[geeks] Scanner recommendations?

[kevin at pipeline.com]

I purchased an LiDE 60 last year and sold it within two weeks.

The picture quality wasn't bad and the speed was good, but it made this horrible, tinny, cheap noise when scanning.  I suppose it shouldn't make that much difference, but at the time i was doing the same as you, clearing out tons of paper docs and the thought of sitting there for hours listening to that sound was not well received.

On the plus side, it did work well with Linux, the picture quality was not bad, and it was rediciously light weight. I put the Canon up on eBay and plugged my old SCSI HP ScanJet IIcx and was happy again.  The HP was much slower, but it didn't grind my nerves as much.

I have since borrowed my mother's Epson Expression 1680 and have been very pleased with it.  SCSI, USB and Firewire support (the Firewire requires an add-in card), it's very fast and works well with both Linux and OSX.  Plus, it has one of the rarest options of all these days.... a power button.

As far as OCR goes, my thoughts are that it is still not there yet.  I scan everything in and save as jpegs in well structured folders (key since i cannot search via content).  I use GQview as it appears to me to be the fastest of the thumbnail view apps out there for Linux.

Best of luck to you.  I've been doing this for a couple of years now and would never go back to paper.  being able to grab any of my docs from anywhere with an internet connection and ssh has saved my as well more than once.

/KRM



On Thu, Feb 28, 2008 at 07:46:42AM -0600, Mike Hebel wrote:
> On Thu, 28 Feb 2008 06:56:01 -0600, Bill Bradford <mrbill at mrbill.net>
> wrote:
> > On Thu, Feb 28, 2008 at 11:42:24AM +0000, Michael-John Turner wrote:
> >> My requirements:
> >> - Good quality scanning of documents and photos
> >> - Supported by OS X (Linux support a bonus)
> >> - Reasonable scanning speed (whatever that may mean!)
> >> - Reasonable price (say in the region of GBP 100/$200 at most)
> >> Anyone got any recommendations? Those of you who've scanned, eg, old
> > Byte
> >> and Popular Mechanics articles, what software and hardare did you use?
> > 
> > For software there is only one choice:  VueScan
> > 
> > http://www.hamrick.com/
> 
> I will second the recommendation for VueScan.  And I will also recommend
> the Canon LiDE scanner.  I have an LiDE 20 that I got for a song off of
> Bill and it just rocks.  LED based so no bulb to go out.  About my only
> complaint is that it's not legal-sized but that isn't a big thing for me.
> 
> Mike
> -- 
> Help!  I'm trapped in a maze of evil spammers and bad IRC quotes!
> _______________________________________________
> GEEKS:  http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/geeks