Q & A: Drivers for HP Scanners

HP ScanJet Drivers for Win98
Q: I own an HP ScanJet 4C, which is a discontinued model. Annoyingly, HP has stopped making the scanner drivers for this and other older models available for free on its website and now says that, if I want to use this model with Windows 98, I have to pay $40, plus $100 for a new SCSI card. Do I have any alternative? It used to work fine under Win95, but I want to upgrade to Win98.

A: I think it is shocking that HP has removed its previously freely downloadable ScanJet drivers for recent models such as the 4c, 4p, 3c, etc. and now charges $40 for them -- and it has the nerve to tell customers with the "rectangular" SCSI card distributed with many ScanJet models that they need to buy a new US$100 SCSI card to use them with Win98. This is false!

I kept a copy of the old free DeskScan version 2.6 drivers and installed them on a Windows 98 computer, which included the SCSI card HP says doesn't work under Win98. It worked fine! Unfortunately, I am not at liberty to distribute these drivers. However, basic HP scanner support (with more limited control than that built into HP's DeskScan software) is built into Win98. If you need the advanced zoom ands color correction features of the DeskScan II software, you'll either have to hunt down a copy or pay HP its forced obsolescence tax.

For further reading:

• Scanners Q&A - part 1 - Discussion of SCSI or Parallel interfaces, best choices under $300.
• Color Scanners - Part 1 - Reviews of popular units from Microtek, Epson, HP, Agfa, plus info on Photo CD and more.
• Color Scanners - Part 2 - More scanner reviews, including models from HP, Agfa, Storm and Umax.

Envisions.com has a number of useful pages of scanner info

• Cables- What will connect to what
• Considering a scanner that uses CIS (contact image sensor) technology over CCD?...Read this First
• Supported-Unsupported Adaptec SCSI Controllers