[SWLUG] Printer/Copier

[Daniel Morris]

On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 09:56:02PM +0100, Matt North wrote:
> I can't recommend any scanners, either.

I'd recommend looking at the supported hardware list from SANE before
buying.

I have an older Epson Perfection 2480 Photo and an integrated scanner
in the Brother MFC5440CN that I have. Both work fine and have done
through many iterations of openSUSE (since about 2003 & 2005).  

The Epson has some proprietary firmware that needed to be extracted out
of the M$ cab files and referenced from the /etc/sane.d/snapscan.conf.
It is attached via USB.

The Brother has separate scanner drivers to install and configure (along
with a fax driver and printer drivers) and I hook up to it with
ethernet (but it also has USB). I can scan either "off the glass" or
using the multi-sheet feeder.

I've used a variety of graphical scanner clients over the years, none of
which I've been particularly impressed with. To be fair, I probably scan 
detailed things like pictures or artwork relatively infrequently, which
usually means I've forgotten the difference between the various modes
from the last time around! I also have quite an old pc/netbook attached
to the Epson at home - the different time taken between processing a
200dpi and 400dpi scan is startling (make a cup of tea vs make dinner).

I mostly skip the GUI's and just use scanimage from the command line,
particularly at work when I regularly have to scan NDA's and other
office documents for the internal twiki, which I then mung with a shell
script to convert to pdf using pdftk & ImageMagick. A nice feature 
is being able to put a few pages in the feeder, run scanimage in "batch"
mode, and leave it go.

I also ought to point out that that Brother MFC ink management is very,
very stupid. Despite having a black cartridge, it is unable to print a
black (and white) fax if any of the yellow, cyan or magenta (the three
colour ones) cartridges are empty. On one occasion I had to wait 48hrs
for a delivery of ink in order to view a fax! The Brother also uses
ink by periodically self-cleaning the heads.

 Daniel