Does Xerox limit scanner speed by law?

[martin.thurau]

One of my teachers told our class the following stories about "Why are
PC-Scanners so slow?":
Allegedly Xerox (http://www.xerox.com) has achieved a law that says
that every manufacturer of PC-Scanners must limit its Scan-Speed in
order to allow Xerox selling their high-speed copiers.

After some web research i found not _one_ proof of this. Is it an known
legend or is it something my confused teacher has found in one of his
daydreams (I guess this is the most probable answer ;-) )?


P.S.: Apologised my english, i'm from the evil-nazi country germany ;-)

 

[Don]

One of my teachers told our class the following stories about "Why are
PC-Scanners so slow?":
Allegedly Xerox (http://www.xerox.com) has achieved a law that says
that every manufacturer of PC-Scanners must limit its Scan-Speed in
order to allow Xerox selling their high-speed copiers.

After some web research i found not _one_ proof of this. Is it an known
legend or is it something my confused teacher has found in one of his
daydreams (I guess this is the most probable answer ;-) )?

Yes, that sounds very much like an "urban legend" or a "conspiracy
theory". It would simply be illegal because it's anti-competitive and
companies can't use the monopoly in one market to corner another.

That's what the Microsoft antitrust suit was all about. In spite of
quite clearly violating it, Microsoft still got off, but that's
another story...

I would ask the teacher for proof. They should not be teaching things
they can't substantiate.

P.S.: Apologised my english

No problem! My German is worse! Although, to be fair, German is a much
more difficult language than English. For example, you don't have to
worry about "die, der, das" because in English everything is "it" -
not to mention all the other complications...

Tschüs! ;o)

Don.

 

[Roger]

One of my teachers told our class the following stories about "Why are
PC-Scanners so slow?":
Allegedly Xerox (http://www.xerox.com) has achieved a law that says
that every manufacturer of PC-Scanners must limit its Scan-Speed in
order to allow Xerox selling their high-speed copiers.

I think that is just one of those "urban legends".
The thing that keeps scanners slow is money or rather lack there of.

I assume you are talking about flat bed scanners. Even for Xerox only
the expensive copiers are really fast. My Old HP 5470c only takes a
few seconds to scan a document. It takes a bit longer for photos, but
it'll scan a 5 X 7 photo in less than 10 seconds.

Another thing to take into consideration is with copies they generally
scan once and print many times. That makes the "print engine" the
object that slows things down.

I have three printers. An HP 890c, HP 970c, and Epson Photosmart
R320. That is in order of age, speed, and features. The Epson is by
far the fastest and will print pages very fast in the draft mode. It's
still relatively fast in the high quality text mode, but when printing
photos it really slows down. OTOH I can hardly tell the photos from
the ones I get out of the dark room. The HPs do very nice photos as
well but you can tell they came from a printer.

The only drawback to the Epson is the price of the ink cartridges. It
costs about $80 to replace all of the ink cartridges, but it's very
miserly on how much ink it uses.

After some web research i found not _one_ proof of this. Is it an known
legend or is it something my confused teacher has found in one of his
daydreams (I guess this is the most probable answer ;-) )?


P.S.: Apologised my english, i'm from the evil-nazi country germany ;-)

This is Usenet. People are from all over the world and there are many
whose native language is not English. At least I believe the English
and German languages have the same roots.

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com

 

[Ronald Bruck]

I think that is just one of those "urban legends".
The thing that keeps scanners slow is money or rather lack there of.

I suspect the major difference is buffer. I haven't used Xerox
lately--we have a Canon copier--but have you ever noticed how a big
copier prints a multipage document? It first reads ALL the pages, just
as fast as the paper can be fed in, obviously into memory; the actual
printing is slower, because of the necessity of fusing I suppose.

Certainly I notice a big difference between my Nikon D2H and my wife's
cheaper digital camera. (Well, I should; $4000 vs. $300, and that was
without a lens.) The Nikon has a huge buffer (it will hold 40 hi-res
raw photos), and shoots at something like 10 frames a second. Very,
very much more responsive. All made possible by the internal buffer.

I suspect there's a similar difference between a Xerox and a home
scanner. Yer pays yer money, yer makes yer choice.

--Ron Bruck

 

[Hugh Gibbons]

I suspect the major difference is buffer. I haven't used Xerox
lately--we have a Canon copier--but have you ever noticed how a big
copier prints a multipage document? It first reads ALL the pages, just
as fast as the paper can be fed in, obviously into memory; the actual
printing is slower, because of the necessity of fusing I suppose.

Certainly I notice a big difference between my Nikon D2H and my wife's
cheaper digital camera. (Well, I should; $4000 vs. $300, and that was
without a lens.) The Nikon has a huge buffer (it will hold 40 hi-res
raw photos), and shoots at something like 10 frames a second. Very,
very much more responsive. All made possible by the internal buffer.

I suspect there's a similar difference between a Xerox and a home
scanner. Yer pays yer money, yer makes yer choice.

--Ron Bruck

Low end copiers/scanners (the type you likely would have attached to
your PC or sitting in your cube at work) generally have very little in
the way of compute, buffer and processing hardware on board. They use
your PC and a whole bunch of software (drivers) to handle that stuff.
The high end business class copiers have a whole lot of processing
hardware on board, which is part of what makes them faster.