Plug and play: Canon N656U
Last night I tried to connect my Canoscan N656U to a computer.
First, I tried the Mac. Connecting the device did nothing. Pushing the button on the device did nothing. A search of Canon's website revealed a driver, but the installer seems to have been written by rabid monkeys. Eventually, I discovered how to make the installer work (you need to already be running on an admin account, because it doesn't know how to authenticate) and restarted, to find... still nothing.
So after a few minutes of that, I decided to try to install on my Windows desktop. This worked a little better right from the start, as Windows at least noticed there was something there. I had to download a driver from Canon's website and use some trickery to install it, but a few minutes later the scan button is launching Picasa2.
Verdict: Canon's installers suck. Completely on Mac, almost completely on Windows.
September 22nd, 2006
It looks like the scanner is supported out-of-the box in the current release Ubuntu, via Sane. This scanner driver was broken in the 5.10 release, but is available in 6.06. I find scanning under Linux especially nice, as you don’t have to wrestle with the aweful per-vendor scan dialogs (all scanners use the same UI).
Is there a reason Apple isn’t installing sane in OSX? Sane supports nearly every scanner out there, quite similar to the printer drivers Apple borrows from OSS. Maybe they’re working on it somewhere in the ethereal, hallowed hallways of their campuses …
September 23rd, 2006
I’ve no idea why Apple doesn’t bundle something like that. Apple seems to include something called TWAIN, but it doesn’t seem to work very well.