[sane-devel] good adf scanners
Philip J. Hollenback
phil@telemetry-investments.com
Tue, 7 Jun 2005 08:28:26 -0400
Hi Brad,
I asked the same question a week ago (as someone pointed out). Here's
a recap of what I found out based on that and my own testing:
1. HP 74XX: works, but the scanner goes to sleep after 15 minutes and
won't wake up without power cycle. Also the feed mechanism tends
to skew pages slightly.
2. HP 55XX: others say don't use these as they are broken in various
ways.
3. HP 82XX: apparently not well supported by driver. Note that HP
doesn't make the 82XX or 74XX scanners, they use the Avision
backend.
4. Brother MFC: one person reported that one of these worked well for
him (I forget which one, but it was an inkjet). However, a lot of
people say the Brother devices are junk. Plus buying a
multifunction device just for scanning seems lame. I have a
perfectly good laser printer in my office and I don't need to
replace it.
5. Some sort of Fujitsu: it seems like Fujitsu might make some
scanners with good ADF support. See the previous thread for
specific models. These generally seem to be just ADF units, not
flatbeds. I saw a couple on ebay for around $350.
Basically I have yet to find a good ADF scanner for my office. I
bought an HP 7450 on ebay for $100 and that would work ok if it didn't
have the wakeup problem. I'm thinking of buying a used Fujitsu on
ebay also for around $300-$400. The Avision backed developer has
indicated that the problem with the 7450 should be fixable in the
backend.
There seems to be a big cliff with these devices: you can get various
mediocre to downright unusable scanners with ADFs for around $100-$500
new and used. Or, you can get one that might really work for
$2000-$3000. For example, Canon and Fujitsu both have
professional-looking ADF scanners in that price range.
I also have a standalone Canon PC-1060 copier in my office. It's
clearly a scanner + a laser printer because it can scan pages into a
buffer and then print them out (i.e. the scan and the print aren't
directly connected). It works great and has a very reliable ADF. I'm
not sure how much it originally cost but I believe it was in the
$1000-$2000 range.
There's even a cutout on the back of this scanner that looks like it
would hold a network card. I called Canon and they told me no such
network connection exists for that scanner. If it did, that would be
a great solution.
I've got a Ricoh salesman coming to my office tomorrow to see if they
can sell me a networked scanner. It's my fear that anything like that
will require Windows, though.
Anyway, that's my long-winded take on all this. I'm actually trying
to put together a complete network scan + fax solution for my office
using a SANE scanner and Hylafax.
P.
On 06/07/05, Brad Barnett wrote:
> On Tue, 07 Jun 2005 02:22:11 +0200
> Jens Gulden <mail@jensgulden.de> wrote:
>
> > Brad Barnett schrieb:
> > >
> > > Does anyone have any suggestions for a well supported ADF scanner,
> > > under Linux? The SANE support list doesn't specify such things in the
> > > summary, which makes it more difficult to pick a good one..
> > >
> > > Any tales of success and words of wonder are welcome!
> > >
> >
> > See the thread "Good office scanners with ADF support?" just one week
> > ago on this list.
> >
>
>
> Hmm.
>
> Thanks for that info, btw.
>
> I find myself discouraged. :/ Seemingly the best solution is an evil
> Brother MFC?
>
> Does anyone have any other solutions? If it's a MFC, I'm quite willing to
> go with laser, in fact.. I'd prefer it.
>
--
Philip J. Hollenback
Telemetry Investments
phollenback@telemetry-investments.com