HP scan software alternative

[rpsgc]

Hello,

I've recently purchased a HP C4480 All-in-One printer and, as we all know, HP's software is nothing but a big bloated and buggy piece of .... well, you get the picture. I managed to find a "minimal" driver package from HP but that doesn't include a scanning utility and since I'm using Vista HP (Windows Fax & Scan is only available in Business and Ultimate) I'm SOL.

I have to scan through Paint.NET or Windows Photo Gallery but that's not as easy as pressing a button to scan now is it? And they don't have OCR either.

So, can you help me?

[axial]

Good question, rpsgc -- I share your problem. We had constant crashes with the HP monitoring s/w causing system lockups, and it took a lot of digging to find the "minimal" driver package so that we could get back to printing reliably on our HP 7780.

[ramoncin]

Yes I had the same problem, and quite one since I had to use the AllinOne with my underpowered netbook.
My recommendation is Vuescan.

[rpsgc]

Yes, but that one isn't free.

[ramoncin]

I'm on XP and I find that the included Camera and Scanner Assistant works fine.
I then use DoPDF freeware to produce PDFs.

[rpsgc]

-{ Quote: "I'm on XP and I find that the included Camera and Scanner Assistant works fine." }-

That'd end up as being the same as using any other imaging software to scan. No automation. The bloody Fax & Scan utility is not available in Home Premium.

[ramoncin]

This thread might be interesting to you:
http://www.donationcoder.com/Forums/bb/index.php?topic=13533.0
There are a number of free scanner applications (quite a few require NET framework).
I would be curious to try XNview (no scanner at hand) since I just noticed it supports both TWAIN and WIA. (for whatever reason the TWAIN freebies I did try failed to work on my setup)
Please post back your experiences ;-)

[rpsgc]

Thanks for the link.

Interesting... I installed SimpleOCR, it worked OK. But what I found that was that I already had HP scanning utility installed ??? It loaded up and scanned the document when I ran SimpleOCR. That raises another question though.

In Vista's Scanners and Cameras assistant, when I click Properties of my AIO and go to Events it has no program registered to the 'Scan button press' event and I can't choose any. It defaults to No Action.

That's really stupid. I'll have to look into that.

[rpsgc]

False alarm. The utility scans and has all sorts of tools but when I try to save the scanned image it gives me an error asking me to reinstall HP Photosmart suite. Great ::)
I'll go back to Windows Photo Gallery then.