Dump W7 for XP - HELP!

[Nil]

I cannot count how many printers, scanners, and all in ones were
eventually scrapped because the device OEM refused to provide
updated software.

Especially scanners. Every major new version of Windows has left piles
of scanners in the dust. Printers have a better chance of surviving the
transition, but the manufacturers are very quick to abandon their
scanners. Maybe it's more difficult to write a scanner driver than a
printer driver and they figure it's not worth their time and effort.

 

[Twayne]

In

Well, yes, practice will be the only advantage,
everything else will be problems, starting with drivers
and ending with incompatibility problems with 16 bit
programs, just the kind of problems that the OP reported. I did 'Upgrade'
several laptops from Vista to XP, it was
not easy, the OP one, been originally Win7 is going to be
harder (and not necessary, since Win 7 work OK), most
likely something will not have XP drivers for. Had he
pick a 32 bit Win7, option he'll have not those problems.

The biggest problem with going from something like 7 to XP is the mobo
drivers; there probably are none since the hadware is newer than XP and
nothing was ever written for XP. If XP was previously running on the
machine, then it's known to be possible, but that's the only case. And it
depends on the drivers having been saved.

 

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

Especially scanners. Every major new version of Windows has left piles
of scanners in the dust. Printers have a better chance of surviving the
transition, but the manufacturers are very quick to abandon their
scanners. Maybe it's more difficult to write a scanner driver than a
printer driver and they figure it's not worth their time and effort.

Yes - I'm puzzled (though relieved) that the printer support continues.
It's more that Windows itself - presumably Microsoft - keeps them going.
I haven't tried with 7 yet, but I was surprised that Windows XP worked
fine with an old dot-matrix - and not an EPSON, either, which might be
considered to be a sort of default, but a Star (LC-10 IIRR). Although
slow, noisy, and obviously not colour, it produced quite good-quality
text.

(The problem with 7 is more likely to be that 7 machines - certainly
laptops, anyway - won't have a parallel port.)

 

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

Yep! Sad but true. It's up to the manufacturer of the hardware to
write and make available for download those drivers. Especially if
your hardware is older, it may well be that the manufacturer has
decided that it's not worth his time and effort to develop drivers
for
hardware that he is no longer selling.

You left out the part where Microsoft keeps changing the underlying
driver model so that manufacturers *have to* write new drivers to have
their hardware supported in new versions of Windows. Surely,
Microsoft deserves some of the blame, don't they?

--
Zaphod

Arthur: All my life I've had this strange feeling that there's
something big and sinister going on in the world.
Slartibartfast: No, that's perfectly normal paranoia. Everyone in the
universe gets that.

 

[jbm]

"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote in message

Understood. What aspect would require the £200 scanner - resolution?
gamma? just the handling facilities? (I too have lots of slides and
negatives, and might be interested in pointers to the £200 scanners
you've found.)
--

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Partly resolution. I'll be looking at 2400x4800 to standardise with what
I've already done. Most dedicated film scanners only allow 1800 or 2400.

But more importantly the ability to do multiple formats, namely 35mm, 110
and 126. The last is the one that makes life difficult. I had to make up the
carriers for 110 & 126 myself for the scanner to do them. And the Canon
software can be adapted to handle the strange sizes, still allowing the scan
of up to 8 (110) separate items at a time.

jim

 

[Yousuf Khan]

My view is different from yours. I recommend against all-in-one
printer-scanners for almost everyone. That's because if either the
scanner or printer dies, the other one dies with it. It's better to
have two separate devices.

These devices cost anywhere between $50 and $99 these days. If one goes,
you just replace them both. It's cheaper than a standalone scanner in
the olden days, and cheaper than laser printers.

And from a personal standpoint, I greatly prefer laser printers to
inkjets, and as far as I know, there are no all-in-ones with laser
printers.

Some people who do a lot of printing do prefer the lasers. I don't do
more printing than a few documents, an occasional Google map printout,
and maybe a photo print (less likely, as it's easier to just take a
memory stick to a drugstore photo print kiosk).

But if you're printing constantly, then a laser is the only way to go.
The friend who I mentioned that's attached to his scanner also happens
to own a laser printer. Not because he does a lot of printing, but
because he's convinced himself that he needs the finest of everything,
including the scanner which he believes is superior to a scanner in an
all-in-one. My all-in-one scanner has a resolution of 200 dpi, and I
think his standalone only goes to 150 dpi.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Yousuf Khan]

Yes - I'm puzzled (though relieved) that the printer support continues.
It's more that Windows itself - presumably Microsoft - keeps them going.
I haven't tried with 7 yet, but I was surprised that Windows XP worked
fine with an old dot-matrix - and not an EPSON, either, which might be
considered to be a sort of default, but a Star (LC-10 IIRR). Although
slow, noisy, and obviously not colour, it produced quite good-quality text.

I do believe I used to own a Star printer too, possibly the LC-10.
However, back in the dot-matrix days, they all used to make their
command-sets Epsom-compatible, to simplify driver development. There
were other examples of hardware emulating other hardware, such as HP
LaserJet compatibility, Hayes modem compatibility, Soundblaster
compatibility. That was all done to accomodate drivers, rather than the
way it is now, where drivers accomodate hardware.

Yousuf Khan

 

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote in message

Understood. What aspect would require the £200 scanner - resolution?
gamma? just the handling facilities? (I too have lots of slides and
negatives, and might be interested in pointers to the £200 scanners
you've found.)

Yes, that is good.

But more importantly the ability to do multiple formats, namely 35mm, 110 and 126. The last is the one that makes life difficult. I had to make
up the carriers for 110 & 126 myself for the scanner to do them. And the Canon software can be adapted to handle the strange sizes, still
allowing the scan of up to 8 (110) separate items at a time.

jim

Agreed: given its popularity for several years, I continue to be
surprised that 126 is so rarely mentioned.

By the way: when you posted, you removed my signature (good) - but you
left in the "-- " line, and your email/news software didn't add "> " (or
you have it set to do so). You also bottom-posted (good, it makes things
easier to read; interposting - where you add bits after the bit you're
replying to, as I am here [and snip the rest!] - is even better, though
wasn't necessary for such a short post). However, some email/news
software recognises a "-- " line as denoting the start of a signature -
and automatically cuts whatever follows from and reply/followup,
assuming it to be a signature that doesn't need quoting. Thus, when
posting this reply, my software initially just quoted the part above the
"-- " line: I had to take special action to get your words back in.

(Your software also seems to be set to a very long line length: it is
putting in newlines [it did after "make" and "still"], but only after a
very long line.)

 

[Sunny Bard]

By the way: when you posted, you
left in the "-- " line, and your email/news software didn't add "> " (or
you have it set to do so).

That's WLMv15 for you :-(

I now have a filter that automatically marks-as-read all messages with
"X-Newsreader" header containing "Windows Live Mail 15".

 

[Yousuf Khan]

You're spot on, Yousuf. The scanner cost a small fortune in its day, and
was bought with one particular use in mind. I have over 3000 negatives
and transparencies that I was in the process of scanning. Very few flat
bed scanners have this facility these days, and none of the combined
units do. It will cost over £200 to acquire a dedicated negative scanner
of decent enough quality for the job, especially because I constructed a
set of holders to scan 110 (the tiny ones) & 126 (Instamatic) negatives.
I don't want to have to go through that again.

jim

Have you considered the dual-boot to XP solution? I don't think a
virtualized XP would work in this case as the scanner won't even be seen
by the virtualized XP, you need XP running at bare-metal here, which is
what dual-boot is all about.

Regarding whether your new hardware will have drivers for XP, it may
not, but there will be enough generic drivers to make it work. And your
only use for XP will be this scanning anyways.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Ken Blake]

These devices cost anywhere between $50 and $99 these days.

The junky ones do. Those with any quality do not.

If one goes, you just replace them both.

My point exactly. That's why I recommend against them.

It's cheaper than a standalone scanner in
the olden days, and cheaper than laser printers.

The junky ones are.

Some people who do a lot of printing do prefer the lasers. I don't do
more printing than a few documents, an occasional Google map printout,
and maybe a photo print

That's fine; it's your choice. I mentioned my preference for a laser
printer but wasn't trying to tell everyone that's what they should
use.

I don't do a lot of printing either, but I still greatly prefer a
laser. It's more expensive than the cheap junky inkjets, but doesn't
cost a fortune. It's better quality, cheaper to use, and I don't have
to deal with the frequent inkjet problem of the jets getting clogged.

(less likely, as it's easier to just take a
memory stick to a drugstore photo print kiosk).

Easier? It may be better quality and it may be your preference, but
it's certainly not easier to go to a store than to print it at home.

 

[Ken Blake]

I do believe I used to own a Star printer too, possibly the LC-10.

I did too. I got my first PC back in 1987, and I got a Star dot-matrix
printer with it. I can't remember the model number, but it was very
inexpensive, and did a fairly decent job.

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

I don't do a lot of printing either, but I still greatly prefer a
laser. It's more expensive than the cheap junky inkjets, but doesn't
cost a fortune. It's better quality, cheaper to use, and I don't have
to deal with the frequent inkjet problem of the jets getting clogged.

Neither do I, and I use inkjet printers, as I have for years.

When I used laser printers, I had to deal with the frequent problem of
the drum developing incurable streaks.

Just sayin'.

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

That's WLMv15 for you :-(

I now have a filter that automatically marks-as-read all messages with
"X-Newsreader" header containing "Windows Live Mail 15".

I'd like to be able to use "mark as unreadable"

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

Have you considered the dual-boot to XP solution? I don't think a
virtualized XP would work in this case as the scanner won't even be seen
by the virtualized XP, you need XP running at bare-metal here, which is
what dual-boot is all about.

Regarding whether your new hardware will have drivers for XP, it may
not, but there will be enough generic drivers to make it work. And your
only use for XP will be this scanning anyways.

Yousuf Khan

My VMware virtual machine running XP works fine with all kinds of
devices that Win 7 can't see.

OTOH, my XP Mode VM doesn't always succeed.

 

[Yousuf Khan]

The junky ones do. Those with any quality do not.

I've found no all-in-ones to be junky, they all do their jobs just fine.
And their scanners are even usually somewhat superior to the older
standalone scanners of a few years ago.

But even if they're junky, just get another one.

My point exactly. That's why I recommend against them.

What I meant by replace them both is that since you'll be getting a new
printer, you'll be getting a new scanner in the bargain. If your an old
all-in-one's printing function dies, but its scanner function is still
working, or vice-versa, why keep it around? Just get another all-in-one
and you get both a brand new printer and scanner at the same time.

These days, I find all-in-ones indispensable because they also fulfill
the function of a copying machine at home. You can use the all-in-one as
a copier, even without having the computer on. Even color copies are
simple with these things.

I don't do a lot of printing either, but I still greatly prefer a
laser. It's more expensive than the cheap junky inkjets, but doesn't
cost a fortune. It's better quality, cheaper to use, and I don't have
to deal with the frequent inkjet problem of the jets getting clogged.

There is a point to be made about lasers being more economical than
inkjets because their toners last longer than an inkjet's cartridges. So
fewer refills. But still I minimize the expense of an inkjet cartridge
by having it refilled as often as possible. Eventually a cartridge will
reach an ultimate limit of refills, and so then you'll have to buy a new
cartridge, but it's still cheaper than having to buy a new cartridge
every time.

Easier? It may be better quality and it may be your preference, but
it's certainly not easier to go to a store than to print it at home.

Well it's cheaper than buying your own photo paper. You may only need a
few copies of photos, and you pay $0.25 or less per print.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Ken Blake]

These days, I find all-in-ones indispensable because they also fulfill
the function of a copying machine at home. You can use the all-in-one as
a copier, even without having the computer on. Even color copies are
simple with these things.

OK, we have different opinions and that's fine. I don't want to argue
about it, but I'll make just one more point, with regard to the above
paragraph. You don't need an all-in-one to have copying capability. I
use my separate scanner and printer for that all the time. And color
copies work just fine too.

Yes, my computer has to be on, but to me, that's not at all an issue.
It's on all the time anyway.

 

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

In message <[email protected]>, Yousuf Khan

So fewer refills. But still I minimize the expense of an inkjet
cartridge by having it refilled as often as possible. Eventually a
cartridge will reach an ultimate limit of refills, and so then you'll
have to buy a new cartridge, but it's still cheaper than having to buy
a new cartridge every time.

[]
A fair number of laser toner containers can be refilled, too. Where they
can, it's the drum that eventually wears out (or, develops too many
streaks to be usable).

 

[Bob I]

You have it exactly right, and you're missing nothing. Scanners don't
have "bitness."

Actually they do have "bitness", but it relates to color rendering
capabilities. 16, 24, 32 etc.

 

[Ken Blake]

Actually they do have "bitness", but it relates to color rendering
capabilities. 16, 24, 32 etc.

OK, but that's a very different matter from the "bitness" of software.