Anyone care to chime in with an opinion? I just got an iMac, with Leopard, and am looking for an inexpensive scanner that does a decent job with photos. I'd like to stay under $100 if possible. I know there are some scanners out there that have OS X drivers that don't work reliably, so I'd like to avoid those if possible.
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Best budget scanner for Leopard/Intel
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I am looking for the same thing. I am not necessarily limited to $100.00. I can tell you that hp products claim to be Leopard ready but they are not. I currently have a Scanjet G3010 which worked fine under 10.4. I installed Leopard and it has not worked since. I have been bounced back and forth between Mac support and hp support with each claiming it is the other's problem. The device manager gives an error message that it can not locate the a scanner. I have made at least two dozen calls to hp technical support which is located in Costa Rica and they are very uncooperative. All they will tell me to do is to wait for another 60 days and they MAY have a solution. My last call was about 2 hours ago.
I have made arrangements with Office Depot to return it for store credit since they do not carry any scanners which are listed as being compatible with Leopard. I will attempt to drop by my local Apple dealership to see if they either have scanners to sell which will work or if they know of which ones will work.
Canon LiDE 25 is about as cheap as they come and has bundled Mac software. I won't lie and say the software is great, but it does the job.
I second the Canons! I have two, the LiDE 35 and 60 and both work fine with Leopard. Just make sure you get the latest drivers from the Canon website. One of the features I really like is Multi-Scan. You can load the platen up with many photos (I have done as many as 8 small school photos) and it will scan each one as a separate photo with one pass of the scanner.
Good luck!
Good luck!
Thanks to both. I have an appointment in 45 minutes with the local tech support at the apple store. He will check the scanner first to see if it is working and if it does then check my computer to strip out some of the old plist and other files that may causing a conflict.
If it is the scanner at least I have a couple to look for.
I have to post a correction. The hp Scanjet is now working fine. My visit to the local store paid off. The scanner worked fine on their machines so we attached to mine. The only thing the tech did was to change my account name. Something about having two different accounts for myself on the same computer. He deleted one and renamed the other.
The hp scanjet G3010 is very basic, but it does do photos, slides and scans directly to my printer as a copier. I paid less that $100 for it so I guess it is worth about what it produces
The hp scanjet G3010 is very basic, but it does do photos, slides and scans directly to my printer as a copier. I paid less that $100 for it so I guess it is worth about what it produces
I performed an erase and install of Leopard and have downloaded the latest drivers from the Canon site but my Lide 60 doesn't work at all.
The only thing I think could be the issue is that as part of the Leopard install I opted not to install any print drivers (since I don't have a printer).
Could you tell me how you installed Leopard? And what is the name and version of the driver you downloaded? I'm really scratching my head as to what my problem is so if you could shed some light on it I'd be most grateful.
I've just noticed that Canon released a new driver for the Lide 60 on Friday 7th December. Here are the release notes:
Once I get home from work I'll give it a try.
Canon said:
Once I get home from work I'll give it a try.
My Lide 60 has worked fine on Leopard since its release, I just installed the driver, rather than the crappy Canon Software though.
It is a really nice scanner though.
It is a really nice scanner though.
If ScanGear and Toolbox are no longer functioning, what IS functioning? How does one scan with it? Will upgrade (even though it is working fine except for multi-scan) in Leopard now.
I've tried the new driver but my scanner is still dead as a dodo. Everything was fine with Tiger but I can't work out what the problem is with my Leopard install. 
I'm glad to hear its working straight out of the box for some people though.
If anyone has any ideas, I'd love to hear them!
I'm glad to hear its working straight out of the box for some people though.
If anyone has any ideas, I'd love to hear them!
I hope scanner manufacturers take their software seriously someday. I have a pile of scanners here that no longer work because the software is bad or Macs are no longer supported. I bought a nice $200+ Epson scanner just before 10.4 came out, upgraded, and it hasn't worked since. I have another Epson someone gave me because it wouldn't work on their Mac. I just bought a $300+ Microtek scanner, none of the software works with it, including the SilverFast Ai software.
Most of the scanners I have work perfectly fine and I might be able to get some to work with SANE drivers. It's the software that's bad. It would be nice if scanner manufacturers would make good software to start with, and then support them.
The only scanner I have been able to consistently depend on is my 15+ year old Microtek SCSI scanner hooked up to my old beige PowerMac 7600, but that means keeping that old computer around.
If anyone knows of a company making scanners that is committed to making good software and supporting Macs it would be nice to know.
Most of the scanners I have work perfectly fine and I might be able to get some to work with SANE drivers. It's the software that's bad. It would be nice if scanner manufacturers would make good software to start with, and then support them.
The only scanner I have been able to consistently depend on is my 15+ year old Microtek SCSI scanner hooked up to my old beige PowerMac 7600, but that means keeping that old computer around.
If anyone knows of a company making scanners that is committed to making good software and supporting Macs it would be nice to know.
lide 25
My lide 25 would not work with Leopard.
I tried all the tricks from Canon tech support and nothing worked then I tried a third party software,namely, VUESCAN and lo! and behold no more drama, worked like a dream.
So DON"T THROW AWAY YOUR EXPENSIVE or even CHEAP scanners try vuescan or something similar first.
My lide 25 would not work with Leopard.
I tried all the tricks from Canon tech support and nothing worked then I tried a third party software,namely, VUESCAN and lo! and behold no more drama, worked like a dream.
So DON"T THROW AWAY YOUR EXPENSIVE or even CHEAP scanners try vuescan or something similar first.
So you have to go and buy $40 software to make a scanner that only costs $50 work. VueScans good, but that just reinforces what I was saying about scanner manufacturers not supporting their scanners.
SANE appears to work with the Lide 25. That would let you use Apple's Image Capture app found in the Applications folder. It take a little effort to set up though.
The whole bit about the software is a ploy to get you to upgrade. I inquired about this when trying to use my LiDE80 directly in Photoshop CS3. They weren't planning on upgrading the plug-in, but they offered me a discount on a newer model. I think Canon is better for some of their other products than they are for scanners. Anyway, the absurdity of it is, my scanner doesn't work in Leopard (haven't tried the very latest drivers), but it works in Windows in Parallels Desktop in Leopard.
I have a new Canon Lide 90 cost $79.00 from Canon with free overnight shipping and Let me tell you that it works wonderful with my 24" Imac. Called Canon to help set it up and talked to a guy named Tony for Mac help. He was great with me because I'm a new switcher to Mac. PS. It is a great scanner for my needs.
LiDE 35
I had an LiDE 35 and while it did work with leopard.. it's twain driver wasn't the best with every application (namely Presto PageManager 8). I recently decided to try the LiDE 200 and it not only works flawlessly, but it has one of the best twain drivers available. Canon has also started to beef up their offerings with the software. They include their optional software (meaning you don't have to install it) which browses and organizes the images that you scan which was sorely missed with the LiDE 35. I played around with it and although it's very nice.. it still doesn't beat Presto PageManager. I think every scanner should come bundled with that. At any rater the new twain driver with the LiDE 200 will let you batch scan to any application, AND will let you do mulitple manual selects.
I have used VueScan, but I find that the canon's twain is simpler and easier to use and it gives you a picture that looks exactly like the original. That's really what you want, because Photoshop can fix anything. You want something that will reproduce the original as accurate as possible. Incidently the plug-ins that you can use optionally worked very well unlike the ones on the LiDE 35. If you can get it I highly recommend it. The only thing it won't do is Slides, but I don't have any.
I had an LiDE 35 and while it did work with leopard.. it's twain driver wasn't the best with every application (namely Presto PageManager 8). I recently decided to try the LiDE 200 and it not only works flawlessly, but it has one of the best twain drivers available. Canon has also started to beef up their offerings with the software. They include their optional software (meaning you don't have to install it) which browses and organizes the images that you scan which was sorely missed with the LiDE 35. I played around with it and although it's very nice.. it still doesn't beat Presto PageManager. I think every scanner should come bundled with that. At any rater the new twain driver with the LiDE 200 will let you batch scan to any application, AND will let you do mulitple manual selects.
I have used VueScan, but I find that the canon's twain is simpler and easier to use and it gives you a picture that looks exactly like the original. That's really what you want, because Photoshop can fix anything. You want something that will reproduce the original as accurate as possible. Incidently the plug-ins that you can use optionally worked very well unlike the ones on the LiDE 35. If you can get it I highly recommend it. The only thing it won't do is Slides, but I don't have any.