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Canon DR-2020U document scanner OS X drivers

S

sirherbert

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 12, 2008
19
0
Hi there!

I just bought me a brand new Canon DR-2020U, but to my dismay, I noticed that it doesn't have OS X drivers, and OS X doesn't even flinch when I connect the scanner to it.

I googled for drivers, but the official site does not say anything about those drivers. I have, of course, the Windows drivers and I can operate it through Parallels, but I feel a little stupid for paying $700 for a scanner which does not have necessary drivers to operato on my OS X.

Any suggestions?
 
Answers from Canon officer

I just ended a call with a Canon official, and he reported that the printer does not include OS X support. He said there could be some in the future, but at the moment there is none.

Still, even with Parallels, there are massive problems with the device. The "CaptureOnTouch" software does not function at all, and the CapturePerfect 3.0 bundled software is the only way to operate the device with Windows 7.
 
Unfortunately I am stuck with this device because of a 24 month leasing deal.

I called a Canon scanner tech specialist here in Finland, and we managed to get the thing working with SIMPLEX feeder scanning. DUPLEX scanning, though, gets the scanner software to jam.

I am running The Canon DR-2020U Driver Version 1.0.10907.29001 and firmware revision 0075.

The tech scanner specialist promised to check out what their European Knowledge base says about the thing, so I hope to get this thing fixed. Also, I hope, they will include OS X support later on. It's not too big of a problem to run the software on Parallels, but still would be nice to integrate perfectly to OSX. Also, the duplex scanning is a must - that's why I bought the damn machine - so I hope to get that fixed soon, OSX or no OSX.

EDIT: funny thing is that the device itself is very nice, and this is one of those cases where rotten software can mess up the program completely.
 
Canon DR-2020U Scanner Mac Drivers

I am also interested in getting the Canon DR-2020U. I wonder whether there has been any more recent development on the availability of a Mac driver since the helpful alerts from SirHerbert in February 2010. Thanks.
 
The Finnish Canon's tech representatives say that Canon has no intention, at least at this point, to deliver OS X drivers. Their strategy seems to be, that if a device is not reported to be OS X compliant, it is not and nothing will be done about it. That's a bummer for me - I have to use a separate PC to get my scanning done.

So all fellow OSXers, please steer clear of this manifestation of corporate indifference!
 
Canon DR-2020U document scanner

Thank you SirHerbert.

One further question. I note from your initial posts (earlier this year) that you had limited success with running the DR-2020U under Parallels. I wonder whether you have considered or tried running it under Boot Camp (not boot camp partition under Parallels) as it would appear to me that under the Boot Camp environment the iMac will be really a "true" Windows machine (rather than a virtualisation engine as will be case under Parallels) and theoretically the scanner with the Windows driver should perform according to its full specs.

I did raise this question with the Canon representative here and received a non-committal answer. There was a discussion that they would try to arrange for a demo with the machine running a Boot Camp scenario in a Mac but I have never heard back from them. Not sure whether this is also an illustration that, in a nutshell, they are not that interested in accommodating Mac.
 
Well, now that you remind me, the technicians claimed that they had it functioning under WMWare Fusion. So it is possible that it functions with Boot Camp. I however am not a Boot Camp user, and don't know about that.
 
sirherbert said:
So all fellow OSXers, please steer clear of this manifestation of corporate indifference!
Click to expand...
It's really unfortunate. Just yesterday I posted https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/935982/ slightly similar story. I bought Canon MF4320D. Though it has drivers for OSX, they do not work via AirPort Extreme. Canon representative in Singapore also told me they have no intentions to rectify this problem in drivers. If I want their printer to work via network I should buy a network printer.
Though I like the printer I can't afford not being able to use it as I planned. But I have a plan now to change my AirPort Extreme to Linksys router with USB and install DD-WRT on it, which is technically Linux mini-server. Hopefully, this will solve my issue.

But enough off-topic. I do not like Canon's attitude. In the future I will consider twice before I decide to buy any other of their products.
 
takemore said:
... But I have a plan now to change my AirPort Extreme to Linksys router with USB and install DD-WRT on it, which is technically Linux mini-server. Hopefully, this will solve my issue.
Click to expand...
Wow! Changing from AirPort Extreme to a Linksys router will not magically convert Canon's USB driver into a network driver.
takemore said:
... I do not like Canon's attitude. In the future I will consider twice before I decide to buy any other of their products.
Click to expand...
It has nothing to do with Canon's attitude. The Canon DR-2020U is designed for a direct connection to the host computer. To design it for a network connection would have made it more expensive. It's called business.
 
MisterMe said:
Wow! Changing from AirPort Extreme to a Linksys router will not magically convert Canon's USB driver into a network driver.
Click to expand...
Probably you missed me mentioning DD-WRT in my message. Linksys router with DD-WRT is basically mini Linux server with USB port on it. So technically Canon driver for MF4320D will be working on a local USB connection with driver installed locally. Local relatively to the Linux server the printer will be connected to. And if this Linux server will be printing jobs submitted locally or via network will not be known to Canon driver.

MisterMe said:
It has nothing to do with Canon's attitude. The Canon DR-2020U is designed for a direct connection to the host computer. To design it for a network connection would have made it more expensive. It's called business.
Click to expand...
MF4320D is designed to work via USB. AirPort Extreme has USB port and it has in place a transport protocol so that OS X would access remotely devices connected to it with drivers installed on OS X. Canon printer connected to AirPort Extreme is properly advertised via Bonjour and it's driver gets installed on my Mac. Power state is correctly shown. It's almost working. They just need to fix that small stuff which prevents them from fully working. This is different from implementing from scratch a new feature.

But Canon refuses to. This is not business this is wrong attitude.
 
takemore said:
Probably you missed me mentioning DD-WRT in my message. Linksys router with DD-WRT is basically mini Linux server with USB port on it. ...
Click to expand...
I missed nothing. It doesn't matter if your router is a mini server, maxi server, or somwhere in between. If you don't have the driver, then it won't work. The fact that Bonjour is properly broadcasting the name of the device notwithstanding. The Canon driver is a USB driver.

If your "mini Linux server" features user-configurable printer sharing, then it probably uses the opensource [and now Apple-owned] CUPS printer engine. If this is the case, then you could use the MacOS X PostScript print driver to use the printer. However, the Linux Foundation's OpenPrinting CUPS print driver project does not support your printer.
 
Looking at scanner options, stumbled on this thread.

Worth checking out the open source TWAIN-SANE drivers. I use that to run an old unsupported Epson GT-7000 Scanner on Snow Leopard. Not perfect but eminently usable. I use Image Capture and Acrobat Professional.

http://www.ellert.se/twain-sane/

Just checked the SANE website and DR-2020U is one of the Canon models presently "unsupported".
http://www.sane-project.org/lists/sane-mfgs-cvs.html

So to really make this scanner go, a programmer could go delving into writing a modified canon driver.

(Canon has a very long history of not making Mac-compatible hardware/software.)
 
Last edited:
sirherbert said:
The Finnish Canon's tech representatives say that Canon has no intention, at least at this point, to deliver OS X drivers. Their strategy seems to be, that if a device is not reported to be OS X compliant, it is not and nothing will be done about it. That's a bummer for me - I have to use a separate PC to get my scanning done.

So all fellow OSXers, please steer clear of this manifestation of corporate indifference!
Click to expand...

I just checked http://www.hamrick.com/ to see if Vuescan supports your scanner. It is not one of the over 1800 scanners supported. Still... they have a free download and it is possible that it will work so you might want to give it a try.

Vuescan is an incredible asset to the Mac community. The driver is top notch and it is updated every couple of weeks to support new features and new scanners. If I was you, I would give it a test drive... it just might work.

/Jim
 
Already given up

Guys,

Thanks for your ideas!

I've pretty much given up hope for this piece of s***, and using another scanner and a scanning service from Xerox. Basically, even if we could get the scanner working (we've tried using it on a Windows 7 computer), it is so poorly manufactured that it takes ages to do anything with it.

The software is buggy and freezes a lot, and the settings UI/views are so poorly designed that it's hard to know what kind of output you are going to get.

As a result, I concluded that my time at work is more precious than paying an outside company to do this dirty work for me, even if it's something like $1 per invoice. If you think about it, with the setup costs, labor requirements etc, it's actually cheaper and MUCH less hassle to outsource invoice scanning.

I'm sorry for everyone/anyone who bought this device, especially for OS X use. I hope at least I learned my lesson.
 
If you do decide to bring this in house sometime... I would give a strong recommendation to Fujitsu Scansnap S1500M. It is small, fast (20ppm), stable sheet loader, full duplex (scans both sides at once), auto page rotate, blank page removal, self straightening of mis-fed sheets and OCR (Adobe Acrobat)... and creates PDF+Text documents. It retails for about $500 but usually sells for about $400 last time I checked.

I use it with DevonThink document software ($170) that is an incredible piece of software that directly supports the ScanSnap.

The two are the heart of my fully digital office. The only thing I now retain in paper form are original official legal documents. I still have a lot of old paper crap that I am getting rid of over time... but I am not adding to the mess.

/Jim
 
flynz4 said:
If you do decide to bring this in house sometime... I would give a strong recommendation to Fujitsu Scansnap S1500M. It is small, fast (20ppm), stable sheet loader, full duplex (scans both sides at once), auto page rotate, blank page removal, self straightening of mis-fed sheets and OCR (Adobe Acrobat)... and creates PDF+Text documents. It retails for about $500 but usually sells for about $400 last time I checked.

I use it with DevonThink document software ($170) that is an incredible piece of software that directly supports the ScanSnap.

The two are the heart of my fully digital office. The only thing I now retain in paper form are original official legal documents. I still have a lot of old paper crap that I am getting rid of over time... but I am not adding to the mess.

/Jim
Click to expand...

+1 for the S1500M. Been using it in two offices that have been moving away from paper files and it works beautifully. Hundreds of sheets per day are scanned without issue. Feels incredibly fast, and couldn't believe the first time I did duplex and it scanned both sides at once!
 
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