Scanner wanted--Plustek UT24, or something else?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Dances With Crows
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Dances With Crows

[ Followup set to comp.periphs.scanners ]

I'm finally going to buy a scanner, and would like some opinions on what
might work. My requirements are modest; 600 DPI, 8-bit color, and <=
$200 would be just fine.

The real problem is that I *don't* want to buy a scanner that isn't
supported by Free software. According to the lists at
http://www.sane-project.org/ , the current low-end offerings from Epson
and Canon are not supported by SANE yet. I can probably run USBSnoopy
on 'Doze, figure out part of the protocol on a LiDE 35 or Perfection
3490, and write a partial backend--but that's too much like work and it
takes a long time. So: Does anyone have any horror stories about the
Plustek OpticPro UT24 ? That one's marked as "complete" in SANE's
lists, and Googling for problems didn't turn up much. If anyone has
other suggestions, please post them to the newsfroup. TIA,
 
[ Followup set to comp.periphs.scanners ]

I'm finally going to buy a scanner, and would like some opinions on what
might work. My requirements are modest; 600 DPI, 8-bit color, and <=
$200 would be just fine.

The real problem is that I *don't* want to buy a scanner that isn't
supported by Free software. According to the lists at
http://www.sane-project.org/ , the current low-end offerings from Epson
and Canon are not supported by SANE yet. I can probably run USBSnoopy
on 'Doze, figure out part of the protocol on a LiDE 35 or Perfection
3490, and write a partial backend--but that's too much like work and it
takes a long time. So: Does anyone have any horror stories about the
Plustek OpticPro UT24 ? That one's marked as "complete" in SANE's
lists, and Googling for problems didn't turn up much. If anyone has
other suggestions, please post them to the newsfroup. TIA,
Click to expand...

Canonscan LiDE 20 from canon works perfectly on Linux. And I paid for
it less than 60 euro 6 months ago.

I just plugged it (USB1.1), started xsane and it was working.
My distribution didn't have an OCR program so I downloaded gocr,
compiled, installed and also OCR was available.

Ciao
Giovanni
 
[ Followup set to comp.periphs.scanners ]

I'm finally going to buy a scanner, and would like some opinions on what
might work. My requirements are modest; 600 DPI, 8-bit color, and <=
$200 would be just fine.

The real problem is that I *don't* want to buy a scanner that isn't
supported by Free software. According to the lists at
http://www.sane-project.org/ , the current low-end offerings from Epson
and Canon are not supported by SANE yet. I can probably run USBSnoopy
on 'Doze, figure out part of the protocol on a LiDE 35 or Perfection
3490, and write a partial backend--but that's too much like work and it
takes a long time. So: Does anyone have any horror stories about the
Plustek OpticPro UT24 ? That one's marked as "complete" in SANE's
lists, and Googling for problems didn't turn up much. If anyone has
other suggestions, please post them to the newsfroup. TIA,
Click to expand...

In general, Epson has good Linux support for their scanners. There is
Linux 'iscan' software available, and a look at the docs will tell you
what models are supported. I'm currently using a Perfection 2400 Photo
which works fine - purchased it for under $100 from the Epson online
store. The iscan software used to be available from the epson-kowa website
- I think it moved not too long ago, but a web search should find it.
Their scanners also work with sane.
 
["Followup-To:" header set to comp.periphs.scanners.]
Canonscan LiDE 20 from canon works perfectly on Linux.
Click to expand...

....and it's been discontinued, is not listed on pricewatch/newegg, and
of the first 5 webstores I found/checked via Google, 4 list it as "out
of stock". The one that didn't list it as out of stock was in Malaysia.
Not very encouraging to my mind. That's sort of why I mentioned the
Plustek UT24, because it's in-stock at a USA company and listed as
"complete" in SANE.
My distribution didn't have an OCR program so I downloaded gocr,
compiled, installed and also OCR was available.
Click to expand...

The "gtk-ocr" frontend for it is pitiful. Fortunately, kooka can use
gocr as well. gocr worked better than OCRad on a very clean test image,
but it's still inferior to what a 4-year-old Omnipage and Typereader
came up with. OCR is one area where Free stuff is seriously lagging.
Fortunately, I won't be doing much if any OCR on the things I'm
scanning.
 
In general, Epson has good Linux support for their scanners. There is
Linux 'iscan' software available, and a look at the docs will tell you
what models are supported. The iscan software used to be available
from the epson-kowa website - I think it moved not too long ago, but a
web search should find it.
Click to expand...

Ah. Silly me, thinking that SANE had every supported scanner organized
into a nice list. The iscan stuff is at
http://www.avasys.jp/english/linux_e/ for future reference.

The local Worst Buy had an Epson Perfection 3490, so I bought it and
tried iscan. It complained that it couldn't communicate with the
scanner. I ran it as root, same result. Went debugging with strace,
didn't find much that was helpful. Copied all the files from
/usr/local/lib/sane to /usr/lib/sane , reran ldconfig, copied the
epkowa.conf file from the iscan source tarball to /etc/sane.d/ and
changed dll.conf , fiddled the symlinks in /usr/lib/, and suddenly
everything started working.

I'm very confused. One of the things I did was obviously the right
thing, but I don't know what it was, so I can't advise other users when
they run into the same problem. At least I can now acquire TIFFs.
Thanks for the advice!
 
Dances said:
[ Followup set to comp.periphs.scanners ]

I'm finally going to buy a scanner, and would like some opinions on what
might work. My requirements are modest; 600 DPI, 8-bit color, and <=
$200 would be just fine.

The real problem is that I *don't* want to buy a scanner that isn't
supported by Free software. According to the lists at
http://www.sane-project.org/ , the current low-end offerings from Epson
and Canon are not supported by SANE yet. I can probably run USBSnoopy
on 'Doze, figure out part of the protocol on a LiDE 35 or Perfection
3490, and write a partial backend--but that's too much like work and it
takes a long time. So: Does anyone have any horror stories about the
Plustek OpticPro UT24 ? That one's marked as "complete" in SANE's
lists, and Googling for problems didn't turn up much. If anyone has
other suggestions, please post them to the newsfroup. TIA,
Click to expand...
personally i like my epson perfection 3170 with iscan software quite well.
It serves me well.
 
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