[bksvol-discuss] Re: Introduction/Possibly Difficult Question...
- From: Grandma Cindy <popularplace@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 24 May 2008 23:36:31 -0700 (PDT)
Oh, Chris. I was practically in tears after reading your sad story--no kidding.
I normally wouldn't have read the whole thing, it being about technical things
that I don't need to know and can't help with, but your first paragraph made me
so happy--you and your wife are exactly the kind of people we need for so many
"nerdy" books. I kept reading hoping that the ending would be positive and you
were ready to go. Sigh.
I hope you get the advice you need.
G.Cindy
--- On Sat, 5/24/08, Chris Hofstader <cdh@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Date: Saturday, May 24, 2008, 6:00 AM
> Hi,
>
>
> I've been working as a contractor for BSO for some time
> now and have been a
> member for a very long time. A few friends of mine on the
> blind programming
> mailing list and I wanted to find a way to get our very
> nerdy books scanned
> and onto Bookshare.org. I volunteered to get a scanner and
> my sighted wife
> volunteered to do a lot of verification and add textual
> augmentations to
> describe diagrams and such. In theory we were off and
> running.
>
>
>
> Disaster one hit when we found out that our trusty, albeit
> ancient, Epson
> scanner had stopped working and that there were no drivers
> for it to be used
> with Vista, now mostly a requirement in our household. So,
> undeterred, I
> surfed over to the newegg.com web site and started
> searching for a
> replacement scanner that had one requirement - a reasonably
> sized document
> feeder.
>
>
>
> I came upon two that sounded pretty good. One was an Epson
> with a 30 sheet
> document feeder and the other was the Xerox DocuMate 152.
> Both cost about
> $350 and because the Xerox supported duplex scanning and
> had a 50 sheet ADF,
> I chose it.
>
>
>
> At this point, dismay turned into anticipation as we waited
> for the shiny
> new scanner to arrive at our house which it did late
> Wednesday afternoon.
> Like kids on Christmases Eve we had to wait to open it the
> following day as
> that evening had already been booked.
>
>
>
> Susan, my lovely wife, took the thing out of its box early
> Thursday,
> assembled the small number of parts one needs to attach and
> started loading
> the software. Here is where the real fear and loathing
> starts. First off,
> the document says nothing about having to download special
> drivers for
> Vista; the box says "Vista Ready" and the
> installation routine says nothing
> about downloading anything special for the newish OS. OF
> course, at the end
> of the list of instructions, it gave a URL for getting the
> Vista drivers
> but, by that time, we had already ground poor Susan's
> main PC to a near
> haul. Fortunately, Vista has restore points so she was
> able to
> automatically back out most of the install and get the rest
> out via the
> control panel.
>
>
>
> We then attached the device to an old XP machine that we
> use for backups (we
> have a pair of monstrous external drives that mirror each
> other and hold all
> of our important data attached to it). This is a five or
> six year old
> absolutely vanilla Dell with nothing special that might
> cause hardware
> conflicts.
>
>
>
> Following the instructions on the installation CDs to the
> letter of the law
> (not exactly an easy task with JAWS) I got everything to
> install without any
> crashes and only the typical reboots that accompany most
> any installation
> procedure. It was now time to turn on the beast and give
> it a try.
>
>
>
> I powered it on using its own power switch and opened
> OmniPage 15. JAWS
> says for help using OmniPage hit F1 twice quickly. Often
> JAWS keystrokes
> teach me a bit about the application so I took a look at
> what they had. It
> turned out to be documentation on how to use OmniPage 10.0
> with JAWS and
> said that it didn't necessarily work with other
> versions. JAWS worked
> poorly with version 15 but good enough to try to get the
> scanner going.
>
>
>
> I went to the OmniPage 15 File/Get Page/Scan menu and hit
> ENTER. This put
> me into a dialogue that asked if I wanted to download the
> latest scanner
> database and then choose which one I wanted to use with my
> hardware. I
> followed the instruction and on the next page of the
> wizard, chose the top
> one of three drivers available for the DocuMate 152. It
> then told me that
> not all tests were run but gave me only a
> "finish" button to proceed which I
> pressed.
>
>
>
> OmniPage then told me that an unspecified error had
> occurred. I tried the
> other two drivers with identical results (except once when
> I did get an
> error message but for no reason obvious to me the pages I
> had in the ADF got
> sucked through the scanner. I fiddled about with all sorts
> of different
> settings that looked like they might be helpful and even
> when to the
> scanners and cameras page in Control Panel only to crash
> while moving
> through its tabs.
>
>
>
> So, utter dismay and despair, fear and loathing.
>
>
>
> I called the 800 number for Xerox technical support and
> connected with a
> pretty well uninformed individual who, after having me try
> a few things,
> said that she would have to call back on Tuesday afternoon
> and do something
> using remote access to take over my PC to get it figured
> out. More fear and
> loathing as I had forgotten this was a holiday weekend.
>
>
>
> I tried a few more things with the device and made no
> progress.
>
>
>
> A relatively low cost scanner with a 50 page duplex ADF
> would be great for
> scanning whole books. Said scanner that sits like a
> toaster on my desk is
> of no use to anyone.
>
>
>
> So, after my long tale of disappointment and misfortune,
> does anyone here
> have any ideas about how to get a Xerox DocuMate 152
> running either on XP or
> Vista?
>
>
>
> Frustrated,
>
> cdh
To unsubscribe from this list send a blank Email to
bksvol-discuss-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
put the word 'unsubscribe' by itself in the subject line. To get a list of
available commands, put the word 'help' by itself in the subject line.
Other related posts:
