It's an HP Scanjet 8250. It has an automatic document feeder and a flat bed scanning area of 8.5 x 14 inches. This larger scanning area comes in handy because I draw my comic strip 4 inches by 13 inches.
In a previous post, I was looking at modifying the size of my comic strip template and drawing it a bit smaller to accommodate my Umax scanner. I used Scribus to design the template and was all set to go when a Freespire community member pointed out how this HP scanner was at geeks.com for only $65.00. I jumped on the deal!
The scanner is wonderful! And the really great thing is, Xsane supports it. All I had to do was pull the scanner out of the box, plug in to my USB port on my Linux system, power up, and I was scanning! No software or drivers to install. Xsane was already in place to handle the scanner. (and Xsane and Kooka both support the ADF feature!)
Here's the neat thing. I've been using a Umax scanner in Linux for the last year or so. All I did was unplug it, then plug in the HP scanner and Linux did all the rest! The HP scanner was up and running in an instant!
Each scanner just works in Linux! It's true plug 'n play.
Since I run a rack system, I plugged in windows XP to see how the HP scanner would fare compared to Linux.
30 minutes later, I was still installing drivers and software. I had to restart the system a couple of times, as well.
After finally getting all the necessary software installed (some would not install. I have to check with geeks.com for another disk), the scanner worked nicely. But, it did take about 30-40 minutes for software and drivers to install.
So, I'm quite happy with my new scanner. It allows me to scan larger pieces so I can continue to draw my George comic strip 4 inches by 13 inches.
And Linux and Xsane support this scanner, so set up was a snap! I plugged in and was scanning in less than 30 seconds!
Get Linux!
2 comments:
Hey, I got the same scanner at geeks.com, and thought they were a little underhanded in that geeks.com didn't mention anywhere that the scanner was a refurb (at least not when I bought it). And yeah, the disk that came with my scanner had ridiculously old software on it. But it was easy to download the most recent software from HP's website.
I find the scan quality for documents is fine, but compared to my high-quality art scanner, the HP really isn't very good quality.
I've found the document scanning doesn't go quite as smoothly after a year of ownership, there are more misfeeds... But I still think it was worth $65.
Hi, Rob,
I wrote in my post, "My new (actually refurbished) scanner arrived last week and I've been putting it through the paces here in my studio." So, I was completely aware that the scanner was refurbished. Now, I cannot remember if the notice of it being refurbished was pronounced or sort of small and in an obscure place on the page. But, I certainly saw it.
My scanner has worked wonderfully well!:) Yes! Worth the $65.00. And considering it's becoming more difficult to find a large format scanner for a reasonable price, I snapped it up right away!:)
It works great with Linux!:) I'm running KDE 4.3 in PCLinuxOS and the scanner is terrific!:)
So glad it's working for you.:)
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