.

CAlvarez,

Hope some of the following info can help...

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--Have you tried the Fujitsu ScanSnap fi-5110EOX?

"It is the best (probably the only) high speed scanner that works with OS X. The ScanSnap is sheet fed - small footprint on the desktop. It has ADF for up to 50 sheets. It scans in full color, and scans both sides of the page at the same time. It is incredibly fast, and scans to perfect PDF's".

You can use it in MacOS X, although Fujitsu doesn't admit it's OS X compatible (the scanner is not TWAIN, but will run in OS X using the software provided by Fujutsu). You can download the Scansnap manager for Macintosh from:

http://scansnap.fujitsu.com/jp/downl...10eox.html#mac

It's in Japanese but it will work as-is, without any configuring. It will scan duplex if the document is printed on both sides. It will use preview to show the final scanned document, you can then print to pdf. If you run the scansnap manager, the first tab has a drop down menu where you can either choose preview or adobe to show the final scans. The second tab is where you can designate your scans to be saved. For only front side scan of a doc with print on both sides, check the third tab in the scansnap manager, and the bottom drop down menu. The button on the bottom of the second tab is how you want the file names to appear. It wont matter if you change the format of the file name because it will be in japanese anyway. The third tab is where you can set the scan quality. The tabs are self explanatory. The third, fourth and fifth tabs are also self explanatory.

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--Have you tried WorkingPapers X 2.2.1 ?

"WorkingPapers lets you scan in business documents and color photos using many of today's leading scanners".

http://www.dominionsw.com/products.html

Suggested scanners:
http://www.dominionsw.com/suggested.html

For example, you could try as an alternative WorkingPapers with the Systec TravelScan 464 as a replacement for PaperPort with Visioneer StrobePro, which is not supported on OS X.

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

--To do full-page scans of documents while on the go, it would be interesting to follow the developement of "DocuPen":

http://www.docupen.com/

From The 'FAQs':
"Is the DocuPen compatible with MACs?
The DocuPen handheld scanner is currently hardware compatible with MACs, However, the current version of the bundled software does not include the MAC driver support. We are currently working to developing the MAC drivers. Once released, current PC users will have access to the new MAC drivers free of cost. Also, please sign up for Planon's E-newsletter to receive news of when the MAC version will be released first hand".

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--Emulation
http://manila.mems.rice.edu/behr/activities/paperport

"For those dark days when booting into OS 9 is not an option, I also have the Strobe Pro USB scanner, which, in limited experiments, functioned correctly within Windows 2K, within VirtualPC 5.0.4, within Mac OS X 10.2.3. One needs to "capture" the device in the VirtualPC USB control panel, and I found it necessary to cycle the power to the scanner (read remove and replace the power cord) before it was accessible from Windows. In a clear case of negative progress, the Strobe Pro is twice as slow in black and white scans as the Strobe, possibly due to limitations of USB compared to SCSI interface. I wouldn't be surprised if the newest Strobe XP100 was even slower, due to a USB-powered transport mechanism".

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Some other places to check:

Visigo™ A4 Mac
http://www.ambir.com/product.asp?item=PS464M

Morena 6.1 - Image Acquisition Framework for Java™ Platform overview
http://www.gnome.sk/Twain/jtp.html

iView MediaPro 2.6 -PDF management or any image management in general-
http://www.iview-multimedia.com/

PaperPort Preservation Society - A nonaligned home for PaperPort Mac Users.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/paperp...vationsociety/
In the "Files" of the "Members Only" section, you can download and try "PaperPort Viewer 5.6 OS X".

Haystack
http://haystack.lcs.mit.edu/index.html

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

.

Good work, Sao!

You've also reminded me why I gave up on Visioneer and the PaperPort scanner somewhere around 1999: the proprietary file format and the need to install 'PaperPort Viewer' on every system that needed to access the data. :rolleyes:

Carlos: are they still doing that in the Windows version you're using or have they adopted a more portable format like PDF, PNG, TIFF or even RTF yet? If they have there's all sorts of things a person can do to access the files.

What I mean is that I don't have a single paper file in my home or office at all. None. I haven't for about five or six years. It's all in my laptop.

Sao, good finds, and thanks for your efforts. I'd seen a couple of those, but some are new and promising. The Fujitsu scanner is simply above my price range and rather large. I've actually sold that unit to clients for high-volume work, but I simply scan a few pages per day. I have the TravelScan 464, but it just won't work at all. Not recognized. Could be a defective one. I also have a TravelScan Pro, and found that to be very flaky at best on the Windows machine, so I'm suspicious of everything from that manufacturer.

PaperPort moved to PDF scanning many years ago. No more proprietary viewer. It's very, very nice. You stick a sheet in the scanner, even without running the software first, and it just takes it and goes. You can file it, or just let the system OCR it, which adds every word on the page into a fully searchable index with fuzzy logic to make up for mis-recognized characters. Extremely effective. The speed and ease is perfect for someone like me who is very lazy(COUGH) time-efficient, I mean.

I'm playing with their ancient version for OS 9, and it works perfectly, but is simply ugly and clunky to use. A reasonable temporary solution so I'm not dead in the water, and I can keep researching with a little less panic.

Yes, I used it in Hong Kong on my old 8500 till 1997, then I moved briefly to South America so I still must have it in storage over there. :)

.

I'm just going to skip the whole bit on IT arrogance and try to help out...

First off, Sidetrack. Wonderful program, but it's shaky -- It causes my 15" not to wake from sleep sometimes. Completely unacceptable. There are other alternatives out there, including older versions of Sidetrack. That said, being a Windows pro you should know what to do when your system is having severe crashes -- go back to square one, and install things one item at a time until you find out what's causing the glitch. If you've had the thing 3 days, you're relatively new to the mac, and you're already installing kernel-level modules, it's no wonder you're having issues.

That said, I hear your complaints about OSX and many enterprise-level tasks. While almost any peripheral device "works" with OSX, not all that many work WELL with it. You almost have to buy devices that are made for OSX, and I'm always hesitant to invest in expensive peripherals after watching how many went unsupported from OS9 --> OSX for months or years... or still.

There are some things that seem a little ridiculous -- I've never had trouble with any USB hard drives, any printers (yes, you may have to go get drivers from the manufacturer or use cups -- tough shizzle), or any sort of kernel panic problems -- aside from my Sidetrack/Wake From Sleep issue, I've never had my Powerbook kernel panic on me, and of the roughly 50 Macs that are around at work, I have yet to see one kernel panic except one with a dead HD.

Do what any professional would do -- step back, and take it one problem at a time. Aside from gaming, there's almost nothing your Mac can't do.

Good advice of course. On the 3 days thing, I bought a PB a little over a week ago to be my primary computer in place of a Dell laptop; I have had Macs for a lot longer, but just never used them seriously. They were for games, video, and goofing around. So I have some exposure, just not as much as the Wintel platform.

I haven't gone backwards in my installations because I haven't been able to readily recreate the problem. So I can't test reliably until I know I can make it fail reliably.

My point about crashes and problems is not to bash the platform, but to say that really it can have problems just like any other. Windows is nice and stable if you leave it alone too. Add system extensions, and any machine can have some issues.

Right now I'm actually zeroing in on reproducing the lockups; they seem related to unplugging the external monitor, believe it or not. I thought it was related to sleep since I often do both together (pull off the external devices, close it, and carry it to a meeting or home, etc).

It's certainly true that an OSX Mac is not the end-all be-all of computers as it's sometimes evangelized here as being, though it seems that it's only the folks who also use Windows that seem to have a handle on that. The Mac platform certainly can have problems, and it's sometimes even harder to track down useful help, in that 90% of the advice given on "Mac Help" forums is "Go repair your drive permissions."

That said, those problems are, from my experience, about ten times more common with Windows systems, and they're also about ten times harder to track down. You'll also probably wake up one day realizing that you haven't reformatted your Mac in 6 months, and it still works perfectly... and once you see people's home Macs that haven't been reformatted in 4 or 5 years, you'll be even more impressed at how well they still work compared to Windows machines in that category.

My PowerTower Pro hasn't been reformatted in 6 years. Last reformat was for a new drive. This computer has been through 6 OS's (8, 8.5, 9, X (1,2 & 3) without reformat.

My Blue and White, hadn't been reformatted in 2 years. Carbon Copied the previous drive to new drive after first 2 years.

My Powerbook 12", 800MHz hasn't been reformatted in 1.75 years (since new).

I just got the G4 a couple of months ago, but exchanged the drives directly from the G3. No reformat. Of course, the G3 got a G4's drive with a new format.

While I have no qualms with installing OS's clean, I rarely see a reason to reformat.

Heh, I've blown up and reformatted my Macs far more often than that, but usually it's because I want a newer OS or did something to kill it (they were always toys to experiment on). I've never kept my primary computer for more than 2 years, with 12-14 months being more typical, so one install of Windows or Mac OS will certainly take care of that ownership time. I had to laugh when the guy tried to sell me the 3-year warranty...by then I'll be on my third notebook already...

The "format every 6 months" is another one of the Windows myths. We've got around 55 machines here still reliably Windows 98 every day without any attention. Same with some of the Pentium 300-class machines that have been on XP for many years without any repairs.

The random lockups and crashes on the PowerBook seem to have randomly stopped... I didn't do anything to fix it, just added more and more software and extensions.

I've never re-formatted to upgrade any version of Mac OS. In fact, on my Pismo, I've installed every upgrade/update (25 and counting!) of Mac OS X over previous versions with no problem. Performance is very good (OK . . . waiting for G5 Powerbooks ;)).

I didn't mean to say it was necessary, just like it's not necessary with Windows. I did it that way since the machines were all just for playing around, so there was no need to save anything on them. And like I said, I was often abusing them, so having clean machines was better.

The second a PowerBook with a high-resolution screen becomes available, I'm dumping this one. I believe that will be sooner rather than later, so I can't imagine I'll even go a year on this one. So I guess I'll get to learn how data migration across Macs works...

If it weren't for Windows........
 

I work in a large national call center where we provide technical support for customers using broadband internet services. I can say from personal experience that of all the calls that come in for technical assistance, approximately 98% of those calls are from Windows users. I can also say that a large percentage of the issues deal with hardware conflicts and viruses and or spyware complications. The fact that fewer than 2% of the calls come from Mac users does not mean there are necessarly fewer of us out there; just fewer experiencing any issues (not that the Mac isn't prone to having its own set of problems). But, from where I sit, if it weren't for the majority of Windows users, us Mac users would be out of a job.

The statistics are a bit off there though. All of the Mac Users I know, call me before resorting to a Tech Support number. If I don't have the answer, I likely know a Mac user that will. They've learned that it saves them a lot of time and bother from likely non-Mac tech support people. Most Mac users don't like being told it must be a flaw with the Mac that something doesn't work.

</lurk>

hi, I work with an awful lot of macs, and a ton of mac laptops and I just thought I'd throw out a quick point.

Most of the kernal panics I've seen on laptops (and several desktops) are tied to plugging and unplugging devices, and some of it is sort of expected, when you look back at what you may have done.

We all flub a plug in or out once in a while and I've noticed that many of the laptops may CLAIM hot switching plug-n-play but it's still an awfully good idea to remember a few things:

1 - (no brainer) make sure the device being removed isn't activley being used.

2 - Never feel around the plug with the plug to get it in. (this isn't the drive-in it's, well, more technical and the tolerances are less. :)

3 - If you've added third party (or fourth, in some cases) software for a piece of hardware, don't be too surprised if it wsn't written smart enough to deal with a "hot swap". Sometimes a sleep, or shutdown isn't a bad idea even tho we "shouldn't have to".

We all know this stuff is all "supposed" to work. But a little extra and analysis care can save you a few hours of scratching your head or even worse, hours of a repair techs time and your money.

And I have had a multitude of probs with video out ports on iBooks acting oddly, and they have had a recall out now for some of these issues. see:

http://www.apple.com/support/ibook/faq/

My wife makes me put $1.00 in a jar everytime I say "it should work".

Just my 2 cents,

Harry

OOoooo.. I hope my wife never thinks of that.

I've experienced some "panics" when feeling around with the plug and it starts to go into the wrong place.

"It should work." Hey, isn't that one of those lines that are part of a Microsoft joke...?

The devices on the USB chain don't have drivers other than what's built in, so I haven't looked at that. It appears that unplugging the external monitor is what's killing the machine. Well, sort of. It seems like it's still partially alive. I unplug the external monitor, both screens go black, but the machine is apparently running. Plug the external back in, and I can mouse around over there, but since the main screen is still black I can't do anything. My only option is to turn it off hard by holding down the power switch.

No, I don't have any special video drivers, hacks, etc.

Yup. I called support for one of my most-hated junk brands (Belkin) regarding a router. He asks what OS I'm using, and I say that right now I'm on a Mac, but... He cuts me off before I can say I've tried it from various Windows machines, to tell me that they can't support Mac, it must be the problem. The issue is TCP/IP routing to a VPN server, which is the same from Mac/Win/Unix/whatever. Idiots.

Hey,

Might try a Powerbook screen reset, (<cmd>-R at startup) but I get the feeling that you don't want (or need) a restart.

Good quickie on startup ( and other) key shortcuts is:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=75459

Also that is sort of sounding like the issue they are issuing new motherboards for.. Might want to persue it.

My personal iBook did that same sort of thing with a "TV" style monitor hooked up to that oddball 1/8" jack. They did the motherboard for me on it, even though it wasn't exactly the problem described.

I personally think it's flaky solder on the connectors. But I wouldn't know, because opening the iBook might have voided it's recall..... ;)

Harry

Didn't think much about the recall since the machine is so new (two weeks), but I guess I should check it out.

Yeah, avoiding a restart would be good. It has resulted in data loss. Now I just plan for the crash by closing all apps, which is hardly the ideal solution for a notebook that gets moved about regularly.

I'll peruse the hotkeys link and see if I can figure out how to make the screen turn back on or at least gracefully shut down the machine.

Your point 6) is what kills the Mac for me. I bought a 12" PB as soon as the 1.33GHz models came out as my first ever Mac, and it's the worst $1600+tax I ever wasted.

Sure the Mac is pretty, and it makes a great internet terminal, but it is totally useless for what I consider the realities of computing.

For example, there was my recent post here about the KVM that won't work with the Mac because it needs the user to press scroll-lock twice to switch the active computer. I got to dig deep in to resource editors and data/resource forks thanks to apple, and it's horribly designed, everything about it carefully set up to make it a pain in the ass to do anything. There's a lot of cool stuff in those resources, but it's such a pain to get at that it's just not worth doing, so most people don't.

I put a CD-R in the drive, the mac said it didn't recognize it. I quick click on okay, and I'm stuck...no icon to drag to the trash to eject it, the eject option in the menu greyed out, and even logging out and back in didn't help. After about an hour I found the eject option in iTunes did work. That is just so much simpler and easier to use than putting a lousy eject button on the drive, isn't it?

What's kind of interesting is that help requests like the KVM don't get much in the way of replies in this kind of forum. I've seen things like press esc-s (but with no explaination of what it does, and it does nothingon my machine), or ctrl-F14 (my PB keyboard doesn't have an F14, should I buy a $70 keyboard from apple just to find out it also does nothing? -- there's also no explaination of just how that should help).

It seems like even die-hard Mac experts don't know much beyond the basics, because the Mac has nothing beyond basics in any practical way.