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HP Scanner compatibility with OS X

S

Seppentoni

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 14, 2011
95
95
Europe
Hi.

I have a Canon Scanner (Lide70). The osx drivers for Canon are a big pile of b***s**** so I decided to throw it in the garbage and buy a better one. (The Canon driver creates a new process every few seconds until the ram is full and I have to restart my computer).

I tought about HP Scanners. Does anybody have issues with their drivers? Or do you have any other decent recommendation regarding scanners and osx?

I just need a simple A4 flatbet Scanner.

thanks
 
Seppentoni said:
Hi.

I have a Canon Scanner (Lide70). The osx drivers for Canon are a big pile of b***s**** so I decided to throw it in the garbage and buy a better one. (The Canon driver creates a new process every few seconds until the ram is full and I have to restart my computer).

I tought about HP Scanners. Does anybody have issues with their drivers? Or do you have any other decent recommendation regarding scanners and osx?

I just need a simple A4 flatbet Scanner.

thanks
Click to expand...

My Epson Perfection V33 works fine in OSX.
 
Just buy an Epson, Canon or HP multi-funtion printer, their scanners are well supported and work fine. It's also unlikely that you'll find a stand-alone scanner for much less than $60-70 these days. Epson Expression XP-400 or Canon Pixma MG3220 come to mind.
 
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My HP OJ6500 works perfectly fine with my MBP. I use it over the network (the OJ6500 is a network-capable MFP), I spent the better part of 2 hours last weekend scanning some statements that I couldn't acquire electronically and had no issues.
 
Seppentoni said:
Hi.

I have a Canon Scanner (Lide70). The osx drivers for Canon are a big pile of b***s**** so I decided to throw it in the garbage and buy a better one. (The Canon driver creates a new process every few seconds until the ram is full and I have to restart my computer).

I tought about HP Scanners. Does anybody have issues with their drivers? Or do you have any other decent recommendation regarding scanners and osx?

I just need a simple A4 flatbet Scanner.

thanks
Click to expand...

If you are use to using a scanner in a Windows environment you will be somewhat disappointed using one in the Mac world. That is because you lose the use of Twain drivers on a Mac. I can still do most things on a Mac but some things I cannot do. For example, using Acrobat, on a Windows machine I can create a PDF document and later scan additional pages to that document directly from a scanner. On a Mac, to accomplish this I must attach separate pages as a file to the document. A little more time consuming but I can still get the job done. For me, the things I cannot do are not deal breakers.
 
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IGregory said:
On a Mac, to accomplish this I must attach separate pages as a file to the document. A little more time consuming but I can still get the job done. For me, the things I cannot do are not deal breakers.
Click to expand...

I don't need to do this, using 10.8.3 or 10.6.8 with an HP Officejet J6480 (networked) for quick work that a document feeder is useful for or an EPSON RX680 (USB) for high quality photo scans.
 
Giuly said:
Actually, OS X supports TWAIN as well.
Click to expand...

Show me.....I switch over to Mac in Aug. 2012. I have an HP OfficeJet 8600 Pro Plus Printer/Scanner/Copier. I was expecting my scanner and printer to perform similarly to how it perform on Windows. It did not. After doing some research I learned that the problems I was having was due to Mac not having Twain drivers. Don't get me wrong I had to learn the Mac way of doing things and I am completely satisfied with the way my OfficeJet interacts with my Mac. I believe you are incorrect about Macs being Twain compatible. Here's my evidence. I'm not talking about some solution a developer came up with.
 
I tried using an HP B210 All-in-One that came with my wife's iMac. Scanner worked acceptably but the HP software on the Mac sucked royally. Finally gave up on it and bought a Fujitsu ScanSnap 1500. It has worked very well. Only thing I've used the old scanner for was a few pages in a book. Hard to feed a book through the 1500 sheet feeder.
 
IGregory said:
Show me.....I switch over to Mac in Aug. 2012. I have an HP OfficeJet 8600 Pro Plus Printer/Scanner/Copier. I was expecting my scanner and printer to perform similarly to how it perform on Windows. It did not. After doing some research I learned that the problems I was having was due to Mac not having Twain drivers. Don't get me wrong I had to learn the Mac way of doing things and I am completely satisfied with the way my OfficeJet interacts with my Mac. I believe you are incorrect about Macs being Twain compatible. Here's my evidence. I'm not talking about some solution a developer came up with.
Click to expand...
The vast majority of scanners support TWAIN on the Mac. You purchased one that does not. Both of my scanners--a Canon and an Epson--support TWAIN. That said, compared to Image Capture, TWAIN drivers add a scanner UI that look like badly written software from the 1990s. Image Capture is faster and looks ever so much nicer. You might want to look into VueScan. If it works, then pay the license fee.

Another thing: My Epson ships with Epson Scan. It is a front end to Image Capture.
 
Coldcase & MisterMe

MisterMe said:
The vast majority of scanners support TWAIN on the Mac. You purchased one that does not. Both of my scanners--a Canon and an Epson--support TWAIN. That said, compared to Image Capture, TWAIN drivers add a scanner UI that look like badly written software from the 1990s. Image Capture is faster and looks ever so much nicer. You might want to look into VueScan. If it works, then pay the license fee.

Another thing: My Epson ships with Epson Scan. It is a front end to Image Capture.
Click to expand...

Thank both of you very much for the info. I didn't realize that with a Mac it depends on the scanner. The information both of you provided is very timely as I will be making scanner purchase soon to replace my HP.

OP, I didn't mean to hijack your thread topic.
 
Hi.
Thanks for your advices. I guess I look into something from Epson. Their products look nice. I guess the driver for my lide 70 doesn't do it anymore with MountainLion.

OP, I didn't mean to hijack your thread topic.
Click to expand...
No Problem ;)
 
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