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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?"
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
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!
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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.
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.
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 !
Much more with reality- from Google you get paid reviews. From slashdot you get user reviews. For any geek, the second is much more valuable because the first is just marketing.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
You've broken the google rule: if you refer the person to google for their answer, you have to prove google can find the answer by providing the search criteria (and your search criteria better find the right answer, or you'll get flamed heavily).
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
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. "
I'm so sad that I have to agree with this. I remember how I used to swear by HP. 10 to 15 years ago, they couldn't be beat. Then they completely changed. Everything they put out became disposable and cheap. Their inkjet printers are the strongest example of how they went wrong. I have a friend who's still using his deskjet 500, after nearly 15 years. But in the mid-90's, they started selling not printers, but disposable ink-cartridge caddies. Even the cartridges were junk. You couldn't print 1/4 of the pages advertised before they gummed up so bad they were useless. I haven't bought an HP product in years.
Another reason they aren't worth a crap is their shitty driver support. You buy an HP workstation-class machine from the late 90's early 00's, and you get no support for win98, because it's a home O/S. They only have 2K drivers. Or you buy a 'home/home office' variety from that period, and there's no Win 2K drivers. This extended to their 'internet keyboards' too, which was the last HP item I ever bought.
Then they bought up Compaq, and even their server line now has issues. Ever tried to use their mounting rails? I never thought, back in the 90's that I'd pick a Dell server over HP/Compaq and be able to make the decision merely on the basis of their racks and rails!
These people looked deep into my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined.
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
Yeah, but epinions probably won't give you reviews based on optics quality, software/driver interfaces, repairability, or alternate-OS support... unless you're looking for recommendations based on things like "I like the color, not too beige but not grey either" or "it was so hard to install, I couldn't find my BSU[sic] ports anywhere" as I've seen on reviews for several other devices.
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
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.
Not to be confused with the old HP ScanJet models which themselves would play a tune using their stepper motor.
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.
I've used Rosegarden to enter a few pieces of music, and it's pretty good. I tend to focus more on tweaking the output to look exactly the way I want, and Rosegarden's output to Lilypond needed a fair bit of tweaking. Well, rewriting. :-)
There's probably a chance that Rosegarden's export to MUP or PMX or (various other options) works better. I've only recently started using Lilypond (after using MusixTeX for a while), so I'm probably not doing things in the most efficient way.
As mentioned by the AC, NoteEdit looks like a pretty good option too, though I haven't tried it myself. Hmmm... (reading features)... maybe I should. :)