Scanning software

[Chuck Wintle]

I recently purchased an HP G4050 scanner and it comes with all the software to make it work...not. After many times reinstalling the HP software it will not recognize the scanner! Not sure whats up with that so I uninstalled all of it and started using the built-in xp scanning software.....which works quite well except the interface is very basic....so only very few options are available. Who has had good luck with scanning software? If anyone can make a recommendation I want something that works efficiently, quickly and does not require a lot of of fiddling. Thanks.

[Thomas Bank]

VueScan - end of discussion.

[Chuck Wintle]

VueScan - end of discussion.

I am trying it and it seems quite good....much quicker to install than the HP software and easier to use.

[Bill Huber]

I have found that HP makes some good machines their software just plan sucks. Its buggy and take a lot of memory to run and a lot of disk space to install.

[Tim Morton]

if anyone is reading this and thinking about buying a scanner...

i just picked up a $99 epson scanner that is really good...FWIW.

[Chuck Wintle]

VueScan - end of discussion.

I just bought Vuescan and, so far, it is much simpler and direct than the software that came with the scanner. The HP program is hundreds of megs in size vs roughly 8 megs for vuescan. It's been my experience that smaller programs work as well as the humongously bloated software from whoever. A case in point is the popular Nero program. Takes forever to install and still has many bugs and glitches the most notable being its refusal to install if it sees a remnant of a previous version of nero. i got rid of Nero and found ImgBurn which works well.

[Brian Kent]

Tim, I have used Epson scanners and all-in-one for years. I like the multi level user interface, where I can control every detail, or stick it in automatic. So far the automatic has made no mistakes.

[Thomas Bank]

I've been using VueScan on both PCs and Macs since it first came out a decade ago. I was aware of it because I had been using VuePrint for several years before that - a jpg viewer and utility program.

Ed Hamrick has been constantly working on VueScan, upgrading it as newer scanners came out and refining it. It is something of a life quest for him it seems. I particularly like that it supports just about any scanner out there. That means that I don't have to figure out new software for a new scanner - VueScan is going to be there for me no matter what I throw at it.