Epson 1650 and other great OS X scanners!

GadgetLover

GadgetLover

Senior Member & Tech Guru
Does anyone have the Epson Perfection 1650 USB scanner? And if so, how is it? Do you use it in OS X? I have heard that VueScan works with it; true?

What about other USB scanners; does anyone know of a good scanner that WORKS in OS X (with VueScan or its own proprietary software)?

My UMAX USB scanner sucks -- I don't want to boot up into Classic just to scan a freakin' piece of paper! UMAX has not seemed to give a rat's asteroid about supporting existing customers (no apologies, for one thing) and just keeps giving lame "soon" propheses.

Can anyone say false advertising?
 
I am using an Epson Perfection 1650 Photo under MacOS X. Vuescan X is working fine under X. The Epson software (i.e. smart panel), however, sucks. The German version did not install correctly at all and the English looks nice, but is clumsy to operate. I am not using it at all. Besides Vuescan, I am mainly using GraphicConverter in combination with the Twain driver of Epson, which I find actually useful. Features I am missing are no preview of scan rotation, not even in steps of 90°, which should be an easy feature. In addition the size of the preview window is fixed. So you cannot use your complete screen real estate for previewing. The other point is that there is no twain driver for MacOS X. The way I am using it in X is to start GraphicConverterPPC in Classic and then the MacOS 9 Twain driver works. I had it installed when still using 9. So, I am not shure, whether you can install it in Classic, or you have to reboot in 9 for the installation of the twain driver. My impression of the Epson software is that it is a sloppy hack. For example, there are typos! in the menus of the German version. Regarding the technical aspects, I find it ridiculous that the scanner has an external power supply with no switch! What a bumber! I am satisfied with the results of the scanning. My impression was that the default settings in Vuescan resulted in better results with regard to the color matching. However, I did not do much research here. Most of my scans are greyscale documents and color matching is not one of my prime concerns. BTW, the scanner is fast, which comes in handy during prescans. Correcting the direction of the document is important in my cases.
 
Thanks for the info.

Why don't use use GraphicConverter in OS X? Is it because you only have Classic Twain?
 
I have an Epson Perfection 1250, which uses the same twain driver and smart panel as the 1650. I can use the smart panel (which I also think is garbage, I hope this changes in OS X) and all utilities through classic with no problem. I am going to try Vuescan today, so I will let you know how that works.

You should be able to use your smart panel through classic, but you may have a different situation. Just hope there is a large improvement to the software!
 
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