In praise of VMWare and Linux for USB scanner support under Windows

[David WE Roberts]

Just to note that I tried a cheap old scanner - Mustek 1200 UB - with my 32
bit Vista laptop and found no drivers.
That is, the USB device installed but there were no scanner drivers.
Checked online and no support past XP.

Just for the hell of it I loaded VMWare Player and started 64 bit Ubuntu
(clever that you can run a 64 bit virtual O/S inside a 32 bit O/S).
At the bottom of the VMWare window I could see the USB device for the
scanner.
Transferred control from Windows to VMWare and Bingo!
XSane identified the scanner and it worked perfectly.

So for thise with W7 or Vista and an old unsupported scanner, VMWare (or
other virtualisation product of your choice) could be your friend.

Cheers

Dave R
--
No plan survives contact with the enemy.
[Not even bunny]

Helmuth von Moltke the Elder

(\__/)
(='.'=)
(")_(")

 

[Noons]

So for thise with W7 or Vista and an old unsupported scanner, VMWare (or
other virtualisation product of your choice) could be your friend.

Certainly good to know. Thanks for sharing!

 

[Gernot Hassenpflug]

Noons> Certainly good to know. Thanks for sharing!

The SANE project is the underlying driver project.
Similarly, the gutenprint project develops support for inkjet (and some
other) printer types.
The addition of hardware support is seen as critical to getting linux
more accepted among users, and having these two projects (of course,
there are several others, for webcams, for example) is a great boon.
I am involved as the Canon backend maintainer on the gutenprint project,
and also submitted quite a bit of code to the SANE project to support a
variety of Canon scanners and multi-functional units.

So certainly, if you can bear working with linux, in virutal mode or on
the bare hardware, you may be pleasantly surprised to find good support
for both new and old hardware.