Advice needed on scanner with old parallel port

happyhero

Hi I have just recently bought a new PC and have been adding my hardware, ie printers etc to it. It comes with Vista Premium. My printers were ok as they are USB so I plugged them in and eventually got them going by finding the right drivers but I have a scanner which is a few years old but still does everything I want really well, trouble is it only has connections for a parallel cable which the new PC does not have.

What do you think is my best solution, not sure about prices of scanners, I don't need anything fancy but I do like quality so I would want it to scan photos etc so that I could print at a fairly good quality.

Is there a low cost adaptor I could use (or a cable with different ends that acts like an adaptor) which would still allow the scanner to be used on my new machine, ie USB to parallel and would it work ok as I can already see with my USB devices that Vista needs a lot of satisfying with some old equipment. I would not want to get into adaptors only to find I then have problems with the drivers etc.

I realise there may be more than one way to do this but which would you advise as the best route to go down and what are the options?

My current scanner had some crazy figures that it would scan at but I have found that if I set it high all these figures do is take up loads of memory so I have had it set at about 300dpi (think I read somewhere that that was a good setting to use and anything above was a waste) for probably all my scans over the last years, but I am no expert on scanning so maybe I am missing something. The reason I mention this is to show roughly what I do so that if it is a new scanner I should get, then maybe I can be guided by this information.

Anyway, any help appreciated.

geewhiz

Have you checked your old scanner doesn't have a usb connection too as they used to come with both for a while.

If not, there is a good chance that xp drivers might work on vista but before you waste money do you know anyone with vista already that also has a parallel port, I would try it on their pc first to see if you can get it working.

If all else fails, the scanners that sell for around £40 will produce excellent results if you only need to scan photos etc. If you may need a new printer soon too then you could consider an all in one to save money in the long run.

spud17

You can get leads, don't know if it's exactly what you're looking for but for example Maplins have

http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=98711

Probably cheaper to get new scanner.

happyhero

Out of interest you say a £40 scanner would do what I need but what benefit can you get out of a more expensive one other than extra features, I mean like I said I could never see any improvement above 300dpi only more memory taken up, so how do you benefit from higher dpi?

geewhiz

The more expensive ones may have more features you don't need like scanning negatives etc.

A higher dpi might be used for scanning very small text or for enlarging a photo but the cheaper scanners are more than capable of doing this to a very good quality unless you need professional results.

jeffdavies

Hi,

Found an adaptor lead for you on Ebay which looks very similar to
the one advertised by with Maplin but at a fraction of the price!

Yet another one here

Hope this helps you.

Unstoppable_2

No good if there's no drivers for Vista for it.

happyhero

jeffdavies wrote: »

Hi,

Found an adaptor lead for you on Ebay which looks very similar to
the one advertised by with Maplin but at a fraction of the price!

Yet another one here

Hope this helps you.

Cheers jeffdavies, what worries me is that my new PC has Vista on it and I have already seen how it can be a bit awkward excepting older devices and they had USB connection, and these 2 ads which I am grateful for, advertise the fact that they do different versions of windows but they only go up to XP, neither mention Vista.