HowToFixComputers.com

Joe · Guest

posted in comp.periphs.scanners

When I recently got a Dell with Vista I was disappointed to find out that my
HP 4570c scanner wasn't going to find a happy home on the new PC- HP has
chosen to abandon that scanner- yes, they do offer a striped down driver
that will simply do a scan and send it to graphics programs for further
work- but they won't offer the full Director program- which it turns out is
violently in conflict with Vista's IE7 browser. (when I downloaded IE7 on my
XP system, then tried to run Director- it whacked my PC so much I had to
reformat)

So, I switched scanners with a friend- and got her Epson 2400 Photo scanner.
I saw that Epson offers a Vista driver, got it and installed it- only to
find that this Vista driver is also a stripped down driver.

Has anyone tried to install the original driver that came with the Epson? I
think it's about 3 years old and it came with a Vista driver. I'm hesitant
to install anything on my new PC until I have some idea that it will work OK
without introducing problems to the PC.

As far as I'm concerned, these scanner makers are ripping me off- sure, they
can claim that it works on the older PCs with old OSs but we all know that
they could if they so chose- offer full featured drivers for Vista- and
sure, they want to make money selling new scanners. Sheesh, I'd be happy to
pay a fair price for Vista driver- can't expect something for nothing- but
if they offered it a fair price- I'm sure they could make the same profit
they'd make selling a new scanner- after all, new scanners aren't that
expensive, there can't be that much profit in it. I'd rather pay, say, $25
for a Vista driver than buy a new scanner.

I should think that the programmers who made the XP driver could in a jiffy
make it work on Vista.

It just seems resource wasteful to buy a new item when the old one works-
just filling up landfills.

Joe

Philip Homburg · Guest

In article <wLV9i.7345$My4.5457@trndny05>, Joe <abc@xyz.com> wrote:

Joe · Guest

No, but when running the OS that 98% of the people of the planet will be
running in a few years, it's not asking too much to be able to PURCHASE a
driver for the new OS.

As I spent more time with the Epson Vista driver - I see that it's not so
bad, better than the bare bones driver that HP is offering- THEREFORE I'm
more likely to buy from Epson in the future- therefore, your idea that these
companies have little obligation to THEIR customers is counterproductive to
those companies.

Joe

"Philip Homburg" <philip@ue.aioy.eu> wrote in message
news:0md0dciprbs5aef138r37qcqr4@inews_id.stereo.hq.phicoh.net...

babaloo · Guest

The lack of Vista drivers for relatively recent hardware is a deliberate
decision made by both Microsoft (which could write the drivers if it wanted
to) and peripheral manufacturers to force consumers to buy new equipment.
The lack of driver support for Vista for common hardware that is just 1-2
years old is worse than with any previous new version of Windows.
As you have seen some Vista drivers seem stripped down. Some seem stripped
down simply because they do not work the way they should under Vista.
The good news is Vista stinks. It is absolutely the least ready for general
release OS Micrsoft has ever foisted on its captive public. The 64 bit
version is even worse, but the 64 bit version of XP is equally rotten.
Vista offers absolutely nothing except aggravation in comparison to WinXP
and makes all applications run slower than they would in XP, if the
application runs at all in Vista. I can time the difference with my
wristwatch when doing simple Photoshop operations.
It will be interesting to see if Microsoft pulls the plug on XP after this
year, as it threatens, and is left only with this brain-dead turkey as its
major product.
Vuescan (www.hamrick.com) is a scanner twain driver that operates a large
number of scanners and it works under Vista. You can download a trial and
see if it works for you.