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?"

Re:Hey boss! "The TWAIN!!"

[Marxist Hacker 42]

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).

Re:MIDI? Dear God, NO!

[Anonymous Coward]

check cnet reviews for EVERYTHING and stop posting stupid questions like this on slashdot.

http://reviews.cnet.com/Scanners/2001-3136_7-0.htm l?tag=dir.scan [cnet.com]

this means you too, editors.

Re:Add to Question

[greed]

Yup; I've got a Microtek X6USB that only works in MacOS 8.6... if you use Microtek's alledged drivers and scanning software.

SANE (Linux) and VueScan (Mac), on the other hand, will drive it just fine.

OTOH, the stepper motors are making some really, really odd noises these days... so I'll be watching the recommendations this topic pulls out with interest.

My general rule of hardware: If it only works with the manufacturer's software, it's crap. The number of times I've had manufacturers just stop supporting stuff--and not even all-that-old stuff, is... well, not too many because I lerned from both Microtek and Microtech (both make cheap hardware and incredibly bad software drivers).

So TWAIN for scanners, Hayes AT commands for modems, generic protocol drivers for USB, SCSI and FireWire things, PostScript for printers... though I can't seem to find a $100 PostScript inkjet printer for some reason.

Re:DPI ?

[debest]

The OP is correct: just like with digicams, it very often doesn't matter what the resolution is, the scanner needs to have good quality optics or it is shite.

What would you rather have, a 300dpi scan that is crystal clear (if a bit jaggy under a magnifier), or a 1200dpi scan that renders its blurriness in incredible resolution, and at about 16x the file size?

If your scanner doesn't have good glass under the hood, it makes no difference how fine the CCD/CMOS resolution is.

Re:DPI ?

[infochuck]

Well, you know wrong.

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. Just like all xMP digital cameras are not equal - the quality of the optics goes a long way toward determining final quality; I'd take a 3MP cam with Nikkor or Leica optics over some roody-poot 1000MP camera.

Chances are, the 600 DPI Epson will produce better quality scans than that 3600 DPI (interpolated) from Brand J (for junk).

Get a clue before you start correcting folks.

Re:Google

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Because /. has that 8-hour interrogation to prove who you really are so no marketing geeks ever get on here and try to pretend that they are unbiased users.

No, because /. doesn't let the "marketing geeks" have any more say than the "unbiased users"- thus letting a ton of people jump on the marketing geek's posts with disagreements and bad reviews. The bad reviews that you'd never see on a marketing site like ZDNet or Tom's Hardware.

MOD PARENT UP, MOD GRANDPARENT DOWN

[Vellmont]

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).

Re:DPI ?

[babyrat]

I think the original poster is implying that most scanners have >600dpi resolution which for text and normal photographs is plenty - most colour prints are 300dpi and in general scanning at a higher DPI setting than that is a waste of time and disk space.

Also a high quality 1200 dpi scanner can in fact create better scans than a low quality 2400dpi scanner.

There are special cases where huge DPI is necessary (scanning negatives for example) but for sheet music and normal photos, I'm not sure you could even buy a new scanner that doesn't have sufficient resolution, which really means it doesn't matter - quality/price/compatibility are the attributes that are going to be considered.

Re:Hey boss! "The TWAIN!!"

[cmacb]

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).

Re:crappy story...

[Anonymous Coward]

Since we are talking about a driver to support a SCSI interface, I think it's a fair argument. SCSI wasn't just invented last week, you know...

Re:crappy story...

[Anonymous Coward]

no actually the story reflects my experiences with windows 2000 6 years ago that is. pos then, pos now. thanks for playing.