Scanner Sans Drivers
I picked up an Epson V100 Photo scanner refurbished for something like $40 from Woot the other day just because I’ve always wanted a cheap scanner around to digitize paperwork I wanted to trash.
Epson’s site lists the driver as compatible with Leopard but it hasn’t been updated since November 2006, so I wasn’t looking forward to installing old scanner software with some agent that would sit in the background sucking RAM and CPU just to launch the right app when I press the scanner button. Nor did I wish to deal with clunky scanner software with a terrible interface.
Luckily, I don’t have to. The Preview application built into Mac OS can control the scanner (presumably through the standardized TWAIN interface). Here’s a screenshot of the interface which can be accessed through the ‘File’ -> ‘Import Image…’ menu item:
As you can see, it features a nice little suite of controlls and tweaks for scanning and doing basic editing on the image. Overall I’m quite pleased with the purchase and the built in Mac OS support. Yay for standards!