Drivers...

Brainstormer · #1 February 1st, 2007, 03:12 PM

Greetings people, I'm having difficulty getting my Canon Lide35 scanner to work, now I managed to get it going on my old mac with no problems (Powerbook G4) but I can't get it to run whatsoever on my MacBook...

All this advertising saying how you don't need to worry about installing drivers with a mac etc.. Why can't I get a simple piece of hardware working that worked fine on my old mac?

I'm beginning to think I made a mistake buying this machine, it doesn't seem much faster than my old Powerbook, and it seems to run less apps, I'm starting to lose faith in the way Apple is going, the older macs seem so much more stable than the new Intel ones.

I'll probably change my tune if I can get this scanner installed, I don't fancy shelling out on a new one just because this computer isn't up to scratch.

Any help would be massively appreciated.

Brainstormer · #2 February 1st, 2007, 03:30 PM

Just to add.. I downloaded everything from the Canon website, installed it all, but when I try to run the software, it says "failed to open a driver"

Brainstormer · #3 February 2nd, 2007, 03:56 AM

I presume the lack of response or help here either means this isn't a very helpful site, or the Intel macs are incompatible with Canon scanners?

Brainstormer · #4 February 2nd, 2007, 06:40 AM

Well what a warm welcome...

Even if it's NOT possible to fix this problem, someone could at least tell me, so I'm not running around chasing my tail.

Thanks for all the 'support' you guys offer! I certainly know which site NOT to recommend to friends.

nixgeek · #5 February 2nd, 2007, 07:38 AM

Sorry that no one has answered your question yet. Remember that people are on various time zones and aren't always logged on at the time. I just now saw this post and have not been on the forum for a couple of days now, so it's quite possible. Also, they could be researching this information for you through Google, especially if it's not a common issue. And finally, if you continue to have an attitude like that, you won't garner any help at all whether it's on this forum or any other forum for that matter ("you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar", remember?). Just keep in mind that patience is a virtue, and that the people here are willing to help if you are patient. You wouldn't respond the same way to someone in person that you wanted help from, no?

OK, about your issue, from what I could tell it seems that the driver is probably a PowerPC one so it might not work on an Intel Mac. I also found this thread on the MacNN forum about someone who was wondering about peripheral compatibility which might help you some as well. But so far, it looks that you might have to contact Canon about a Universal Binary driver or an exclusive one for the Intel Macs. Their site wasn't too informative about the driver itself so you might need to contact them.

Hope this helps.

nixgeek · #6 February 2nd, 2007, 07:44 AM

To give you another idea, check out this link about the release of the Canon LiDE 35 and some other products. Check out the date of the article....2004 (2 years before the Intel switch, and 1 year before the "shocking" announcement about switching to Intel). So this could mean that the product has been end-of-lifed since then and because of that Canon isn't too eager to further develop drivers for it.

ora · #7 February 2nd, 2007, 08:14 AM

Yeah, it seems this is the only big problem since the intel switch, drivers for old hardware of various sorts.

To second nixgeek - ~4 hours between your first post and you complaining about there being no replies is kinda crazy, forums don't tend to work so fast (or this one doesn't anyway).

Despite that, welcome to the board.

Brainstormer · #8 February 2nd, 2007, 08:21 AM

Thanks for your reply, and my apologies for getting irate, I've been on the phone to Canon about this and their service is shocking, I phoned their 'customer service' premium rate number, and got a very slowly spoken recorded message going through all the options, the last one being to speak to a human, when I pressed that option, the robot then said "I'm sorry, I didn't recognise your choice" and started the recorded message again, the second time round I pressed and held the option of choice with the same result.

I finally managed to get through to a completely different department, who gave me a direct number for the head of the imaging team, I have phoned this number several times, but only managed to get through to the voicemail, I did leave a message, but not had a callback as yet. So when I came here I wasn't in the best frame of mind, and watching my post sink down the forum under all the other replies didn't leave me too heartened, hence my further replies.

I have noticed that the scanner model in question is still available, and advertised on their website as being 'OS X compatible': http://www.canon.co.uk/For_Home/Prod...E_35/index.asp

I presume I'm not the only one that is disgruntled with Apple's Intel switch? It's a shame Apple don't produce both systems any longer; the cheap and nasty Intel, and the PPC.

I wonder if there's some sort of PPC emulator software available?