Canon's LiDE 30 Scanner

Software

• Upon inserting the software CD, the Classic installer is auto-launched. This installer knows nothing of Mac OS X, and will merely install the Mac OS 9 versions of software. I had to read the fine manual to figure out how to install the Mac OS X versions of the software.
• OmniPage SE, the OCR software bundled with the scanner, fails to install due to a permission error of some kind. This is with the native Mac OS X installer. There is no way to point the installer at another folder that may not have permission issues.
• There's an "installer" application called "Delsg". I launched it to figure out what it does, since its name is useless. This resulted in a single modal dialog box with the text "Deleting file. Please wait a moment." What file are you deleting!?!
• It offers no standard Twain driver. I bought this scanner to write software against. Fat chance, short of disassembling the world.
• Because of the lack of a standard Twain driver, the scanner will not work with GraphicConverter.
• The "CanoScan Toolbox X" scanner frontend eats 100% of the processor doing nothing. Indeed, processor usage is reduced during scanning. I assume that's because their code is blocking on IO.
• CanoScan Toolbox X is ugly, ugly, ugly. It's neither Aqua, Metal nor Classic. Nonstandard pictograph icons abound.
• Two background processes, N067U_ButtonManager and N124U_ButtonManager are started and placed into a boot-time launch folder.
  • N067U_ButtonManager writes Looking for devices matching vendor ID=1193 and product ID=8717 to system.log once per second.
  • N124U_ButtonManager also writes Looking for devices matching vendor ID=1193 and product ID=8718.
  This happens all the time, regardless of whether the scanner is plugged in or not. That means these two processes will write out around 10 megabytes of log files every 24-hour period.

Hardware

I was in love with the idea of the scanner getting its power solely from its USB connection. However that benefit is lost to the fact that the scanner produces a variably thick black line along the top and right side of every scan. It appears the white backing doesn't fit the plate, which means the scanner doesn't get the necessary white background, which results in the border. I was able to put a blank piece of paper where the gap occurs to make up the difference, but I am unwilling to live with such a kludge. Without the kludge, auto-cropping isn't possible, a necessary feature.

Summary

Canon should be ashamed of releasing this to the public. It is possible that this machine is simply defective hardware-wise, but that doesn't account for the poor software.

I've happily owned Apple-branded Canon inkjet printers, and love my S110 Digital Elph Camera. What's the difference? With all my previous Canon products, I've used Apple's software with Canon's hardware. Apple's drivers for their printers, iPhoto with the S110. It appears Canon may have their hardware act together, but can't write good desktop software for the life of them.

Bottom line: this scanner reeks like a Windows product, and Apple should be ashamed of carrying it in their store. However, I must note Apple did take back the product, and waived the restocking fee. That helped a lot in my feelings towards the Apple Store.

Update: Doug Edwards writes me to say he just purchased a CanoScan 9900F and has experienced the same problems with this higher-end scanner. In addition, Doug tells me its advertised FireWire interface does not currently work with Mac OS X! The FireWire driver was supposed to be released in April, but still doesn't exist. Sure enough, checking Canon's 9900F download page reveals product manuals and a brochure, but no drivers whatsoever.

Update: My followup, which includes which scanner I bought instead.

Tuesday, April 29, 2003
12:00 AM