Re: USB scanners?

Jonathan Buzzard (jab@hex.prestel.co.uk)
Wed, 02 Dec 1998 01:02:11 +0000

davidm@mostang.com said:
> It occurred to me that this whole boring debate about parallel-port
> scanners and the lack of support may soon disappear as a result of USB
> picking up in popularity. Maybe we should focus on USB support? It
> seems to me that parallel port scanners don't work well even if they
> are supported. The reason for this is that parallel port scanners
> tend to waste all available CPU cycles on the scanner, effectively
> turning your nice & fast multi-user, multi-tasking machine into a
> crummy single-task machine. AFAIK, USB doesn't have any of these
> problems yet is much cheaper than a SCSI interface.

Indeed, while this is true, (a) USB scanners are still significantly more
expensive than parallel port ones, (b) there are still countless thousands
of parallel port scanners out there and (c) unless their exists some
sort of USB scanner command set that manufactures actually stick too, are
they any more likely to give us the protocols for USB scanners than
parallel ones?

Just my experience though, a scanner will turn any fast multi-user,
multi-tasking machine to a single-task machine SCSI or otherwise.

JAB.

-- 
Jonathan A. Buzzard                 Email: jab@hex.prestel.co.uk
Northumberland, United Kingdom.       Tel: +44(0)1661-832195







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