[filmscanners] RE: Umax experience

["Lloyd O'Daniel" <lodaniel@bham.rr.com>]

Laurie,

Bummer on the Powerlook II. In general, I agree with everything you
wrote below. In this particular case, I got lucky. I did research the
site before I bought and found a Magicscan upgrade version that was XP
compatible. I had actually been shopping for a scanner for contact
sheets for awhile. I didn't want to put the $$$ in for a new Epson 1680.
I narrowed my choice to either a used Epson 1600 or a new or used PLIII.
I did take note that, for the longest, Umax's site stated that their
scanners were not XP compatible. Totally amazing to me that they were
that slow in upgrading. I bid on 1-2 epsons and did not bid on
Powerlooks until I knew they had compatible software. Of course, I knew
that I could use Vuescan or (gulp) buy Silverfast. Have you tried
Vuescan with your PLII?

The problem with the old firmware in PLIII's with XP was that it caused
multiple device manager entries for the scanner. The new Magicscan and a
registry fix on the Umax site caused my scanner to be listed properly
without the new firmware.

Lloyd


-----Original Message-----
From: filmscanners_owner@halftone.co.uk
[mailto:filmscanners_owner@halftone.co.uk] On Behalf Of Laurie Solomon
Sent: Saturday, May 25, 2002 11:43 AM
To: lodaniel@bham.rr.com
Subject: [filmscanners] RE: Umax experience


Lloyd,

I have a Umax Powerlook II, which I like very much; but I have had
problems getting it to function in twain mode under Windows XP when
using upgraded Magicscan and Binuscan software.  Upon checking the Umax
web sight, I found no upgrades for that scanner when it came to software
that would work with Win XP; a call to Umax did not help either.  They
suggested trying the Win 2000 upgrade which enabled the MagicScan twain
to work so that the scanner could be used; but the Binuscan PhotoPerfect
portion did not work. Moreover, for some reason, the MagicScan twain
would not work with programs such as OmniPage and OmniForm.

My point is that your experience seems to indicate that, as is often the
case with many support staffs, they really do not always know what they
are talking about when they give advice.  In your case as in mine, it
was not the scanner hardware or firmware that would not work with WinXP
but the damn software, which they do not really keep up todate in terms
of upgrading and which the web site is totally ineffective in providing
good substantive information on.  Their sight when it comes to support
and upgrade information is lacking.  Their telephone support service can
be expensive as pointed out and generally not all that helpful even if
you get through, despite the fact that the personnel may be very nice to
deal with and attempt to be helpful.



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