Hi Chris (and other interested parties, if
any),
One of our units here at the ol' Physical Plant decided
that a networked attached scanner was a must have. So they bought one. The
device is a Savin 3210 multi-function copier/network printer/network scanner.
Installation and configuration requires that some system (a desktop OS system
will work fine) be the scanner server, with Savin provided scanner server
software installed on the designated box. Then individual users install a
Savin provided scanner client on their systems, which communicates with the
scanner server system. Ummm, this is all Windows stuff, by the way - I don't
know whether Savin supports this functionality for other desktop OS
environments, if that's an issue.
The Savin device is configured with scanner mailboxes,
one per network scanner user. It is further configured with information about
how to contact the scanner server system (ip address, etc.). Then, when one
wants to scan something he/she takes (or directs some gopher to take) material
to scan to the scanner. On the Savin the user walks through a menuing system for
the scan job, designating the desired user's scan mailbox. The Savin device
scans the material presented, then sends it over the network to the scanner
server. The end user, using the scan client, can then view the scanned
documents available in his/her scanner mailbox, and open/print/etc selected
scanned documents in his/her scan server mailbox.
Is this better than sliced bread? I had/have my doubts,
and I really don't think that the end users who just had to have this capability
in fact use it all that much. And it is a little nasty to install and configure,
and complicates one's system and network configuration. But it does work as
advertised; I'll give it that much, if not much more.
Regards,
John Fishbeck
Physical Plant Computer Systems and
Networking
Chris,
Can you give some insight into the mechanics of such a setup? Would
this be for single-sheet or a few sheets, or for mass volume scanning? In
any event, wouldn't the end use need to physically visit the device each time he
or she uses it?
Network-attached printers evolved a long time ago because it's easy to
generate a print job, and pick it up asynchronously, perhaps hours later.
I'm guessing that network-attached scanners aren't as obvious a
setup because you inherently need to visit the device to start the
job. You also need to save the output somewhere, so wouldn't a
network-attached PC with a shared drive fill the bill?
/rich
On 3/7/06, Chris Wolf
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
I'm looking into scanners that have an
Ethernet connection to allow them to be shared across a department or
workgroup. If anyone has this kind of setup I'd like to hear about what
you're using, how well it works, etc. Thanks.
--Chris
==============================================
Chris
Wolf
Computer Service Manager
Agricultural
Economics
[log in to unmask]Michigan State
University 517 353-5017
