The quality of the scanning software is the answer, i.e., how well is your scanner supported by the available Linux software.
HP provides excellent Linux support for their printers and all-in-one office products (combination scanner, copier, fax and printer), but, for whatever reason, they do not provide Linux support for their standalone flatbed scanners.
As I've mentioned before, I've spent so much time trying to get good, quality scans using XSane, it would add up to hours, if not days, and, perhaps, even weeks.
I finally gave up and started running winXp in VirtualBox and therein, the HP windows driver for the scanner. Perfect results.
However, things just took a turn for the worst. Last weekend I bought a new motherboard, CPU and RAM. It took a few days to figure out why Xp running in VirtualBox could no longer access the USB ports. Turns out the motherboard uses the Intel xHCI driver to control all the USB ports and the xHCI driver is not supported by windows Xp or Vista.
So, now what?
I guess I could buy a copy of win7 or it might be cheaper to buy a new case and put the old motherboard in the old case and use it just for scanning....
We will see.....
To the OP, apologies for the digression.
