When we were visiting with relatives over the holidays, my wife's sister broke out a photo album. The album had a bunch of pictures from when the kids were young and she lived near us. I offered to scan the pictures in and give her back a CD with the scanned pictures on it. I figured it would be an easy exercise, given that I have a fairly capable HP ScanJet 5500c.
My first challenge was finding the power supply for the scanner. I tore up my office, but I eventually found the power supply. Only 45 minutes more into it than I thought I would have to spend.
I recently updated my Mac Pro to OS X Lion. While this is overall a great thing, it turns out that HP no longer supports my scanner for Lion. I bought the scanner in 2003 (judging by when reviews were published PC Magazine's website). Does it make sense that the scanner would be completely abandoned after just eight years? The old HP software was apparently written for OS X 10.4, but hasn't been updated since. HP's website suggests in one location that you should be able use it through Apple's built-in image capture program. No dice. Further research revealed that my scanner was just not supported. In the end, I will have to say that I'm not impressed at all with HP.
In any event, the only way forward was backward. What do I mean? I'm a bit of a pack rat, and I never got rid of my G4 tower. I booted it up, downloaded the most recent (10.4-compatible) HP software and started scanning. Three pictures at a time, but it did work flawlessly.
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