Speed of scanning.

[yadmonkey]

Hi - I have a Canon Lide 80 scanner which supports USB 2.0 and thought I'd upgrade my dual 1gHz powermac to USB 2.0 to take advantage of the speed. I tested it before and after and found that when scanning a color photo it took:

14 seconds to scan at 150 dpi.
40 seconds to scan at 300 dpi.
147 seconds to scan at 600 dpi.

Then I installed the USB 2.0 card and tried again, only to get the exact same times to the second. It is quickly becoming apparent that the limiting factor wasn't the USB speed, but the scanner speed. Or am I missing something?

 

[MisterMe]

Re: Speed of scanning.

Originally posted by yadmonkey
Hi - I have a Canon Lide 80 scanner which supports USB 2.0 and thought I'd upgrade my dual 1gHz powermac to USB 2.0 to take advantage of the speed. I tested it before and after and found that when scanning a color photo it took:

14 seconds to scan at 150 dpi.
40 seconds to scan at 300 dpi.
147 seconds to scan at 600 dpi.

Then I installed the USB 2.0 card and tried again, only to get the exact same times to the second. It is quickly becoming apparent that the limiting factor wasn't the USB speed, but the scanner speed. Or am I missing something?

How do you know that your USB 2.0 card is running USB 2.0 and not USB 1.1?

 

[mnkeybsness]

or perhaps that is just the maximum speed that the scanner can... well... scan.

 

[yadmonkey]

Re: Re: Speed of scanning.

Originally posted by MisterMe
How do you know that your USB 2.0 card is running USB 2.0 and not USB 1.1?

Are there many USB 2.0 cards out there that are actually just running 1.1?

The scanner is running at "up to 480 Mb/second" according to the system profiler.

 

[yadmonkey]

Re: Re: Speed of scanning.

Originally posted by MisterMe
How do you know that your USB 2.0 card is running USB 2.0 and not USB 1.1?

Its an Iogear GIC 251U, which supports mac. Is there any reason to believe it would simply be running USB 1.1?

 

[rainman::|:|]

USB2 and FW800 are both too high-bandwidth for many devices placed on them... it's quite possible that a scanner would be limited by it's own speed under USB1.1, the same way that hard drives won't be faster under FW800 as they don't max out FW400 (except in sporadic short bursts).

Forced obsolescence shows it's ugly face once again...

paul

 

[yadmonkey]

Originally posted by paulwhannel
USB2 and FW800 are both too high-bandwidth for many devices placed on them... it's quite possible that a scanner would be limited by it's own speed under USB1.1, the same way that hard drives won't be faster under FW800 as they don't max out FW400 (except in sporadic short bursts).

Forced obsolescence shows it's ugly face once again...

paul

OK... I just found the fine print. This scanner only supports USB 1.1 for any Mac OS. It was not an advertised fact when I bought it. So I will return it unless Canon pledges USB 2.0 support in an update.

 

[bousozoku]

Re: Re: Speed of scanning.

Originally posted by MisterMe
How do you know that your USB 2.0 card is running USB 2.0 and not USB 1.1?

It should look like this in System Profiler.

Notice the High-Speed designation.

 

[caveman_uk]

USB2 is only supported in 10.2.8 and higher unless you install third-party drivers. Otherwise the card will only be USB1 regardless of it's capabilities.

 

[jtown]

Originally posted by yadmonkey
OK... I just found the fine print. This scanner only supports USB 1.1 for any Mac OS. It was not an advertised fact when I bought it. So I will return it unless Canon pledges USB 2.0 support in an update.

I bought a Lide 30 mostly because of the size and partly because of the "built for OSX" logo on the box. Funny how it doesn't work with OSX's image capture program. You'd think that would be a requirement for an image capture device to get permission to use the "built for OSX" logo. My choices were to buy Photoshop and use their photoshop plugin, use the ugly CanoScan software, or return it. I decided to use the ugly CanoScan software.

Canon figures they got away with that so they'll hide the USB2 issue on the new models in fine print. Technically, it does work with USB2 on your Mac. Just not optimally. They know most people won't make the 1.1 to 2.0 comparison so they'll never suspect that there's a problem.

 

[yadmonkey]

For the record: I have confirmed that my USB 2.0 card is running at high-speed and it shows up that way in the system profiler. The drivers for this scanner were written for OS 10.2, so I am hoping that an update to 10.3 drivers will be made available and will include support for USB 2.0. Canon has been decent about Mac support thus far, so here's hoping that for the update!

 

[bousozoku]

Originally posted by jtown
I bought a Lide 30 mostly because of the size and partly because of the "built for OSX" logo on the box. Funny how it doesn't work with OSX's image capture program. You'd think that would be a requirement for an image capture device to get permission to use the "built for OSX" logo. My choices were to buy Photoshop and use their photoshop plugin, use the ugly CanoScan software, or return it. I decided to use the ugly CanoScan software.
...

You could use the plug-in with Photoshop Elements 2.0, couldn't you?