Scanner Recommendation

[Brian Abraham]

The boss of the household had a momentary lapse and lashed out and bought her long suffering a new desktop running Windows 7 - bless her soul. Pity is, my scanner, which I dearly love, is only good for XP (a Canon D660U). The reason for the love afair is,

1. It does slides
2. I can preview a document and select the portion I want scanned. Unlike the daughters scanner where the scanned document has to be imported into paint, and the required portion cut and saved.

Is there a Windows 7 scanner that can capture my heart?

[seacue]

I have an old Epson Perfection 2400 Photo scanner which scans 35 mm slides at 2400 pixels per inch. The result is very good by my standards. Of course it scans full-size reflective pages as well.

Here's a sample of a slide I scanned, note the dust in the sky.
http://members.toast.net/rcarpen/silverton1970.jpg

A friend has an Epson Perfection V500 scanner, which is a modern replacement for my model. It seems to work at least as well as my older unit. The newer unit offers "dust removal" which mine doesn't have. You can turn off this feature if it causes you problems.

These do NOT come with the horrible software "baggage" like HPs do. Just nice Twain drivers with straightforward control panels.

The V500 is in the region of $150 on Amazon in the USA.

I'd certainly go with an Epson flatbed with slide attachment in the future.

When you scan positives (slides), dust shows up as black dots, which aren't terribly offensive to me. When scanning negatives, dust shows up as very white dots - far more offensive. I haven't investigated whether the Epson anti-dust feature helps with dust on negatives.

seacue

Edited to correct price.

Further edited to state that these meet your criterion #2 (select from preview before scan).

[Bushfiva]

The Vista driver may well work. If you do decide to buy something newer, I'm very happy with my 9000F. Also, check if your scanner is supported by Hamrick Vuescan, an outstanding bit of scanning software.

[obgraham]

As above, the Epson V500 will do what you want. Get the Win 7 driver from the Epson website. The software is very friendly.

I expect Canon will have a similar well designed unit.

Do not get an HP for this purpose. It will fry both your brain and your computer. (dont ask me how I know this!)

[Capetonian]

I have a Canon Lide scanner, a flatbed, which worked beautifully and delivered high quality results with XP. When I got a new PC with Win 7 it no longer worked but I was able to download drivers for it and it works perfectly, even though everyone said it wouldn't be possible to do this.

[hellsbrink]

As Bushfiva says, try the Vista driver BUT I would also add that it would be better to install the driver using compatibility mode so from the moment of the install starting it thinks you have a Vista machine. Once installed, you may then have to use compatibility mode for the programs too, but it may work under 7 without compatibility mode. It's a method I've used on various bits and pieces and I have everything running sweetly here.

[seacue]

I second obgrahams' recommendation AGAINST an HP scanner.

A couple of days ago I installed the software needed to get one of their all-in-one units working on a system I "shepherd". Unfortunately one gets Image Zone even if you want only a Twain driver. The installation took forever and Image Zone should never be mentioned in polite society.

This system already had an HP flatbed with slide adapter. But the slide adapter holds the slides a millimeter or so above the glass. You can scan at 2400 pixels/inch to no avail since slides are slightly out of focus because of the bad design of the slide adapter. I hope the newer HP slide scanners don't have this problem.

[Mac the Knife]

Download a trial copy of Hamrick's "Vuescan" - VueScan 9 Scanning Software for Windows 7, Mac OS X (Snow Leopard) and Linux (http://www.hamrick.com/) - the absolute best scanning software you can find.

"VueScan 9 x32 runs on Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows 2000, Mac OS X 10.3.9+ and most Linux distributions."

"VueScan 9 x64 runs on Windows 7 x64, Windows Vista x64, Windows XP x64, Mac OS X 10.5+ and 64-bit Linux."

"Supports more than 1750 scanners"

If it works - pay for it!

Mac

Edited to add:

"VueScan works with the Canon D660U on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. If you're using Windows and haven't installed the Canon (http://www.canon.com/) driver, you can instead install VueScan's driver by:


Make sure you've installed VueScan and that you've answered 'Yes' about installing drivers
Click the Start button in the lower left corner
Click 'Computer' or 'My Computer' with the right mouse button and choose 'Properties'
Click the 'Hardware' tab (not needed on Vista or 7) and then click 'Device Manager'
Click the scanner with the right mouse button and choose 'Properties'
Click the 'Driver' tab
Click 'Uninstall'
Reboot the computer

If Windows asks for a driver for the scanner, tell it to install it automatically or to look in c:\vuescan.
This should cause the driver for the scanner to be loaded properly.
You can use this scanner on Mac OS X and Linux without installing any other software."

There you go!

[Mr Optimistic]

Capetonian: that's bad news. I had a lide scanner and junked it for a new model because everyone said you can't update drivers.:(

[A A Gruntpuddock]

I expcted to bin my Agfa scanner when I moved on to XP but newer drivers kept it up and running. Didn't work with Win7 though and I was searching for recommendations for a new one when I came across a reference to Vuescan.

That reminded me that I had bought a copy ages ago to run my slide scanner using ME so I found the installation disks and, to my amazement, it worked without any problems and my ancient scanner is running again!

The program is expensive but well worth a look.

[Mac the Knife]

"You can use VueScan on up to four different computers that you personally use, with any combination of operating systems, with any number of scanners, both x32 and x64, with a single license. If more than one person (who isn't a family member) uses the computer, then you need a separate VueScan license for each computer."

Generous terms and really good support.

I support FOSS and rarely buy stuff unless its quite special

Vuescan is not cheap cheap but its aye worth it.

[Brian Abraham]

Many thanks for the input. Tried the VueScan but thought it a bit slow and clunky. Settled on the Epson V500.

[obgraham]

Good choice. Likewise on VueScan.