# What scanner to buy?

## exhausted

I just want a good USB flatbed scanner, comparable to Epson's Perfection 3490 Photo, that can be made to work with Gentoo without having to join the Masons to get the super-secret URI for an FTP server from which I can download an RPM for some proprietary software that will require me to track down and study incomplete and/or outdated documentation spread across a dozen Web sites, create a udev rule, edit multiple config files, sacrifice a hedgehog at mignight, and pray that the gods of scanner firmware and configuration might have mercy on me.

My Epson Perfection 3490 Photo which has served me well for many years has finally died and I need a replacement.  I've already reviewed information about what scanners are supported by iscan and various SANE backends and I've already scoured the Web for information, most of which is outdated or incomplete.  Based on my research, I bought an Epson Perfection V550 Photo which some people claim works with Linux if you use Epson's proprietary driver and some sort of interpreter.  I cannot download any Linux drivers from Epson's Web site and was told by an Epson telephone support specialist that Epson does not even have Linux drivers for the Perfection V550 Photo.  (I'm not sure this is true.)  At any rate, even if the driver exists, it is not available; the Web site hosting the Linux drivers has been down for days and they've no idea when it will become available again.

The information on the SANE Web site appears to be outdated as well and even if SANE doesn't support a scanner, that doesn't mean it won't work.  (For example, my Epson Perfection 3490 Photo is listed as unsupported but I had no trouble getting it working via epkowa.)

I just want a scanner comparable to my old that will work.  I thought this might be a simple thing—especially considering how easily I got my Epson Perfection 3490 Photo to work all those years ago—but apparently not.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

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## Roman_Gruber

General advise... I think scanners and usb-webcams are the few hardware in linux which are hardly used and therefore the support may lack or do not exists...

I usually use a camera or a smartphone and crop the picture after that.

It depends on your use case.

Most pictures are digital anyway here and the few things i need to be digitalized i use my smartphone and crop the picture.

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## bammbamm808

Canon Canoscan LiDE 210. Works very well with sane and easy to set up.

http://www.sane-project.org/sane-mfgs.html

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## szatox

I used to have some cheap multi-function HP device (printer + scanner + copy function). No problems getting scanner to work. The printed never used black ink in color mode and didn't last very long though. I guess I got what I paid for  :Rolling Eyes: 

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## davidm

I would look at what is out there and then search various Linux forums to see how well it is supported.  Believe it or not even a lot of the cheap multi-function scanners you can find at Walmart are supported these days.

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## OldTango

I think it depends on what you want to scan and the resulting output quality of the scan.

I personally prefer HP All-in-Ones or Lasers that can be installed as an IP based printer on my local lan. The All-In Ones do a darn decent job scanning photos and images and produce high quality PDF docs as well. My current unit is an HP-Office-Jet-Pro L7680 All-In-One and works well with SANE but works even better when inserting a USB thumb drive and selecting the scan options from the HP menu and just dumping the scans to the USB drive. I have been using it on my linux server based lan sense 2008 and it has worked flawlessly. I'm just now having a little trouble finding the INK cartridges for it, as most vendors are only supporting the newer hardware.   

Most HP devices are supported in linux and come in the standard low price units to the high end colour lasers and flatbed scanners. They come with a variety or combination of options as well, like USB, NETWORK, WIRELESS, incorporated USB and SD drive slots. The more versatile the device you decide on is the more options you have on how you choose to use it.

Just do a little research first...............  :Smile: 

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## OldTango

 *szatox wrote:*   

> I used to have some cheap multi-function HP device (printer + scanner + copy function). No problems getting scanner to work. The printed never used black ink in color mode and didn't last very long though. I guess I got what I paid for 

 

Yep been there done that a few times myself before I realized doing some research and spending more the first time around saved me a lot more in the long run. It seems like the cheep 79 to 125 dollar units would only last a year at the most before they failed. I spent close to 300 dollars on my current unit and it's worked great without any problems for almost 8 years now. I could have bought 2.5 of my current devices for the same money I would have spent on 8 of the 100 dollar units in the same amount of time.

.......................  :Laughing: 

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