Dave, Shawn, and Chuck & all of others interested,
Basically I agree with Chuck's analysis of why different hardware
manufacturers each decide to support a particular platform or not. And I
disagree with Shawn in his final analysis as to hardware driver compared
to twain support. Twain is not a hardware driver but acts more like a
port or configuration for applications to find a particular device.
Basically it was a standard conceived right after the code of Windows
3.0 was made open to developers. Everyone thought it was a good idea to
use a common "port" or "interface" to find a particular device in
Windows. This was not Microsoft's decision but an independent developers
action. Although twain loads into windows similar to a hardware driver
it is not a device and is not recognized as a hardware device by the
Windows device manager. In order to be recognized by Windows as a Device
it must use one of the hardware interrupts available to the device
manager. Certainly it can share the interrupt of the SCSI host
(assuming of course it is a SCSI device). This is not the case for a
SCSI drive since they are loaded with out the need for a particular
hardware driver since all SCSI disk drive devices use a standard written
within the Windows operating system. Thus it is quite possible for SCSI
to find a particular device such as a Scanner, it (SCSI) can neither
operate the scanner nor find the scanner from an application. Therefore
TWAIN was written. However if after TWAIN finds the device it certainly
can not operate the device. Hence the need for a driver. So some
programmer must design a driver to load into the operating system be it
Windows 3.x/95-98/NT/or 2000. Therefore there can be a conflict if the
driver was only written for one version of Windows.
So what is the wise purchaser of a scanner to do to insure future
comparability amongst newer operating systems? My answer. Simply look
for software computability before you make your purchase. Don't assume
anything. Buy from an experienced manufacturer of scanners. This ES-10
was Olympus's first approach (maybe their last?) into this market. In
order to to get my old UMAX 1260 flatbed (circa 1993) compatible to Win
95, I had to go to UMAX and request a firmware upgrade. They did make
this available at no charge. Therefore I would not feel hesitant to
buy another expensive flatbed from UMAX. It seems that Minolta is
supporting their film scanners as new versions of OS's are becoming
available. If Olympus chooses to not do this then one should not buy
their scanners or any other computer hardware devices from them. As
simple as that.
Phillip Franklin
< This message was delivered via the Olympus Mailing List >
< For questions, mailto:owner-olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx >
< Web Page: http://Zuiko.sls.bc.ca/swright/olympuslist.html >
|