Re: filmscanners: Laptop configuration

[Arthur Entlich <artistic@ampsc.com>]

I have used two film scanners with USB version 1.1 interfaces, with both 
a P-100 and Celeron 500 CPU (and between 64 and 600+ megs of memory).  I 
also previously had a SCSI interfaced film scanner.  The image file 
sizes ranged from 18 megs (2400 dpi/8 bit) to about 50 megs (2820 dpi/16 
bit).  I have not found the throughput painfully slow in either 
circumstance, although the speed between the SCSI and USB with the same 
resolution and basically same scanner (HP S-10 versus S-20) was probably 
20-30% slower with USB.

Due to other processing considerations during transfers of scans to your 
computer, the interface speed differences between SCSI and USB are not 
the principal bottlenecks.  With higher dpi scanners, perhaps firewire 
would provide some advantage, if the processor, memory and hard drive 
were fast enough, but in more situations a USB interface probably would 
not be an albatross.  I'd think that if the restriction is the USB 
interface, manufacturers might begin to offer USB 1.1 and ver 2.0, 
unless hardware costs or licensing fees are prohibitive for that upgrading.

Art



Mark Otway wrote:

> Arthur wrote:
> 
> 
>>>Do you have a USB connection on your laptop?
>>>
> 
> Yes, I've got two. :-)
> 
> But obviously scanning requires a large amount of throughput and USB
> isn't the fastest i/face in the world. So if anyone made a firewire
> scanner it would be preferable...
> 
> Steve wrote:
> 
> 
>>>This may or may not be relevant but there is no USB with NT.
>>>
> 
> Yes & no - NT4 and previous don't support USB (unless you can find 3rd
> party drivers). But since Win2K USB support has been native in NT. I'm
> running Windows XP on the laptop, so it's not an issue.
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Mark
> 
> .
> 
>