older scanners and Vista

[Joe]

posted in comp.periphs.scanners

When I recently got a Dell with Vista I was disappointed to find out that my
HP 4570c scanner wasn't going to find a happy home on the new PC- HP has
chosen to abandon that scanner- yes, they do offer a striped down driver
that will simply do a scan and send it to graphics programs for further
work- but they won't offer the full Director program- which it turns out is
violently in conflict with Vista's IE7 browser. (when I downloaded IE7 on my
XP system, then tried to run Director- it whacked my PC so much I had to
reformat)

So, I switched scanners with a friend- and got her Epson 2400 Photo scanner.
I saw that Epson offers a Vista driver, got it and installed it- only to
find that this Vista driver is also a stripped down driver.

Has anyone tried to install the original driver that came with the Epson? I
think it's about 3 years old and it came with a Vista driver. I'm hesitant
to install anything on my new PC until I have some idea that it will work OK
without introducing problems to the PC.

As far as I'm concerned, these scanner makers are ripping me off- sure, they
can claim that it works on the older PCs with old OSs but we all know that
they could if they so chose- offer full featured drivers for Vista- and
sure, they want to make money selling new scanners. Sheesh, I'd be happy to
pay a fair price for Vista driver- can't expect something for nothing- but
if they offered it a fair price- I'm sure they could make the same profit
they'd make selling a new scanner- after all, new scanners aren't that
expensive, there can't be that much profit in it. I'd rather pay, say, $25
for a Vista driver than buy a new scanner.

I should think that the programmers who made the XP driver could in a jiffy
make it work on Vista.

It just seems resource wasteful to buy a new item when the old one works-
just filling up landfills.

Joe

 

[Philip Homburg]

posted in comp.periphs.scanners
It just seems resource wasteful to buy a new item when the old one works-
just filling up landfills.

Don't buy Vista then. A new OS that is not backwards compatible with the
old one is going to cause a lot of incompatibilities. Do you also expect
hardware manufacturers to provide you with Linux drivers if you happen to
switch to Linux?

 

[Joe]

No, but when running the OS that 98% of the people of the planet will be
running in a few years, it's not asking too much to be able to PURCHASE a
driver for the new OS.

As I spent more time with the Epson Vista driver - I see that it's not so
bad, better than the bare bones driver that HP is offering- THEREFORE I'm
more likely to buy from Epson in the future- therefore, your idea that these
companies have little obligation to THEIR customers is counterproductive to
those companies.

Joe

 

[babaloo]

The lack of Vista drivers for relatively recent hardware is a deliberate
decision made by both Microsoft (which could write the drivers if it wanted
to) and peripheral manufacturers to force consumers to buy new equipment.
The lack of driver support for Vista for common hardware that is just 1-2
years old is worse than with any previous new version of Windows.
As you have seen some Vista drivers seem stripped down. Some seem stripped
down simply because they do not work the way they should under Vista.
The good news is Vista stinks. It is absolutely the least ready for general
release OS Micrsoft has ever foisted on its captive public. The 64 bit
version is even worse, but the 64 bit version of XP is equally rotten.
Vista offers absolutely nothing except aggravation in comparison to WinXP
and makes all applications run slower than they would in XP, if the
application runs at all in Vista. I can time the difference with my
wristwatch when doing simple Photoshop operations.
It will be interesting to see if Microsoft pulls the plug on XP after this
year, as it threatens, and is left only with this brain-dead turkey as its
major product.
Vuescan (www.hamrick.com) is a scanner twain driver that operates a large
number of scanners and it works under Vista. You can download a trial and
see if it works for you.

 

[Philip Homburg]

No, but when running the OS that 98% of the people of the planet will be
running in a few years, it's not asking too much to be able to PURCHASE a
driver for the new OS.

Yes, in a few years. And companies will make sure that they will have drivers
for the products that are popular in a few years.

You are probably the only who wants to spend money buying drivers.

As I spent more time with the Epson Vista driver - I see that it's not so
bad, better than the bare bones driver that HP is offering- THEREFORE I'm
more likely to buy from Epson in the future- therefore, your idea that these
companies have little obligation to THEIR customers is counterproductive to
those companies.

Not that Epson makes bad products, but I would rather just keep an old
computer around for legacy hardware than to select that kind of support as
a major requirement for selecting hardware.

 

[Barry Watzman]

That's an absurd answer, in several ways. If I took that advice, I'd
still be using DOS (and an early version), or windows God-knows-what.

 

[Barry Watzman]

Re: "The lack of Vista drivers for relatively recent hardware is a
deliberate decision made by both Microsoft (which could write the
drivers if it wanted to) and peripheral manufacturers"

It's not fair to pin this on Microsoft. While Microsoft could write any
given driver, or hundreds (and indeed while they probably have), they
can't write drivers for the tens or hundreds of thousands of peripherals
being sold. The "blame" lies with the product manufacturers.

And in this context, I have to ask you a question: Say that it costs
$100,000 to write the Vista driver for a product (probably a fairly
close figure). Say you are HP with thousands of discontinued products
(all types .... printers, scanners, digital cameras, storage devices
..... all of them). How much money would you spend writing drivers for
years-discontinued product. When you answer, pretend that you are HP
and it's your own money.

 

[Joe]

I should think that a smart, new OS would not change its fundamentals so
much that old drivers would fail to work. If a new OS can run older programs
it should be able to run older drivers- if so desired. If the drivers hook
into low level functions- then all drivers should be written so as to not
hook into those level functions- I thought some years ago that was the
trend- that drivers would interface with parts of the OS that would keep the
driver from going "too deep"- I'm not a programmer so I forgot the terms,
but I have read about this. If the relationship between drivers and the OS
were kept as simple as possible, then it shouldn't cost $100,000 to update a
driver.

Joe

 

[Philip Homburg]

That's an absurd answer, in several ways. If I took that advice, I'd
still be using DOS (and an early version), or windows God-knows-what.

That's the way it works. There are systems in the world that are running
DOS because they control expensive equipment, and there is no support for
other operating systems.

If you don't want to go that route, go for hardware of which the specs
have been published and open source drivers are available. Open source
drivers for well documented hardware are very likely to be ported to
new versions of an OS.

 

[Barry Watzman]

Re: "I should think that a smart, new OS would not change its
fundamentals so much that old drivers would fail to work."

That depends on how the old driver was written.

The changes are mostly for security. If people were writing the "old"
drivers "right", the old driver DO work. But if they were writing the
"old" drivers "wrong", the rewrite is major; it's not just some minor
things, the entire approach and way that things are done has to change
from the ground up.

Real example: I have an HP 5490C scanner, which HP says they will never
support under Vista (discontinued in 2003). The last version of the XP
software DOES install and work under Vista. BUT, many products (much
newer products) which use the "HP Director" software, don't work with
Internet explorer version 7 .... even under XP, much less Vista. And
it's clear that the issues with "HP Director" are major.

 

[Barry Watzman]

Hey, if a computer is only used for one purpose, one program, that's fine.

But most general purpose desktops and laptops are used for dozens of things.

 

[Philip Homburg]

Hey, if a computer is only used for one purpose, one program, that's fine.

But most general purpose desktops and laptops are used for dozens of things.

So? I have more than one computer. And a single computer can be used with
multiple operating systems, sometimes even simultaneously.