Re: filmscanners: Nikon 4000 ED Review Part III

[EdHamrick@aol.com]

In a message dated 4/24/2001 3:50:37 AM EST, artistic@ampsc.com writes:

> For the same reason that Epson hasn't updated the drivers for the Epson 
>  Stylus Pro, or that MS stopped upgrading Win 95.  This biz is more about 
>  moving people to the next generation of devices, not to fix the errors 
>  of the past.

To Nikon's credit, they did support the LS-30 and LS-2000 in
NikonScan 3.0.  This not only makes for happier customers (and
word of mouth from happy customers is a powerful marketing
technique) but it also reduces their support load (assuming there
are fewer bugs in NikonScan 3.0).

I suspect the reason they didn't add GEM and ROC support
to NikonScan 3.0 is because they would have had to pay
ASF licensing royalties and because this would have given
LS-30 and LS-2000 users less motivation to upgrade.

If Nikon were clever, they'd charge for a software upgrade
key to make GEM and ROC work with the LS-30 and LS-2000.
However, if they were clever they would have fixed the jaggies
as well <smile>.  They're primarily a hardware vendor, and
like most hardware vendors, treat software as an expense and
not as a revenue-making opportunity.

(The jaggies on the LS-30 and LS-2000 aren't fixed in NikonScan 3.0,
as they still use the same scsi commands as previous versions
of NikonScan.)

Regards,
Ed Hamrick