[sane-devel] good adf scanners

[Philip J. Hollenback]

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