On 9/15/05, Manuel Viet <oly@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Scanners (especialy flatbeds) are the most inconvenient computer peripherals ;
> they use a lot of valuable desk space, you can't pile anything on top of
> them, and yet you have to manage to keep enough space to prepare the pictures
> you're going to scan. Having a big glass CRT monitor (20") is the icing on
> the cake and if you happen to be of the 'horizontal archiving' type of
> person, it's unavoidable the situation gets out of control.
Yes, that's what I'm finding too. At the moment my scanner is on a
sliding shelf under my desk which is a horrible solution because I
have to pull the shelf out all the way to open the lid of the scanner,
which means I have to roll my chair out of the way, then close the lid
and slide the shelf back in so that I can get to the keyboard and
mouse. I did manage to at least create some more flat space awhile ago
when I got my 23" widescreen LCD with my G5. Before I had a Beige G3
desktop with the CRT on top of that so I've managed to go to a much
larger monitor yet still get more desk real estate because of the
switch to an LCD and a tower case. It's not as nice as a pro quality
CRT but it's still damn good and it's saving me a lot of space.
> The solution I use is to put the scanner on its own small, rolling, table. I
> do not hook it to my main computer, but to a smaller one dedicated to the
> scanner control, located at the bottom of said table (without monitor,
> keyoard or mouse), and connected via ethernet to my station (did I mention I
> have lots of computers ?). This way, when I want to scan, I just roll the
> table next to my desk, switch on the scanner and its controlling computer and
> *presto*, it's ready without disturbing too much of my usual work ; the
> scanner appears as a new acquisition source within the Gimp as soon as the
> server is up. The best part of it being the ability for my GF to use it from
> her own computer, in another room, when she needs to scan a page occasionaly.
> She just has to walk in, switch on the thing, put her page on the glass, it's
> done. I just wrote a couple of programs to switch off properly the scanner
> server from remote computers.
An interesting thought and something I could setup myself as well
fairly easily. If I were using windows I think the best way to do it
would be to use XP and just use remote desktop to connect to the
machine and save the scans to a shared folder. It's not the same as
being a scanner server but it would work well for batch scanning. Your
solution works nicer for being able to have the scan show up in your
image editor on your main computer from the sound of things.
Where I'm running Mac OS X and Linux and am mainly looking at doing
batch scans with my flatbed (batch scan, then edit) I'd probably set
up the scanner on a Linux box and export the X window display to my
Mac. I use Vuescan on my Mac and you can get a Linux version so I'd
even have the same software. Again though, it doesn't give me the
scanner server option like you're talking about (although, I could
probably suggest it as a feature for Vuescan to Ed Hamrick...)
> Downside : remote scanning is not a common option with windows, and in fact I
> don't know any twain driver which can turn a computer into a scanner server -
> except some xerox copiers/fax. I use linux where it is standard with the sane
> drivers, regardless of the scanner, provided there's a working backend for
> that scanner type. I intend now to find a film scanner to add to said setup,
> turning it into a real "acquisition device". As I only do B&W, I'm not
> looking for anything new nor fancy, even a basic 5 years old Nikon without
> ICE would do, as ICE doesn't work on silver films.
If you're interested, I have an old Canon FS2710. No ICE, 2700 dpi for
resolution, does a pretty good job with B&W. If you visit the photo
section of my site, http://www.tildefrugal.net/photo/ just do a search
for photos using t-max 400 and you'll get some examples.
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