suggest good scanner with no need for drivers ?

[latrosicarius]

Hello, I was wondering if someone could recommend a good scanner (either document feeder or flatbed -- I'm not picky).

My main criteria is that it will work with NO proprietary drivers. I just want to plug it in and push a button and it will go.

Is there a scanner like that? Thank you.

P.S. I'm on Vista.

[scaryjim]

I've not done any great research, but I'm inclined to say no.

How on earth is the OS meant to know what to do with a scanner if it doesn't have drivers? I'm not aware of any "standard" for scanners... even if Vista has the driver pre-loaded it's likely to be a proprietary driver that the hardware manufacturer has supplied to MS before the release of Vista.

The nearest you can get is probably to look for a scanner that accepts memory cards and scans straight onto those. I have an HP all-in-one printer that'll scan straight to SD cards / USB sticks etc...

[kmac]

I spent a little time looking into this as well. You will need a TWAIN or WIA driver for most scanners.

Just out of interest why the aversion to drivers?

[Time Bandit]

My experience of scanner software is that it is generally pretty awful and loaded with unnecessary stuff (hp = monsterous installs, epson 'scan to web', etc. all dreadful.)

I would generally advise insalling the driver only, you can then import scanned images directly into useful programs like photoshop, GIMP and the like via TWAIN/ WIA.

[jackvdbuk]

the HP allinone i have, i just installed the basic printing and scanning driver and use win7/vistas scanning software.

not much more simpler than that IMO.