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4 Dec 2020 - Podcast #721 - (21:04)
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If you have a scanner, it probably came with some software, but there's a better option. You'll have to pay $40 or maybe $90 for VueScan, but it's worth it to get the best results from any scanner.
When Microsoft released Windows 2000, I found that Epson wouldn't be providing drivers for my scanner. That converted an expensive scanner to a doorstop, and I replaced it with another Epson. Epson did the same thing around the time Windows 7 or Windows 8 was released, but by then I had found VueScan and the lack of drivers didn't matter.
It didn't matter because VueScan developer Ed Hamrick designed it to work with every known scanner without any dependence on drivers. Hamrick released the first edition of VueScan in 1998. Today it supports flatbed scanners, sheet-feed scanners, and film scanners. Initially his work on scanning software was to improve on what the manufacturer provided. VueScan currently supports more than 6000 scanner models and runs on any version of Windows from the 64-bit version of XP through Windows 10, virtually all versions of the MacOS, several Linux distros, and as of April 2020, even on the Raspberry Pi.
In 2019, Apple's MacOS Catalina version dropped support for all scanners that had no 64-bit versions of their drivers. This is a story that has been repeated time after time for various operating systems and scanner manufacturers. VueScan makes it possible for owners to continue using those scanners.
It's likely that drivers for 64-bit Windows and MacOS systems will continue to work for the foreseeable future, so those who have recently manufactured scanners with current drivers may think they don't need VueScan. But there's another reason for thinking about buying it. At its simplest, the reason is adaptability.
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There is simply no scanning application that gives the user more access to controls than VueScan. The power to make changes can improve the resulting scans or ruin them, and that's doubtless why Hamrick created three operating modes: Basic, Standard, and Professional. Someone who is new to scanning should start with the Basic interface because if offers only the simplest settings and provides on-screen instructions. After gaining some experience with with the Basic mode, advance to Standard to open up a few additional options. This mode introduces four more tabs: Crop, Filter, Color, and Output. The on-screen operating instructions are retained.
Stepping up to the Professional mode is a large step. The on-screen instructions are gone, but some hints remain at the bottom of the screen. The number of options in the Input tab increase from around a dozen in the Standard interface to 25 in the Professional interface, and there are more options in most of the other tabs. All these choices would overwhelm a new user, but will make life much easier for those who have the knowledge and experience to use them.
Experience comes only from continued use, but there's a shortcut to knowledge and enlightenment. Sascha Steinhoff has written two books that will help. Both The VueScan Bible and Scanning Negatives and Slides are available as paperback books or as Kindle books. Scanning Negatives and Slides was written in 2007 and The VueScan Bible was written in 2011. You may think that means they're dated references, but that's not the case. References to existing hardware will seem out of date, but scanning techniques still depend on getting the settings right. Explanations of resolution, file formats, and workflows are the same now as they were a decade ago. The VueScan interface has changed little, so descriptions of controls on each tab are still accurate.
Users can download VueScan for free and try it for as long as they want. Instead of limiting the time or features in the trial version, it places a watermark on each scan until it has been registered. And that brings us to the cost — whether $40 or $90 is a better value.
What if you choose the Standard edition and decide later that you want the Professional edition? That's what I did. You don't have to start over. The full price of the Standard edition is credited and you'll pay just the difference ($50) to upgrade.
VueScan offers another significant and unusual benefit: It can be installed on up to four computers with any combination of operating systems and will support whatever number of scanners you have. I have three scanners: An Epson Perfection Photo scanner, a Plustek film and slide scanner, and the scanner that's built in to a Canon multi-function printer. Some competing products require one license per device per computer, and that would mean six licenses for hundreds of dollars if I wanted to be able to use all three scanners on both a Windows and MacOS computer. VueScan lets me use the Epson scanner when I want the best quality and the Canon scanner when quality is less important or I want to use the sheet-feed function for a multi-page document.
If you're wondering how often updates are released, Hamrick says "There is usually an updated version of VueScan every week or two, and these include improvements, new features, support for additional scanners, bug fixes, and support for new operating systems."
VueScan has so many settings because Hamrick knows that the best quality isn't always the best choice. It's essential to match a scan to its intended use. The two extremes are speed and accuracy. The fastest scan will be low quality. The most accurate scan will take far longer and consume an enormous amount of disk space. Consider one extreme to be the mama bear and the other to be the papa bear, so the baby bear is then the correct choice. But the baby bear moves around. Sometimes the best choice will be more toward speed, sometimes more toward accuracy.
If you scan an 8x10 color print using 64-bit scan depth and 4800 samples per inch, you'll have a file that approaches 16GB and the process of creating it may take hours. What I've described here represents and extreme misuse of scanner capabilities. It's a color print, so you don't need the transparency bit. Scan using 32-bit depth. Then think about how you plan to use the scan. Selecting 4800 samples per inch exceeds the resolution of the photograph. Drop the samples setting to 300. or maybe 600 if you think you'll need a gigantic print. Now instead of a 16GB file and an hours-long process, you'll have a considerably smaller file -- maybe 40 to 60MB -- and the process will take less than a minute.
VueScan has built-in color management, but can also create a raw scan file in its own proprietary raw format or Adobe digital negative format. These allow for post-scan processing, so choose one of the raw options when you want to have more control over the output. From a quality standpoint, TIFF and PDF are next in line; TIFF is a good choice for images that you will need to edit in a photo application and PDF is a good choice for text documents. Choose JPEG for the fastest scans, but keep in mind that JPEG applies compression that severely limits processing options.
Although VueScan's built-in reference files provide a good, quick summary of the application's operation, those who want to get the most out of the application and their scanner should consider buying a copy of The VueScan Bible.
Maybe you're looking for something to do until it's safe to resume more or less normal life. Digitizing old photographs and negatives might be just the thing. If so, VueScan would be an excellent choice indeed.
VueScan is the application that should have come with your scanner.With support for more than 6000 scanners, some of which otherwise would have been rendered unusable by a lack of drivers or operating system support, VueScan extends the life of older scanners and gives users access to more precise controls for all scanners. A reasonable price, a license that allows for use with all scanners you own on up to four computers, and access to updates forever (in the Professional edition) make VueScan the must-have application for scanning.
Additional details are available on the VueScan website.
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5 cats (best).
What's the best way to speed up an older computer? There are two possibilities. If the computer has 4GB or less of RAM, add memory. Otherwise, think about replacing the mechanical hard drive with solid-state drive. Here's a real-life account.
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My wife's computer frequently got bogged down because the disk drive that came with the computer was a 5400 RPM mechanical drive. I ordered a Samsung solid-state drive. When it arrived, I needed about 90 minutes to clone the existing drive to the new SSD and install the new drive. Big difference. Every task should be this easy.
In the old days, I recommended more RAM as the most cost-effective way to speed up a computer. These days it's almost always "install an SSD." That's because most computers come with at least 4GB of RAM. Increasing that to 8GB will provide minimal improvements for most users, but the real bottleneck is usually disk access.
Those who spend a lot of time working on photo, video, or audio files should have at least 8GB of RAM and 16GB or more is better, but mechanical hard drives are the root cause of most computer sluggishness. Manufacturers can keep prices low by specifying 5400 RPM drives. Any mechanical drive will be slower than a solid-state drive, but those that run at 5400 RPM are the slowest of the slow.
Fortunately both additional RAM and solid-state drives are affordable upgrades. If you have a computer that's several years old, upgrading both is a good way to avoid having to buy a new computer. But unless the computer is seriously short of RAM, replacing the hard drive will offer the most dramatic improvement.
I bought a Samsung 1TB drive to replace the computer's 1TB mechanical drive. Normally I would use a Crucial SSD, but Samsung drives have a slightly better reputation and come with useful diagnostic and monitoring software. The Samsung SSD 860 EVO drive was priced at $120 and the equivalent Crucial drive was five dollars less. To clone the existing drive to the new drive, I downloaded Easus Todo Backup Home, which comes with a 30-day trial period. Easus recommends downloading the trial version to clone a drive because the free version of their backup application doesn't include a clone option. This is a remarkably honest approach by a software publisher because they point out that the 30-day trail is sufficient for the cloning operation, after which the user can uninstall the trial version and use the free version. Does this policy lead people to pay for the full home version instead of using the free version? Maybe. I use the paid home version to create a disk image of my boot drive.
Preparing the disk for cloning was easy. I mounted the new drive in a spare Sabrent case, connected it to my computer, and initialized it as a GPT drive. I could have used the older MBR instead. MBR is "master boot record" and GPT is "GUID Partition Table". GUID is "globally unique identifier". In fact, it wouldn't matter which method I used because the cloning process eliminates anything on the target drive. It just needed to be formatted so that Windows could see it. Cloning the drive took a little less than 90 minutes, then I needed to remove the old drive and install the new one.
The computer, a three-year-old Lenovo IdeaPad 310, made that process easy. The disk drive is in a compartment with a cover that's held in place by a single screw. The drive itself has no mounting hardware other than a soft plastic wrapper. So swapping the disk took less than five minutes, and then it was time to power the computer on. The computer booted quickly and it took another minute or so to delete installation files and uninstall the trial version of Easus Todo Backup.
So if you have a computer that's a few years old, feels like it's too slow, and is still using a mechanical disk drive, think about spending $50 to $100 to upgrade the drive to a solid-state unit.
I've talked about Social Fixer before and how the "geniuses" at Facebook are doing everything they can to derail it. Whether you use Social Fixer or not, bookmarking a few Facebook fixer URLs can help.
You're probably not seeing the posts you want to see because Facebook thinks that "Top Stories" is a better choice than "Most Recent". Unless you're using Social Fixer, Facebook repeatedly switches to "Top Stories" no matter how many times you revert it to "Most Recent".
The "Top Stories" view displays what Facebook's artificial intelligence function thinks you will want to see. Given the utter failure of this view to provide what most users really want to see, you might be inclined to think that Facebook artificial intelligence is really Facebook genuine stupidity.
Even using these URLs won't guarantee that Facebook will show you want you want to see, but they'll probably be closer to what you want to see than what Facebook thinks you want to see.
Always bear in mind that Facebook's original motto was "move fast and break things". Although Mark Zuckerberg says it's no longer this way at Facebook, the evidence seems to contradict him.
Phishing emails are a problem regardless of the season and have been for several years. Some phish swim out from under their rocks at this time of year, though.
Security company GreatHorn says four scams are common during the end of the year with its many holidays. The danger is even greater this year because the pandemic is forcing even those who prefer to shop in stores to buy online. So we have people who are inexperienced online buyers who are stressed by the holidays and by COVID-19. It's the perfect time for scammers.
You can see GreatHorn's full post on the company's website, but here are the four key points:
GreatHorn says "the more sophisticated attacks evade traditional email security defenses and can get even the most advanced security professionals to share their personal data." Don't let it happen to you.
Remote learning is challenging for high school students during the pandemic, but imagine what it's like for those who are also homeless.
When you're not sure where you're going to sleep at night, algebra lessons or writing a history report seem unimportant. These challenges are more common than we'd like to think.
The University of California at Los Angeles's Center for the Transformation of Schools says nearly 270,000 students in California were homeless at some time during the 2018-2019 school year.
Learn4Life, a network of high schools that focuses on at-risk students and former dropouts, works with some of these students.
Remote learning has been especially difficult for our students suffering homelessness according to national superintendent Caprice Young. "We've provided them with laptops and hotspots, but without a stable home environment, it was difficult to keep some students engaged."
The organization offers flexible schedules and one-on-one instruction to give students the support and confidence they need to stay in school, and works with community support services to help with everything from free school supplies and clothing to transportation and health care.
This article is based on a news release from Learn4Life, a network of nonprofit public schools that provides students personalized learning, career training and life skills. Each school is locally controlled, tuition is free, and students can get one-on-one. It seems like a good idea, but it currently serves only about 49,000 students, and only in California, South Carolina, and Texas.
For more information, visit the Learn4Life website.
I wrote "It looks like the world isn't quite ready for books that have to be downloaded and read on computer screens. Not even Stephen King could make it work. Sales of 'The Plant' have declined to the point that King decided to pull the plug on the project."
These days the only time I read a dead-trees version of a book is when the library doesn't have an ebook. But back then "The deal was that 75% of those who downloaded each chapter had to pay for it. The first chapter easily beat that number, but the number of downloads and the number of people willing to pay has dropped. Less than half of those who downloaded the 4th installment paid for it."
King said that he planned to finish the story — eventually. "Fans may have to wait because he started this project nearly 20 years ago, so he can go a long time between writing sessions." It's still an unfinished serial novel that was published in from 1982 to 1985 privately and in 2000 as a commercial e-book. Six installments were available when King stopped working on it.