Software. To rent or buy?

[adriank]

4 hours ago, spamcan61 said:

have you tried Vuescan?

Vuescan was about half the price of a new higher spec Epson scanner so I bought a new scanner.

[Guest]

5 hours ago, melmerby said:

However If you are going open source why use paid software?

Might as well stick with Windows.

 

Because the software provides something of use to you? 

 

Oh look a free car. What? I have to pay for petrol? What's the point? 

[D9020 Nimbus]

My HP scanner (actually, a cheap printer/scanner) actually works better with Linux than it did under Windows—no more "can't find the scanner" (it's on the end of that USB cable poking out of the side of the computer…) using SimpleScan (Ubuntu 18.04).

 

The only good OCR on Linux, IMHO, is Tesseract — but it's command-line only and there's no easy way to compare the OCR output with the original.

[Izzy]

I think the advantage of Vuescan is that the licence is a one-off/lifetime one with free 'upgrades' as and when new equipment arrives. You just download/install the latest version with the newest relevant drivers. It also enables features/options often not available with the basic supplied scanner software. Epson are generally the only makers with decent and comprehensive software in my experience. Provided with the most basic MFD's to the same level as their high end stuff.

 

Izzy

[melmerby]

3 minutes ago, Izzy said:

I think the advantage of Vuescan is that the licence is a one-off/lifetime one with free 'upgrades' as and when new equipment arrives. You just download/install the latest version with the newest relevant drivers. It also enables features/options often not available with the basic supplied scanner software. Epson are generally the only makers with decent and comprehensive software in my experience. Provided with the most basic MFD's to the same level as their high end stuff.

 

Izzy

The Epson scan utility is quite comprehensive on it's own and the scanner has a native resolution of 4800x4800.

I also have Silverfast, an original OEM version came with the Epson Scanner but I liked it so I bought the fully featured version which will work with any scanner. This has been auto updated several times.

The other utility supplied was a full version of ABBYY Finereader OCR but as yet I haven't found anything better at reasonable cost, although there must be as it is now quite old (as is the scanner)

I don't need a new scanner but I could do with a new printer as my high end Epson failed miserably a couple of years ago and virtually anything decent with a printer is now a MFD.

I currently bumble along with a £30 Canon!