Hi Brad, I asked the same question a week ago (as someone pointed out). Here's a recap of what I found out based on that and my own testing:
1. HP 74XX: works, but the scanner goes to sleep after 15 minutes and won't wake up without power cycle. Also the feed mechanism tends to skew pages slightly. 2. HP 55XX: others say don't use these as they are broken in various ways. 3. HP 82XX: apparently not well supported by driver. Note that HP doesn't make the 82XX or 74XX scanners, they use the Avision backend. 4. Brother MFC: one person reported that one of these worked well for him (I forget which one, but it was an inkjet). However, a lot of people say the Brother devices are junk. Plus buying a multifunction device just for scanning seems lame. I have a perfectly good laser printer in my office and I don't need to replace it. 5. Some sort of Fujitsu: it seems like Fujitsu might make some scanners with good ADF support. See the previous thread for specific models. These generally seem to be just ADF units, not flatbeds. I saw a couple on ebay for around $350. Basically I have yet to find a good ADF scanner for my office. I bought an HP 7450 on ebay for $100 and that would work ok if it didn't have the wakeup problem. I'm thinking of buying a used Fujitsu on ebay also for around $300-$400. The Avision backed developer has indicated that the problem with the 7450 should be fixable in the backend. There seems to be a big cliff with these devices: you can get various mediocre to downright unusable scanners with ADFs for around $100-$500 new and used. Or, you can get one that might really work for $2000-$3000. For example, Canon and Fujitsu both have professional-looking ADF scanners in that price range. I also have a standalone Canon PC-1060 copier in my office. It's clearly a scanner + a laser printer because it can scan pages into a buffer and then print them out (i.e. the scan and the print aren't directly connected). It works great and has a very reliable ADF. I'm not sure how much it originally cost but I believe it was in the $1000-$2000 range. There's even a cutout on the back of this scanner that looks like it would hold a network card. I called Canon and they told me no such network connection exists for that scanner. If it did, that would be a great solution. I've got a Ricoh salesman coming to my office tomorrow to see if they can sell me a networked scanner. It's my fear that anything like that will require Windows, though. Anyway, that's my long-winded take on all this. I'm actually trying to put together a complete network scan + fax solution for my office using a SANE scanner and Hylafax. P. On 06/07/05, Brad Barnett wrote: > On Tue, 07 Jun 2005 02:22:11 +0200 > Jens Gulden <m...@jensgulden.de> wrote: > > > Brad Barnett schrieb: > > > > > > Does anyone have any suggestions for a well supported ADF scanner, > > > under Linux? The SANE support list doesn't specify such things in the > > > summary, which makes it more difficult to pick a good one.. > > > > > > Any tales of success and words of wonder are welcome! > > > > > > > See the thread "Good office scanners with ADF support?" just one week > > ago on this list. > > > > > Hmm. > > Thanks for that info, btw. > > I find myself discouraged. :/ Seemingly the best solution is an evil > Brother MFC? > > Does anyone have any other solutions? If it's a MFC, I'm quite willing to > go with laser, in fact.. I'd prefer it. > -- Philip J. Hollenback Telemetry Investments phollenb...@telemetry-investments.com
