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