) for storage/EDI transmission and I've never had any complaints or defects.
Please stop APK.. you're only hurting yourself.
- One cable, USB. That's it. No power cable!
- The buttons on the scanner require no background processes running!
I didn't need anything other than basic scanning, and wanted a simple no hassle unit. I just can't get over how I can use the buttons on the front of the scanner and don't need extra software installed and running in the background to use them. And you can't beat just one wire coming out of the thing.I'll second the reccomendation for an Epson scanner. Having purchased two of them for a team of catalog designers, I can tell you they are very reliable and produce a good quality scan. Compatibility with both Mac and Windows platforms has not been an issue, although I haven't had the luxury of trying them with a Linux box. In my experience, the 2400u and 1200u have been great products, but I'm sure by now the quality has only improved.
As the parent mentioned, TWAIN is of utmost importance if you want the scanner to work with most third party software.
If quality of advice was based on frequency of giving, "google it" would be the best advice ever given.
I don't see any problem with HPs. As someone else said, get a dedicated scanner - not an all in one unit. And TWAIN is the way to go. It's a standard that's been around for a while, while WIA is a fairly new, windows-only thing. I've had a 5300c for years and love it. If you're using the built-in utilities, just remember to override the standard resolution and click the "rescan for higher resolutions" (or something like that) button. Otherwise, it doesn't rescan, and gives you the 150dpi preview as your final image. I do occasionally have trouble when I haven't used the 5300c for a while. It seems to go to sleep and not want to wake up. So I always unplug the power when i'm done and plug it back in when i'm ready to use it. I'm a graphic designer and i've had a few bad experiences, so based on those, I would NOT recommend visioneer, microtek or mustek scanners. I have a canon canoscan at work that's pretty good.
The word TWAIN is from Kipling's "The Ballad of East and West" - "...and never the twain shall meet...", reflecting the difficulty, at the time, of connecting scanners and personal computers. It was up-cased to TWAIN to make it more distinctive. This led people to believe it was an acronym, and then to a contest to come up with an expansion. None were selected, but the entry "Technology Without An Interesting Name" continues to haunt the standard. "
did your sister go to band camp? what instrument does she play? flute?
/me is afk
One non-obvious place to read about scanners is the forum at http://www.pgdp.org/ (distributed proofreading for project Gutenberg).
I've had my Canon CanoScan N650U for a few years now, and have had exactly zero problems with it. Plug in the USB cable, install the software, push the button on the front, and Photoshop pops up with the scan dialog. Works great with xsane too.
They're a little older, so you can probably pick one up for like $20 now.
the coolest club on
I don't know if your sister is using that particular software package, but Musitek, who makes such software, has a list of recommended and not-so-recommended scanners plus some scanning hints on their site.
http://www.musitek.com/ScannerComp.html
Look! No sig!
I have installed numerous scanners and have always enjoyed success with Epson scanners.
The work great with OCR software, produce wire fine scans of diagrams and images and render color photographs well - even the $100 scanners provide excellent quality scans.
I have found the tiny tinny low profile Canon scanners to be delicate and occasionally tempermental.
Epson for price, quality of scan and quality of hardware. Works great with Linux and Windows (probably Mac as well).
Brian
Canon makes some excellent scanners. Bucking the trend of "Made in China", most of Canon's products are "Made in Vietnam".
Last December I purchased a standalone Canon LiDE line scanner. It is a small flatbed which works great with Windows via USB connection. The color reproduction is excellent. The driver shows it as a TWAIN source in all of my software which supports TWAIN. I have not tried with Linux or any other OS but I'm happy with the purchase.
Nice sig.
I'm a pianist, and I've tried using several different "Music OCR" things. None of them work well enough to save any time. It's always faster to just sightread the music while playing on a MIDI keyboard.
Maybe sis should spend less time playing on her computer and more time practicing her sight reading!
Best Buy can have you arrested
This software has to use TWAIN compatible scanners and the latest HP scanners are really WIA devices that support TWAIN as well (probably through some WAITWAIN interface). She's also probably a Sibelius user (it even includes PhotoScore Pro)
Epson scanners are really the way to go. Most of the scan engines are very similar and produce mostly similar results. Any high end HP/Canon/Epson will produce great results, though if she has "problems" with some of the music she scans in she may need to look at the higher-end scanners.
Interface is part of the problem as well. Virtually all scanners are USB1.1/2 except for highend scanners that support SCSI, Firewire or both. If she has a FireWire port, I would highly recommend she use this as it doesn't require a card like SCSI and is MUCH better than trying to work out one of a bunch of USB devices. The Epson Expression series of scanners work very well. And I can speak personally about the Epson Expression 10000XL.
They're nice machines, but mine only lasted about a year and half (maybe two years). After which it needed a scanner bulb replacement and HP didn't offer the part for sale. Rather, one had to purchase the whole scanner assembly in order to fix the multifunction device. Worse, not even the print function works when the device reports a scanner error.
Prior to this meltdown, I was pretty pleased with the unit. Getting it to play nice with OS X Panther was a royal bear, but that problem was fixed by the time that Panther had been out about a year.
I wanted to buy one of the Canon or Samsung models to replace it, but neither offered OS X drivers for their multifunction devices. If I didn't have such a limited amount of space, I would have bought a separate printer, copier, and scanner. Separately, they wouldn't have had much of a premium over all-in-one units.
I ended up buying another HP. Unless you want to spend a couple thousand on industrial grade machines, they're pretty much the only game in town for laser all-in-ones for OS X.
Dear Ask Slashdot, I have a report for school. Where can I find pictures of dinosaurs?
sheesh this place is getting lame....
I picked up one of HP's multifunction PSC1315 print/scan/fax jobs (USB). Running FC3, the scanner Just Worked. Without doing anything beyond plugging it in and turning it on, it showed up in Gimp's acquire/scan dialog and successfully scanned images.
Can't speak about the quality, though. I don't really have any references. But it is nice to be able to copy stuff w/o running to the copy shop. And all in the same space as my previous HP inkjet.
The print function wasn't quite as easy to set up. There was a PSC1310 in FC3's printer list, which supposedly workd with the PSC1315. But I just went ahead and downloaded the PPD for the 1315 and told FC3 to use that. (Not much different than installing a driver on Windows.) Works well.
-Uberhund
...thing is and search for that along with scanner in google. You may find that that function is only available on an older machine.
Then be prepared to buy it over the internet. Usually I HATE buying heavy items over the internet because the freight kills you. Try tigerdirect.com if you live in California. They don't charge tax and what you save there may pay for the freight.
Good luck.
We have always been at war with Eurasia!
Has anyone had good luck with scanning slightly larger things at Kinko's or whatever? I have a few oversized jazz band photos that I think are just a tad bigger than my 8.5*11 oriented flatbed can handle, and I'd rather not do it in sections and hope it comes together...any specific chain (or single place in the burbs of Boston) people would suggest?
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
The best flatbend scanner on the market actually are the Epson 4990
Ceci n'est pas une Signature !
If your sister's main need is musical optical character recognition, then you need to ask the company that makes the musical recognation software! Don't bother with recommendations from Slashdot readers.
Most likely it's Neuratron Photoscore
http://www.neuratron.com/
Their FAQ says the following:
Which scanners work best with PhotoScore?
Windows
Most scanners are suitable, although ones supplied with WIA drivers are recommended since you will then be able to use the Automatic and PhotoScore interfaces in PhotoScore 4 (if you have Windows Me/XP). The latest Epson (e.g. Perfection series) and HP (e.g. ScanJet series) scanners generally work very well.
If you need to scan oversized scores, Mustek's A3 USB scanner is very well priced.
Mac OS X
It is advisable that the scanner is supplied with a Mac OS X TWAIN driver (a classic TWAIN driver will not do), otherwise you will not be able to scan directly into PhotoScore (although you can still scan and save suitable TIFF files using your scanner's software, which PhotoScore can then open). Unfortunately many scanners are not supplied with these. We recommend in particular Epson (e.g. Perfection series) scanners as these also work with the Automatic and PhotoScore scanning interfaces (v4 only). Please note, there appear to be some compatibility issues between Epson drivers and Mac OS X 10.4 with regards to use of the Automatic and PhotoScore interfaces (although the TWAIN interface should still function with no problems).
If you need to scan oversized scores, Mustek's A3 USB scanner is very well priced.
There is a lot of marketing hype in the scanner industry. Even HP (which makes the best consumer grade scanners regardless of what that ignorant software claims) has been using this tactic to compete with the other brands.
Pay attention only to the optical resolution. The resolution claimed by the marketroids will just be the bogus interpolated resolution.
Ignore whether the scanner is 36 or 48 bits. There is no such thing. Graphic files can be at the most 24 bits (unless someone has invented a new file format) so anything more is just more marketing hype.
Basically, check the optical resolution and the smoothness and speed of scanning. Try some out at your local big box store.
I have a Canon LiDE 30 that I picked up for work (scanning patent documents). It's light, quiet, cheap (cost me $70), relatively quick, and draws power over the USB connection so it uses only that one cable. I use it primarily for black-and-white and greyscale images, but it's done color very nicely as well.
I believe the current model in this line is the LiDE 35, but all of the above should apply.
Your site is down.
I don't think he meant to imply that the all-in-ones weren't necessarily twain, but that they sucked. I agree.
Also see this wiki for a discussion of various opinions on scanners.
Hey, I recently got an hp 7400 all in one printer/fax/scanner/copier etc. It works great, does legal (even has 2 trays one for legal, one for regular). Has a document feeder that for all intents a purposes can scan an arbitrarily long document. Damn thing was expensive, but sure does get the job done. FWIW.
Why do you abuse slashdot. When you could, like the rest of us, go find out for yourself!
I've had only excellent luck with the LED-based Canon scanners. I'm not a fan of their flourescent ones however. I had one and the bulb died (edges darkened significantly) in just over a year. LEDs have much longer lives (granted I probably just got a dud flourescent). My old N650U is a workhorse. As an added bonus, the LED-based units don't need a power cord.
This one is only $49.99 and should do very well for you.
Does anyone make a scanner yet that allows you to put a stack of pictures in it and have the scanner automatically scan the pictures one at a time and save them in a directory?
That's the feature I'm looking for. I've got a bunch of old pictures that I'd like to share online, but I don't want to have to scan them one at a time.
Wow, I thought for sure the slashdot drinking game would let me off easy with this one, but no...
Mention of Linux in a topic where Linux is really irrelevant: One Shot.
Using a 4200F with a Pixma 4000. Used HP with blank-mark scanners, can't say I was too happy about them. Canon is the way to go (if you're not using Linux, ofcourse, there always is a negative catch).
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
"the software she wishes to use it with .... claims that it doesn't work too well with HP scanners"
So what does the software vendor recommend? Seems simple enough to ask them?
I have done a little bit with scanning music and I would like to tell you a little bit about my experiances.
1.) Original music is better. Lots of copies have "noise" in it. Some music OCR software packages see this as a dot and might make a note a stacatto note or a dotted half note, etc. or just confuse the heck out of the program.
2.) Try not to scan music that has a big fold in it. Many OCR programs use a b/w image and a fold in the paper looks like a big black line. This trows off lots of programs.
3.) Using a higher resolution than the highest suggested resolution doesn't help. If the program says to scan at 600dpi and you scan at 1200dpi, it will not do anything to help and at most it will hinder your scanning. Some programs will come out with the same result no matter what resolution you set above the reccomended level. This is a waste of time and disk space. Other programs will take advantage of the higher resolution. But this could be bad because the program will see how notes arent as round as they look at lower dpi. Also it is easier to see noise at higher dpi.
I hope these tips help.
He's a photographer, so his needs are not your needs, but I think you'll find it interesting what he has to say. Basically, it doesn't matter that much.
http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/scanner.htm
I had one of these puppies and although it looked cool, and was very space efficient, it did a lousy and slow job of actually scanning documents. Stay away.
--
RumorsDaily
I use an Epson Perfection 4870 which works very very well. It has awesome quality and is even used by some professional photo shops. I picked it because of it's high quality scans, it has both USB2 and Firewire interfaces, and it works perfectly 100% with Xsane and The Gimp on Linux. I highly recommend it.
I'd like to do the same thing for Linux but haven't found any good software for entering scores ... Noteworthy Composer is the best one I've used for quickly entering scores (keyboard-only input is a must) on Windows, but I haven't found anything similar for Linux. Anyone have suggestions?
Dlugar
Computer Go: Writing Software to Play the Ancient Game of Go
I have 2 scanners - none of which is ready to scan at 100% zoom - the nearest are 75% and 150% (both on windows and linux) - any idea why?
Assuming the music to be scanned is black and white, DPI is far more important than things like color range.
bp
check cnet reviews for EVERYTHING and stop posting stupid questions like this on slashdot.
m l?tag=dir.scan
http://reviews.cnet.com/Scanners/2001-3136_7-0.ht
this means you too, editors.
Using an ordinary scanner, I scanned something in full colour, and compared that with the same (photograph) scanned in full color using the primary colors and combining those afterwards. I got very clear differences in the final scan when I combined the R+G+B channels with Photoshop to a full-color photo. The combined (3-pass) RGB channel scan produced at least 2 times more resolution than the (1-pass) full-color scan.
If you want very good color reproductions, try it sometimes - could prove interesting - ofcourse your scanner does have to support scanning separate RGB channels...
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
Do research on paper alignment for any HP model you may consider - assuming your scanner quest leads you to look at combo devices. Many of them suck.
I'll try Canon when they start supporting Linux (ie. releasing specs so that devs can write drivers for it.)
I've had experience with HP scanners, and they were all junk. The consumer grade ones were awful anyway.
I haven't been into scanning for a while, but Microtek was the best a few years back. They were also very reasonably priced. Their low end was dirt cheap and still decent. I own a middle range scanner, the ScanMaker X6, which was around $60, legal size, usb *AND* scsi, and even came with an adaptec scsi card, usb cable, and scsi cable. It's the best consumer grade scanner I've used, and kudos to Microtek for not cheaping out on the extras. The scsi card even has the same Adaptec chip as my AH2940 scsi card.
On the other hand, I knew a guy trying to scan animation with an HP scanner. The thing was junk, and it was impossible to control the features unless you forked out for the top of the line. This is very bad when the scanner trys to correct the positioning of your original and you're trying to scan successive animation cells. It was impossible to disable this function which is also probably why your music OCR program has trouble with hp scanners.
hp's old laser printers were awesome, but their new inkjets and scanners are junk. I've delt with both and won't buy either of them anymore.
Scanner technology is one of those slow moving ones. I bought my first Microteck sometime circa 1994 or so, spent a good deal on it. The ONLY reason I stopped using it was the fact that they never made win95 drivers for it. I was lucky enough to have some beta drivers, but it was a flacky piece of filth that only I could use.
The only reason I would have otherwise to upgrade would be speed. My first scanner was a tripple pass model and newer models were single pass. Models after that increased in terms of speed.
Anyhow the reasons for scanner failure.
1. White alignment strip
Plastic breaks down and yellows, likely expsure to UV, perhaps some other reason. But regardless sometimes the color can become off and the scanner can no longer zero out when turned on. This can be replaced with some offical true blue solution or a piece of paper glued to where the old one was. I would reccomend something like Hammermill indoor sign paper, basicly easily choppable and sticky.
2. Lightbulb... unfortunatly someone thought it was a spiffy idea to replace the traditional bulbs the likes of which you could replace at any home depot to some stupid solder-in device and these suckers can not be replaced unless you go in with tin-snips.
3. Other mechanical failure - screw it get another
4. Lack of support - shake your fist in anger screw it and get another one
I share this because I consider the alignment strip to be a common issue, easy to resolve. While something new *may* offer improved speed and perhaps even if you are lucky higher optical resolution... due to the fact there is no standard what so ever among scanners you gotta learn new clicks.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
do NOT buy umax. they charge for thier drivers if you loose them or need/want an upgrade. they are also not garenteed to work after you shell out the $25 for the disc. like my 600's i scrapped. win 98 ONLY.. well for $25 we will send you a XP driver disc but 2K/XP are not supported for our scanner yet. GGGGGRRRRRRR for a crap $50 scanner no less.
aww the constitution
http://www.usa.canon.com/html/conCprProductDetail. jsp?modelid=6623&item=6633§ion=10217?
$49.99
USB+power in one cable
Pretty good quality. Very small size.
It scans directly to printer (with the PC in the middle), effectively making it a single sheet copier. Supposedly does the same to fax, although I have not tried it this.
I'm very happy with my CanoScan 8400f... Using it with Graphic Converter and Photoshop (MacOS X)...
Have not tried the slide/negative scanning yet, but have been happy with it so far.
Good luck
I'd reccomend AFGA, they make great stuff, easy to use as well.
Yeah, they don't work with linux, but the Windows support is good and its powered off of USB.
:)
I've also had them make copies of photos that had supposed 'protection' against copying (ie: watermark that would show up when scanned). Never saw the watermark, must be that the led-based tech in the canon product foils that method.
-- dieman - Scott Dier
We sell high-end scanners (as in SCSI sheet-fed units designed to run all day) here at work. We got a new Fujitsu unit in, and the techs were setting it up in Windows 2000 (which is what the client was using.)
It took them about an hour of putzing with SCSI drivers and trying different settings to get it to work 100% (getting the document feeder to work properly).
When they were done, I stuck my Knoppix 3.7 CD in the machine and started it up. I opened XSANE, and just started scanning. Knoppix saw the scanner, recognized that it had a document feeder, and I was able to start scanning with it immediately.
FWIW I recently purchased a Canon LiDE 60. It's affordable and works great. It's powered by USB so there's no need for yet another power brick and it's also able to sit vertically and take up a ton less desk space.
That is so NOT the acronym. Actually, TWAIN isn't even an acronym at all. See this to be humbled a bit.
[sig] 10 + 10 = 100 [/sig]
I highly recommend the HP Scanjet 4670. Up to 600 PPI resolution, clear display so you can see what is scanning, great color, fast, and inexpensive.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
we had to use a pen on staff paper...in the snow...up hill....both ways....
Evil people don't think they're evil. - George Lucas, Making of Ep III
Just buy a scanner that can run Linux...
Oh, wait...
I got nothin'
I was able to find the afformentioned all in one, shipped for under 100 bucks (factory refurbished). At these prices I dont understand why anyone would not get an all in one, and the printing is top notch as well.
-- this sig beneath your current threshold
I've used it before with the package that comes with sibelius and it works a treat.
It's also a damn fine film scanner for doing hobby stuff (it's got FARE level 2 which will do some pretty impressive retouching to remove scratches and particles)
I am NaN
I don't like my Visioneer 8920 because it requires Windows, and it's the only thing at home I use Windows for.
The quality is OK for reflective scans, but I don't care for its negative scans too much.
So, you have a sister, and she wants to scan sheet music that can automatically convert the picture into digital sheet music for MIDI. There is one very important question that needs to be clarified before a solution can be found:
Is your sister hot?
Its a all in one machine, the pixma mp110, but, still, i love it. the scanner is great, the printer is wonderfull and the copying is flawless. its kinda cheap too, about 100$ or so.
You will find good reviews of imaging hardware at http://www.steves-digicams.com/
I've personally used Apple, HP, Epson, Memorex (Artec), Microtek and Canon scanners. My personal scanner is a Canon CanoScan 8400F. There's probably a newer version.
The bundled software with this Canon does a wonderful job of descreening halftone images.
Last Christmas I gave my sister an Epson Perfection 2480 which included a partial-page feeder (business cards, checks, snapshots). The descreening on this one isn't as good and I wasn't able to associate the scanned images to Paint Shop Pro properly. However, the software does allow scanning multiple pages in a queue with a minimum of button clicks. Unless your sister is scanning single-page sheet music, she'll probably really benefit from this ability.
I don't know of any consumer-level sheet feeders. By that, I mean a scanner which retails for $100 or so won't have a sheet feeder option or accessory.
Another thing to consider is that scanners with their own power supply will yield higher contrast and brighter colors during the scan.
You should also look at the color of the pad on the underside of the cover. My Canon has a white cover. Yuck!! How Stupid!! Bright light will pass through paper which is being scanned and reflect back to the light sensors. It's far better to have a black pad so a ghost image of the opposite side of the paper is not detected. I have a full-sized hardcover book with a flat black cover which I use to block reflection and hold paper flat. Black construction paper won't work. The scanner's likght will bleach the paper.
A white pad does have some advantages but, in my opinion and experience, a black pad is far more useful.
I use my eyeballs, you insensitive clod!
Regarding your quote:
Save yourself time and money. Get a good keyboard, synth module, and a sequencer and do it that way. Scanning it to midi just doesn't ever work right.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I prefer epson scanners especially for the Mac. HP has bloated unreliable software. I don't particularly like HP running in the background at start has they insist on doing. Epson has simple easy to use software that runs only when want it. It auto-identifies the document and it provides indexing for multiple scans so you only have to enter a filename once.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
If you know anything about scanners you'll know that part of it is just a big camera. The parent is obviously correct that the optics quality is very important. Just look at any cheap 35mm film camera compared to an expensive 35mm camera. They both have the same "resolution" because they can use the same film. The optics of the cheap camera are probbably crappy poorly "ground" plastic lenses, while the expensive camera likely has very high quality well ground glass (or whatever ueber-optics material they're using these days).
AccountKiller
If not, then I'd like to post a question on how to choose a stapler. There are so many of them, but some seem not fully compatible with HP paper. Also, my sister likes staplers that are pink. Which brand you slashdotters whould advise to buy?
Just remember: "TWAIN" not "WIA" not "All-in-one"
Why?
I just remember VueScan. It has cross platform compatibility and supports more scanners than you can shake a stick at. And the developer is accessible and updates often.
I'll call her up and make sure she gets everything she needs....
My family recently got an Epson scanner (I don't remember the model, sorry) and the thing I love about it is that it has a top-loader. What it does is it enables you to put a stack off physical pictures (under a certain size) and it will load and scan the pictures for you. This has been an awesome feature that works most of the time (if the picture is bent or curved the loader may have problems). I find this to be a killer feature because we have so many old pictures that we're trying to digitize. I can't imagine what we'd do without it. (Overall the scanner is decent. I have some hardware complaints. The scan quality is mostly good with some pictures being grainy and some pictures coming out fantastic.)
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
I can heartily recommend anything from Visioneer. I picked up the 8920 for Christmas last year, and it's a top quality flatbed scanner. It has the added features of a cover mounted light for scanning slides/negatives, and also the cover can be removed for scanning oversized items. It looks like the new model is the 9220 at around $70, but any older model off e-bay would probably be more than acceptable. I can't recommend Umax, I've had too many of those be either junky or just plain crap out.
Each processor would proceed sequentially as if it had been better for them not to rise against Saul.
For my collection of images scanned from antiquarian books I am now using an Epson E10000 3200dpi scanner that does A3+ (18"x12" roughly) and am very happy with it. I generally scan in Windows because the Linux Sane interface doesn't know how to focus the lens.
:-) For sheet music, though, larger than letter size is worth considering: there are several A3/tabloid scanners around. You will need at least 300dpi (native, not interpolated) for OCR, and possibly higher.
For your little sister you might want something rugged, depending on how little she is
A USB interface is the simplest, although if you have firewire on your computer that may be faster.
For graphic art work you need to be able to do colour calibration. For OCR, you probably will use grayscale most of the time. You can get some good solid greyscale sheet-fed scanners on ebay pretty cheaply, although make sure they're in your area: I wouldn't trust the shipping.
As others have said, look for TWAIN, and for scanners that work on multiple operating systems.
If you do a lot of scanning you'll need extra hard disk storage and a way to back it up, such as a DVD writer or a tape drive.
Live barefoot!
free engravings/woodcuts
Apparently it is.
It's fast, easy, and, best of all, TOTALLY FREE!!!! Professional IT help in as little as a day or two! Just post your question. Within several hours you have an initial opinion; within two days, a football stadum's worth of opinion, invective, and offtopic trolling!! Some of it's even relevant to the original concept!
As someone who scans with the purpose of OCR for a living, I can only talk to what I have used. For the most part we have found that the Kodak and Ricoh (which can be found re-branded as Bell&Howell scanners as well) are very durable and lasting. My organization is doing roughly 40,000 scans a week with a Ricoh IS450DE and an Kodak 2500D. Both have their pros and cons - as I would choose the Ricoh over the Kodak any day. We have recently started buying scanners the eBay route as we have found that a great scanner can last for years and there is always someone selling an almost new one for 70% off list. Great way for our money crunched business to save some $$$. I have found that most of the issues that I have to address with scanning have been at the software side - virtual rescanning (VRS) and using cards like Kofax. Hope this helps!
Bonus points for both technically and funkily correct use of the term "funkadelic". Now just apply the PsychoAlphaDiscoBetaBioAquaDoLoop to your Computer Games and you'll have scanned yourself beyond all recognition.
--
make install -not war
I wouldn't refer to Tom's Hardware as a quasi-reputable site. Quite the contrary, I believe it to be but one of a handful of top-notch hardware sites on the web. I would trust any review done by Tom's Hardware. So, if you are looking for informed and thorough details about any aspect of computing hardware, Tom's is one site I would definitely visit.
Crow T. Trollbot
I like the one built into the boring Dell A960 which was made by Lexmark. I use it to scan sheet music as well and it does a way better job than the Epson and HP which I had as doorstops and now have been donated.
I was very disappointed to find out that it supported OSX 10.2 ONLY not 10.3 which had been available for some time. Furthermore, HP promised that 10.3 would be supported by January, but it wasn't until summer that it actually was. Not to mention the driver was serveral HUNDRED megs and they would not mail out a newer CD. Since we only had dialup, this was a nasty situation to be in. Once I finally did get it installed, it turns out their scanning software is complete shit and very prone to crashing the system.
For $500, and with a product name with "Professional" in it, you would think HP would do a better job. The worst part is HP will not support the SANE project and will apperantly not release technical documentation on this scanner. If they had, I would have no beef since SANE works on OSX.
XJS*C4JDBQADN1.NSBN3*2IDNEN*GTUBE-STANDARD-ANTI-U
Prior to its decision to feed 12 sheets of paper at a time, I went through driver hell with Win'98 ("No longer supported!"), Win2k ("You can't use this on a print server!"), and finally WinXP with a Canon Multipass.
Their answer? Over and over again; "We out-source our driver programming to Japan. We have no control. No, we can't accept bug reports. Upgrade to WinXP and your problems will go away." The problem? After upgrading to Win2k (the time spent doing so with all the applications and devices that had to cooperate - accounting/tax software et al. being a larger factor than the cost) they tell me to upgrade to WinXP? I'm sorry, just because I'm using Win2k Professional doesn't mean I'm serving the printer to the entire network - but I WOULD like more than one local user account to be able to print to the damn thing. The solution? "Set every user as 'Administrator' and your problem will go away." Then what's the point of having multiple user accounts?!?
I wouldn't give you a thanks for a skidload of multi-function devices, thankyouverymuch.
BD Phone Home!
Shameless plug. Like you weren't expecting it.
A really good scanner has a really good dynamic range. This is how well the scanner can pick up the details in the dark areas. Dynamic range is driven by the quality of the CCD. So generally the better the dynamic range - the more expensive the scanner. Most consumer level crap will not even list the dynamic range. The closer to 4 you can get the better. Epson used to sell a decent flatbed with a dynamic range of 3.2 Read this (scantips.com) for more info
I've had two all-in-ones from HP and love them both. Great quality scans and prints.
Not to be confused with the old HP ScanJet models which themselves would play a tune using their stepper motor.
Yeah, except I do have an HP all-in-one (printer, fax, scan, copy) and it does suck. (Among other things,) The sensor that senses the position of the scanner-carriage-thingy get's out of whack periodically. The motor will try and grind the carriage past the end of the rail, and after about two or three minutes of that, the display says, "Scanner error." Usually, you can wipe all the mirrors in the carriage with alcohol to get it working again, but it's an enormous bitch to get at.
:-p
The only solace I find in it all is that I wasn't the one who had to pay for it.
Anyway, I don't mean to say that every recently manufactured all-in-one deal is crap, just that the opinion that all-in-one's suck is still around for a reason. If you go all-in-one, choose wisely.
This sig rocks the casbah.
I, too, have a LiDE 20, and I'm very happy with it. Having no wall-wart is wonderful - especially since that's the component that failed on my previous scanner. It also means that it's easy to drag it out, plug in one USB connection, and use it: there's no need to have it permanently set up.
Realistically, 600 dpi is more than enough for anything I've ever needed to do. That doesn't include slide or negative scanning, but it's plenty for photographs and drawings. (Remember that 600 dpi on a scanner is not comparable to the same resolution on an inkjet printer.)
If your comment title says 'Re: Foo', I'm not likely to read it.
I got the Visioneer OneTouch 9220 USB new on ebay for $35. 4800x2400 max dpi, about the max for the average inkjet. It has a backlight and tray for slides and negatives and other options for reflective and transparent items. It can be set to use your printer to act as a copier. I got it for scanning slides and it works well for everything else.
F7 doesn't work, ignore spelling and grammar
...but I left it back in the '90s.
I bought a $70 Visioneer OneTouch 7300 USB, and it works great with the sane project. You can check out the scanner's Linux driver page at , and some example scans I've done with the scanner in Linux here.
I have to echo others' comments here. The HP we have at work MUST HAVE the 160MB "driver" software in order to work at all. Although I'll bet the driver itself, wherever it's located in that package, is tiny.
Until recently, you couldn't even download the drivers - you had to order a CD with the software on it. (No longer, though)
HP's scanner software is ridiculous bloatware - I can't even begin to fathom why they need 160MB of code to drive the scanner.
If you can get the crappy, buggy, bloated software to work, they scan beautifully. Don't bother. Go with Epson (software is not great, but much better than HP) or Canon.
Yes, it's a blog. Sorry if that offends you.
I've tried that in the past, on occasions when I haven't had immediate access to a scanner.
It's a passable "poor-man's" solution: it works, but the image tends to be geometrically distorted, with colour fringing around letters. Lighting can be a bit tricky, too. (These problems can be fixed with the right equipment, but scanners are cheap; certainly cheaper than the requisite photographic equipment.)
If you need a record in a hurry, it's an option. I'm not sure that the output would work well in most OCR software, though, and photos of photos lose a lot of quality.
If your comment title says 'Re: Foo', I'm not likely to read it.
PCMag.com's scanner reviews are relatively brief (compared to Tom's Hardware), but they still review more scanners than most sites and is a good starting point for first-time scanner buyers.
PCMag.com's scanner roundups group together their scanner reviews by category and give nice introductions that describe what features to look for in each category. Their most recent roundups are:
TO START
PRESS ANY KEY
Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...
Lots of USB and SCSI (those still round?) scanners work with Linux using SANE(7). Networked scanners are harder to find, but a much better choice (scan from multiple computers, locate anywhere, no buggy USB drivers, etc.). Network printers are more rule than exception now, so why are most scanners still USB-only? To add insult to injury, most of the networkable scanners available use propriatary protocol not supported on linux.
I think HP's OfficeJet line might be the best bet. (Stay away from Brother at any cost!) I've been happily using a Officejet 7120 with linux. At $299 it's cheaper than most dedicated network scanners, and comes with a document feeder for the scanner which also works great with SANE. The built-in inkjet is supported too, but haven't used it much. I don't think the fax functions work from linux, but a windows instance running inside VMware can use it for conveniently sending faxes if you must.
Scanning on windows seems to always be a huge PITA, with buggy drivers and dialogs popping up all over the place with the wrong default settings for every document you try to scan. Using sane from the command line on linux is a huge improvement. Just hack together a script with the right parameters for the common stuff you scan, and then drop the documents in the feeder and run the "scan_bank_statement" (or whatever.) Try that on windows!
scanimage -d "hpoj:hpjd:192.168.1.55" --resolution 300 --source Auto --format=tiff >my_document.tiff
Err, that last post should have been
I bought a $70 Visioneer OneTouch 7300 USB, and it works great with the sane project. You can check out the scanner's Linux driver page here, and some example scans I've done with the scanner in Linux here.
I have a portable USB powered BENQ and it sucks big time. I wouldn't suggest you any portable usb powered scanner. Canon is decent, but still..
I've tried HP artist model or something.. that you can see what you're actually scanning, since it is transparent from both sides.
It broke in a week, not sturdy enough.
I replaced it and it broke in another week as well. Both mechanical problems.
I'd love to see some answers to this question that work with Linux: My old Visioneer OneTouch 8700USB is the *ONLY* piece of hardware I was never able to get working when I converted from Windows to Linux.
Anyone know if there is an open source driver project for these things anywhere? It seems like Linux is really lacking in supported scanners, compared to other devices.
Um. I think that is the point. TWAIN is not an acronym, even thought it is capitalized as though it is one. To me, calling it the "Technology without an interesting name" is perfectly acceptable. Can you imagine of most of our protocols were named by picking some vaguely related word in literature somewhere?
The joke, and it IS a joke, gets a good laugh at presentations to the uniformed and often causes them to go read up on the subject (something it is increasingly hard to get decision makers to do).
i also did end up with canon after all ... got an ixus II digicam and an eos SLR, bought on of those LIDE scanners for my sister. i'm quite happy with all of those.
it's not always just the specifications but quality that matters. for example digital cameras: i bet most x-megapixel-canons perform at least as good as a cheap x+1-megapixel-model does.
I'm on my second Visioneer. Their low end scanners don't cost much (my new 7100 USB cost $40), but work very well under XP, as long as you don't need more than 600 DPI. They will deliver more than 600, but not usually to the more automated scanning applications.
J.E.B.
Joshua Corps
Most of those watermarks just work by inducing aliasing patterns in the digital rendition of the page. However, this only works when the resolution of the scanner is low. With a sufficiently high resolution, you can just reproduce the original pattern - and it turns out that 600 dpi is plenty.
If you want to know the details about how this works, look at the sampling theorem.
If your comment title says 'Re: Foo', I'm not likely to read it.
I have one of the HP PSC 700-series all-in-one printers and the scans are pretty bad, but even within manufacturers it can probably vary dramatically from model to model.
If scan quality matters, perhaps looking on a domain-specific review site would get you more information than Slashdot.
E pluribus unum
Did they state that WIN98 and 2K were supported on the box?
If so you should have just taken it back.
If you're running under Windows, get a Microtek scanner. The software and drivers for Windows are simply superior, though you may want to enable expert mode instead of the default "easy" mode. And the hardware is at least as good as the rest. Starts around $80.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
I like my Microtek Scanmaker. It is a great scanner if you are on a budget. It has pretty good quality and speed and the software is pretty good. However, the mac version of the software is often somewhat buggy. The windows software works better. If you have a little more scratch, I recommend Epson.
Well, it isn;t that all in ones are not TWAIN, it is just that they suck.
Also, they often have software bugs in some of them becuse the printer or the scanner is first, can;t rememer which.
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive
"No, YOU know wrong. DPI doesn't matter for spit; any new scanner sold these days will use a greater resolution than most people will ever need.
so it DOES matter, it's just so good now it doesn't make much difference.
"Chances are, the 600 DPI Epson will produce better quality scans than that 3600 DPI (interpolated) from Brand J (for junk)."
so, once again, DPI does matter. Specifically, whether or not in interpolated.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Do *NOT* get UMAX. They don't provide free updates and support, and you absolutely cannot get most of their scanners to work under SANE/XSANE.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
He's searching for a decent scanner, not scanning for a decent searcher. >8)
That's a lovely story, with no substance. The trouble with stories of this kind is that they don't test like for like. Windows 2000 is 6 years old, and has barely had any feature updates (USB2 is just about the only one). Further, when it comes to external devices Microsoft's policy is to let the manufacturer produce the driver, which may result in a crappy driver, as describe [by parent] but is alot more sensible (think about it) and usually more flexible than the linux half-baked equivalent produced by people who aren't good enough to get adequate satisfation from the their day jobs. Ok, ok, so the last statment was unfair and anti-social; I reluctantly withdraw it. If Fujitsu produce crappy drivers for their scanners then sack the person responsible for buying it, and stop blaming Microsoft.
Otherwise you wait at the checkout counter forever while the cashier keeps yelling over the PA:
Im not here now... Im out KILLING pepperoni
I had a Microtek scanner about 5 years ago. One day, it crapped out on me (under warranty). It took something like an hour on the phone (not a toll-free call) to get through to Microtek support and get an RMA. I was so disgusted with the whole mess I never bothered to ship the damn thing to them to be repaired, and I never got around to buying another scanner to replace it.
HP hardware is great, but the software sucks. (I actually like it, when it works; but it is unnecessarily bloated; and updates are few, far between, and hard to get.)
Canon hardware is marginal, but adequate for most tasks, but is 100% proprietary software (i.e. difficult to find TWAIN drivers.)
Microtek is adequate in both hardware and software.
Epson is good hardware, excellent software. (I actually prefer HP's software interface, but Epson's is more stable, better written, less bloated, etc.)
(The Epson, Canon, and HP info is based on less-than-two-year-old hardware/software, the Microtek is based on more-than-two-year-old hardware/software, so Microtek may have improved.)
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
If the scanner is going to be used mostly with this software, why not ask the software manufacturer what scanner they recommend? Certainly whatever they suggest will be sufficient for any other purpose your sister might have.
I will never buy another umax scanner. Ever. They don't release new drivers for new OS versions, unless you want to pay money for the privilege of using their scanner.
Even when they don't have any intention of even writing a driver for the new os, they won't release enough details for people to write one on their own.
Business practices like these have cost them yet another customer. Forever.
I have both a HP and a Brother All-in-One and both work well (and have Linux support).
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Fujitsu seems to have replaced it with a fi-5110C, but it looks to be essentially the same scanner with a few updates. A bit of froogle'ing shows that it can be had for just over $700.
TWAIN scanners are all over the place so it won't be difficult finding them.
Imho, if your primary use for a scanner is to keep digital copies of your documents, books, papers, etc. It is also just as important to get a good OCR program that could accurately replicate the document into digital form.
Unfortunately, the OCR software that comes with scanners these days generally suck so when you probably scan your documents, what you will get are very poor digital copies (if you could call them copies at all).
I have yet to see an OCR program that is even close to the functionality, capability, and accuracy of the latest version of ABBYY Finereader.
No, I don't work for them.
These sheetfeed scanners are fast and easy to use. To scan, you put the paper in the slot. The scansoft paperport program starts automatically. It was better pree windows 2000 because the parallel port version screamed twice as fast.
I have scanned everything since 1995 - about 4000 sheets a year with these.
The quality of the device isn't what's important; the reason multifunction devices suck is because of the drivers. Generally speaking, they're proprietary and cause the device not to work properly in alternative operating systems (linux, of course, but sometimes even Mac OS too).
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Is your sister hot?
Some models have a lot of bells and whistles like being a fax server, network printer, web admin. Some can recieve an incoming fax and forward them off via email.
Thing is sometimes these services are on and you can't turn them off. And drivers aren't updated that often.
So it's a good idea to put the things in a DMZ if you use the fax bits AND the network bits.
Look for any scanner that comes bundled with SilverFast - Lots of manufacturers bundle their own software with scanners, however it's been my experience that any scanner that _also_ comes with a copy of SilverFast is generally pretty decent, and SilverFast is great scanning software (standalone scanning or Photoshop plugin) that can deliver powerful results, and is easy to use.
Cheers,
Kai
Specialist Mac support for creative pros, Melbourne
Uh, can somebody explain to me why they consider all-in-oners not to be TWAIN compatible?
When I open my TWAIN copy machine software, fax software, or or OCR program and the application that came bundled with the all in one hijacks the scanner output and launches some other app photo album software launches on top of the application trying to use the scanner! The bundled printer driver is biased heavily to using their bundled application. ArcSoft, Photocopier, and WinFax are screwed from using the scanner. Requesting a scan from these applications should not launch another photo album application. Dell picture studio is the worst scanner hi-jack software on my wife's machine. I scan on a Win98 machine instead because the 3rd party software still works with my TWAIN scanner.
The truth shall set you free!
Better than that. The higher end ones can change their interfaces via a plug-in card. e.g Ethernet, firewire, etc. I recommend them if you're scanning in at higher resolutions, plus here's a hint. Go for one that can accept legal size paper.
PC World and others are in the business of doing reviews. Also magazines for photoshop and desktop publishing often review scanners. Or ask the manufacturer of the software what they recommened. Or you could just use google.
Basically, why are you bothering us about this?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Correct. That's why most good manufacturers will have a colorsync profile for their respective scanners. Same for any output/input device. e.g monitor, printer, scanner, camera, etc.
I was given a Visioneer scanner a few years ago. It didn't work for well under windows, and there was no Linux support. Visioneer scanners were not just picky about model/version but model/version/chipset and probably bios version. I gave the POS away. My Brother MFC also sucks, but its much better than the Visioneer. The other posters mentioning HP from 10+ years ago are correct, neither of my newer scanners are up to snuff of the old HP SCSI.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
Better. I bought a Canon ElPH S400 (4MPix) a few years back; rightfully bragged about it back then (near top of the line of consumer-level digis at the time). Pops comes home a few months back ago with a new 6.something MPix Sony Cybershot, and then spends 3hrs trying to figure out why, at its best setting, it can't produce an image as clear as my "measly" 4MP ElPH at a mid-setting -- Sony cameras ALWAYS produce an image that's far too cool in temperature.
Lord knows why he bought a Sony after the TV he hates.
But Maaa! Everyone else has a
Too hot for your ass!
More advice: stay well away from parallel-port scanners.
A nice companion for those who do color scanning is.
4 536958/qid=1126313245/sr=1-3/ref=sr_1_3/002-538072 2-4292837?v=glance&s=books
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/076
depends on which one, the ones with "HP intelligent scan technology" seem to work the best.
such as the 4100C. it also has something more technical than its brother, the 4200C that makes it work so well.
with HP, it's hit or miss.
Epson is good shit, I hear microtek works decently
UMAX is good, mustek is hit or miss as well.
Interesting. Would you mind letting us know the models, and whether all the features work? (Especially scanning. I'm going to assume that any "one button" type features they have are Win only.)
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Scanners move a lot of info - sheet music does not need to be in 24bit color - However, USB2(480) on each end of the connection will make the scans move a lot faster. That is to say get a USB HiSpeed(480) card for the computer if it does not have it.
If you are going to scan color images or slides as well, you might thing about a "firewire 2" 1394b interface.
If you are indeed just scanning sheet music - I am going to guess a usb powered scanner will work. They are easy to set up and not too expensive. I have a DELL at work - it works.
Just get one with removable glass you can open and clean. Even if you dont smoke (maybe if you cook?) they will fog up on the inside.
If you can clean it, it's a bonus.
Otherwise, expect it to break, get a new one in a year. No biggie.
I love my "CanoScan D1250U2F" USB 2.0 scanner - BUT, it has no Mac OS X drivers at all, which really sucks, and not really any other support I know of either besides Windows....
On my XP machine though, it scans quickly, quietly and with very good color accuracy. (It was top rated for scanners in the $200 price range that could do a good job scanning in photographic negatives too. I rarely need that feature, but it has a special adapter to hold a strip of negatives for scanning.)
I get the idea that driver support is the only real negative to most Canon scanner products.... The hardware is good though.
Strangely enough, in 1990-91 when the TWAIN standard first about, we were working on some scanning and image recognition stuff, and the official definition at the time was "Toolkit without an intelligent name". When TWAIN was released to the public, it was more commonly known as "Technology without an interesting name".
But now everyone points to the FOLDOC definition, even from twain.org itself, eventhough FOLDOC doesn't list a source, and I've never heard of it explained that way.
If you really do that very often, there is a device made for doing all of the holding and lighting for you, it's called (perhaps not too creatively) a copy stand.
They used to be used all the time by anyone who was making presentation slides, because the easiest way to make a slide from a reflective original is many times just to take a picture of the reflective original with a camera. I think this sort of thing has mostly gone by the wayside now that we're in the Age of Powerpoint, and you can probably get one cheap off of eBay. You will probably have to replace the bulbs (properly called lamps) in the lights.
But use a copystand and you're sure to get consistent focus, lighting, and no keystoning. Plus, if you ever want to make 35mm slides, just attach your film camera to the mount instead of your digital and away you go.
Only problem I can see is if you have a digital camera that doesn't have the tripod socket on the lens axis, you might need to do some futzing around.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
i hate ANY music on websites - but that doesn't mean you can't make anything nice with midi...
check out http://www.fest-platten.de/eng/disk.htm - it's a whole album on a floppy disk - thanks to midi.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16838152006
For the money grab the Canon CanoScan 8400F.
3200 x 6400 resolution and besides doing 35mm slides and negatives, it can even do 120 roll film. All that for $149 or less. and fast
I couldn't agree with you more... I've got a LiDE 30. Love the scanner. Unfortunately, I don't have a windoze box. Just OSX.
Let me tell you that the software they shipped with it was a piece of shit. It's buggy, not twain compliant, is a memory hog, and is ugly as hell. At the time I bought it, they promised twain drivers "any day now". I've been waiting for 2 years.
So in the meantime I've been using VueScan. Still not ideal (as it has its share of bugs as well) but better that the stuff canon has to offer. My next scanner will likely be an Epson. At least they can write TWAIN drivers.
I emailed their tech support and got a "we'll get back to you soon" email followed by a "how to change your DPI" form letter. I replied back with the same message. Another "We'll get back to you soon" (WGBTYS) and a "how to scan small pictures" form letter. Once more and I got the "how to change your DPI" message.
Over a dozen emails sent to them and I finally got a call from someone in India who couldn't speak English. I gave up.
Their software is another story. I know three people with HP scanners that all have the same beautiful software. None of the buttons or pull-down menus have any text. NO TEXT. You just randomly click on empty buttons trying to guess which one does what. How can you put out software like this?
Isnt that what he asked for was a site that specifically reviews scanners ALA Toms? (Though sadly I think Tom's has sucked for some time now, for serious hardware reviews I go to anandtech these days)
apt-get install redhat please god - Me (take it easy, I love Debian)
I've yet to see a consumer all in one that wasn't a piece of junk, and I come across several a week (usually seen under many file folders covered in dust). Even if the hardware is decent the driver support is usually TERRIBLE (memory hog or buggy or both typically).
The closest to decent I've seen was a Dell model a customer ordered last year (Lexmark OEM) and that was only because the thing had it's own modem built in (which cost that customer 2x more than the price of a modem on the total sticker prive for this "small business" class machine). But it didn't last...the driver support for it was alright once you did the magic voodoo dance to get it all installed properly but it died an untimely death when that spiffy modem went out twice in it's warranty period.
All on a machine that cost more than the price of a modem, scanner, and printer combined that would have put out better quality and performance.
It never fails that said customer wants that all in one the jagoff at Best Buy sold them to be able to share (not just the printing, but the scanning and faxing too)...good luck with that on a consumer model.
Now I can't compare the big Xerox etc docustation bohemoths (although I can say networking for some of those tools can be spotty in my limited experience with them)...but obviously he's not in the market for one of those for his lil sis.
Meh.
175 upmoderated posts and not a lot of real info.
There are two common consumer level scanners. CCD based and CMOS. Both types are good for 99.9% of consumer requirements of resolution and colour accuracy. So I suppose that price, driver quality, and reliability come into play as discriminating factors in your purchase.
Most scanners are TWAIN compliant nowadays, and if you use vuescan then the software is not a major differentiator either.
CCD based is the traditional scanner as you know it. Every manufacturer uses it except Canon's LIDE based models. Works well and can scan in 3 dimensional objects and the like. Epson's models are quite good, UMAX are lower quality but generally cheaper. HP I haven't had any recent experience with, but they have been OK in the past.
CMOS based scanners are the basis of Canon's LIDE lineup. CMOS based systems were/are considered the holy grail of imaging systems because they are less power consuming and cheaper to manufacture than CCD based units. This is why Canon's scanners can be powered via USB and make decent portable units. Canon manages to compensate for CMOS' inherently noiser systems by a proprietary calibration technique. This is why most other manufacturers are behind Canon in CMOS based imagers for scanning. The biggest drawback to CMOS based scanners are the lack of focal depth in three dimensional or thicker objects. Since sheet music is flat a CMOS based system may good for your sister if she values portability. The lack of a wall wart is a bonus to me and reduces the tangle of cables as well.
Reliability wise, I've never had too much an issue with scanners unless they've been roughly transported or dropped.
I use an old school HP Scanjet 4C that I scrounged out of a dumpster. The lid was missing, the remaining hinges broken,and there's a small scratch in the bottom of the window (only a problem if I should ever scan legal sized documents). I'm pretty impressed with the scans this thing makes, sharp definition, and no color banding. It uses a lens system and a CCD sensor as opposed to the CIS sensors found on those cheap, shitty USB mini-sized scanners (I've used these too, terrible image quality, slow, but the small form factor is nice). The only downsides of this scanner, is the damn thing is huge! It take the full depth of my desk, and stands about 4" high. Also the vent holes on the side allow dust inside, so it does occasionally need to be taken apart and cleaned (because of it's imaging quality, dust is very noticable on scanned images). I'm happpy with this scanner, it's connected by SCSI to an older Powerbook. I haven't had a problem yet, but if I ever do, it's going back in the dumpster. ;-)
Divide by zero hurts my brain.
Scanners don't work unless you are admin.
Many big companys have thrown thousands of scanners away, because the scanner could not be made to work unless the user was 'Admin'. Serious - try twain and ocr software under something other than admin.
Now the admins that goofed up recommendations tried the works - cacls acls , security log traces, new drivers off the vendors - nothing worked.
Anyone sorted out the 'you must be admin' issue with scanners?
It is good to have correct prices...
At best, it doees seem to be an odd use of "correct". I suppose it is a butchery of the "price is right" butchery. This and the previous sentence might be a... butchery as well.
I'd settle for "fair".
The HP see-through 4670 (and 4650?) are great.
No idea about non-ms compatibility, but it scans a page in 6 seconds. Compared to 50+ for other scanners, it's a whizz.
I have a CanoScan 3200F which is pretty neat (which means - good quality, pretty fast and quite cheap for that)... Unfortunately it doesn't run in linux, and canon isn't at all interested in giving out specs to develop own drivers >_
Few know that Avision procuduces high quality scanners. Some are even labelled by HP, Xeros, Kadak and Visioneer. OSX driver is here.
Actually you were right, even if you did not know it ;-)
Nikkor IS Nikons range of better lenses.
They also have (or had) an entry line only named Nikon, typically only used to sell bundled with a camerahouse.
Can you imagine of most of our protocols were named by picking some vaguely related word in literature somewhere?
That's a good point. It has certainly worked well for "quark".
Does anyone have any experience with a portable scanner, one that I can take on the road with me?
I almost bought this one: http://www.docupen.com/ but was put off by reviews that said it was tricky to scan an A4 page without lots of practise.
Anyone care to supply a small review?
NC
Not too expensive, works great, good color fidelity, hooked up automagically, no problems, can also scan slides and film at high resolution. That said, it's not equal to a dedicated film/slide scanner...'cause it is a multipurpose flat bed scanner.
I also recommend Canon printers (right now I'm using a Pixma iP4000), because their ink containers are just that, plastic containers of ink, and you can buy just one color if that's the color you're low on. Cheap! Great pictures, fast text, big black ink container, ink available everywhere...
The hardware costs a little more than others, becuase they don't treat customers as trapped and imprisoned sources of ink purchases at high dollar costs.
One more reason: the OCR software that comes with these printers is slower than copying the data by hand, and less accurate than a roomful of monkeys jumping up and down on typewriters.
She's probably using ReadIris's OCR addon for ReadIris Pro. I use ReadIris Pro with a Fujitsu SnapScan under OSX. 30ppm, double sided, full color.
All of my paperwork gets scanned, OCR, saved as searchable PDF's (for use with spotlight), and then shredded. That SnapScan is one of the most useful purchases I've ever made.
If you use it on OSX, you need a 3rd party OCR app, and ReadIris Pro is the only one I've really found. Omnipage runs under classic mode. But if you use it with windows, it comes with Adobe OCR software.
Note that if she gets this scanner, she won't be able to scan pages from a book without removing them first.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
I've got an HP scanner and it and the software work fine on the Mac and Windows.
Scanners live in XSANE, I guess...
Well, that's what you get from buying computers from a bank. Why don't you just run HijackThis and remove the registry keys for the bundled application? Or better yet, buy an all in one from Epson or Canon or even Lexmark that doesn't come with the bundled photo album software?
It's not the All-in-one's fault- it's the software that came with it, and you can't malign the whole set of peripherials by your choice to buy from Dell.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Regarding quality of HP products, I agree. The paper feed in my HP printer doesn't work right, and a former roommate of mine that bought an HP computer had to send it back twice (one time the motherboard was bad iirc).
I recently picked up a scanjet 2100C at a garage sale for $5. I was pleasantly surprised to find it worked perfectly in Linux without any setup whatsoever. Unfortunately, it has very bad striping. I don't know if that's HP's fault or it was abused by the former owner.
Gimp has a filter that works very well for de-striping images, unless you try to destripe a swath of the image wider than about 500 pixels, and then it doesn't work so well. Anyone know any better open-source tools for removing stripes from low-quality scanner output?
TWAIN was the worst idea ever... "Let's have the DRIVER render its own widgets and control panels! Let's not think about the kinds of options a scanner might have... that would require too much foresight".
When life gives you lemons, you CLONE those lemons, and make SUPER-LEMONS. -- Dr. Cinnamon Scudworth, Ph.D
"Ah yes...the 'espionage' mode. I had a Sony with a special mode that would convert the image to a b/w GIF, so you could store like 10,000 pages on a memory stick."
...
Do you know which model that was? I've idly wished for a camera with that very feature, for exactly the same purpose -- cheap and cheerful document "scanning" (for non-OCR purposes, just on-screen reference).
If it's a model one can find on eBay, I might search for it
Cheers,
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
I'm getting dizzy here... I no longer know if I'm right or wrong, so I'm gonna go ahead and proclaim myself right.
I guess in Soviet Russia I'd be wrong, tough, so it all evens out in the end...
The answer is you get what you pay for: HP Scanjet 8290, 2 seconds/scan (faster below max.4800x4800dpi resolution), $1319. Faster scanners cost even more.
I'd second that, my girlfriend bought the Epson PSC 1215, multi-function printer/scanner/photocopier.
It's great, and works really well, even though its an inkjet.
I've got even had it working on my (Gentoo) GNU/linux box with Xsane and cups... Although after an update it's stopped working and I've not got to the bottom of why.
Anyway the quality of scans copies and printing is pretty good. And it cost less than £70.
The Epson Perfection 2480 is what you're looking for. It has an automatic document feeder designed to accomodate photos and, while no longer sold by Epson, can be found very inexpensively on eBay.
Software piracy is victimless theft.
Cut her some slack. Maybe she's working on a dictionaraoke project.
In a related story, the IRS has recently ruled that the cost of Windows upgrades can NOT be deducted as a gambling loss.
I received a Canon LiDE 30 a while ago as a gift, and it has been rather nice. It's relatively portable, USB-powered, works well with SANE, and produces much nicer images than my old scsi umax scanner. It's also relatively cheap, last I checked. I recommend using it with a USB2 host, but USB1.1 will work if you don't try to send data faster than USB1 can handle.
For more details, I wrote up a review along with some ideas for descreening scans of magazine-style prints.