I need to buy a flatbed scanner and I have found a reasonably priced one at Bestbuy.com. I'm not clear on the "photo-scanner" tag and I won't be using it to scan photos, just paper documents. And I don't really care about (extended) features, just a reasonably fast, high quality output to .pdf format.

Model is G3110 and I checked sane-project.org and found this.

Another model I may consider is the G4050, xsane-project page

I have xsane-0.998 installed on Slackware 14.0 x86_64 Multilib.

Am I going to be able to use either of these devices if I purchase one of them?

Thanks.

While HP does provide Linux drivers for their all-in-one products and their standalone printers, they do not, for whatever reason, provide drivers for their standalone scanners.

If I added up all the time I've spent over the years trying to tweak Xsane to put out a quality result it would add up to days, if not weeks. No exaggeration.

I'm not about to throw out a perfectly good scanner just because of poor Linux support, so I run Xp and the HP ms-windows drivers in VirtualBox and do my scanning there. Far, far, far superior results to sane/xsane.

HP makes an excellent product so maybe it is a matter of finding a model whose chip set is 'fully' or 'completely' supported by sane?

It is this kind of nonsense that, on occasion, makes me think I should just bite the bullet and use m$-windows to get things done. As it is, during business hours, Xp is running in VirtualBox for most of the day. Duplicating everything and jumping through the hoops to avoid mickeysoft almost seems self defeating when you consider the amount of time involved in doing so.

I can make use of my Vbox+XP environment.

OK, so let me backpedal the "high quality output" statement.
How about crappy enough for an IRS audit?

The cost of Faxing has gone through the roof for some reason 'round here.

Yes, it is good enough for that purpose.

So, "it" being either one?

Thanks!

Either model scanner? Yes, you can produce something they can read (if they can read ).

I wasn't gonna "go there"!

Thank you very much!

It does look like the G4050 has better support in sane than that other, but either one will produce a readable document.

and it looks more professional also

+1 for that strategy!

I just started building a Salix system out of spare parts for a financially strapped neighbor. He has a need for a scanner and a printer to enable him to earn some money. My old Canon printer/scanner/fax has no Linux drivers. I'll add some extra RAM to the motherboard and run a Virtualbox with WinXp as the guest system to drive the Canon.

The only cost will be the extra memory purchased. I'll use the WinXP product key off of his broken computer case.

This VM strategy (using Slackware) has worked well for me with other devices and software that needs MSWIN to function properly. In this case I'm hoping it will also work with Salix.

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If you don't need a huge scan surface (like much larger than, say, 9 x 14 or so), you can buy an H-P multi function printer that acts as a scanner, copier, printer and have full software support for it via HPLIP. I have a Photosmart C-4680 (it's only letter size) that sits beside me and it gets used as a copier, scanner and printer more often than my network printer does just because it does a darned good job of every function. H-P does make larger platen models (that will scan legal size), fully supported by HPLIP (which comes with Slackware).

I have a couple of H-P flatbeds laying around and have migrated away from using them (even though they're darned nice scanners) just because they're not supported in Linux as well as they could be. I do have Win7 in VirtualBox and it hadn't occurred to me to use the flatbeds with Win7 (and I'll hold my nose doing so), but, not a bad idea to get some use out of them. If you've already bought one, hey, VirtualBox plus XP or Win7 might be a good way to go to get the most use out of it.

I also have an HP CapShare 920 Handheld Scanner that I just loved using (it produces JPEG, plain text or PDF files where you scan down one side of a page then up the other side and it stitches the text or image together -- neat, neat gadget). Wish I could find some kind of software for the thing (it was Win95/Win98) but, alas, it appears to be a boat anchor or museum piece. Sigh.

Anyway, just a couple of thoughts.

Thanks!

But I have already made the purchase (and is tax deductible) and saved me some cash doing so by purchasing it over at newegg.

Don't forget that XP finally end-of-life's this year. I'd set up the VM with no ethernet cards after you've pulled in all the current updates since there won't be any more security updates after Microsoft drops support.

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Excellent idea!

A few years ago I set up a dual boot system for a friend and suggested he unplug the Ethernet cable whenever he needed to boot up MSWindows and wasn't downloading updates. You suggestion is much cleaner once the WinXP updates stop.

I setup XP in VB, as an "internal network" and allow it access to one shared folder,
but not the rest of the system. Works well and it is not "exposed" to the Internet.