Reg I found your story below particularly interesting. I have been usng Smart Panel for some years, but a Classic version. I thought that by now Epson would have an update but I could not find such on their website, so I sent off an email requesting help, in particular regarding OCR software. Their reply was
At 10:01 AM +1100 22/11/05, Support (EALHO) wrote:
Mr Bond Epson does not write OCR software. The OCR software included with our product is bundled software from a variety of software companies. These software companies also sell their product stand alone. Attached is a pdf outlining a number of the more popular packages. Note there are only a few options for OS X. You may want to check with Apple whether they of any
other. Check their Made4Mac section on their website.
regards Customer Service Epson Australia
The pdf contained OMNI and one other that was for OSX but none that appealed, so I took the journey to VueScan and downloaded their trial version. I found their OCR had trouble recognising different type size and some characters. This took me back to your email and I went to my son's place to download on his broadband the SmartPanel you listed below. However, he has a more recent Epson scanner for his PC that he said had an OSX version on the CD. Installed it and it worked. Now, my story is relevant to yours only in two senses: one that you put me on the path to an update that I wanted; secondly in terms of the questions that you put at the end regarding informing Epson. If you have already done it, fine. If not then I would be please to respond to their email pointing them to the UK site. Regards Merv At 7:59 PM +0800 21/11/05, Reg Whitely wrote:
Hi all intrepid WAMUGgers I thought I'd share this with you in case someone ventures down the same path, although I suspect I'm following someone else's trail anyway. My lovely wife went out to Toyworld here in sunny Gero last Saturday and came back with a a brand new Epson RX510 multifunction printer/scanner device beastie, almost as big as our trusty Ruby iMac it now sits beside! "Just 'cos", as the kids say. Harvey Norman's 18 month interest free plans have caused this household situation before, but now I know what we'll be doing over the Christmas holidays - scanning 1000s of slides and negatives. See http://www.epson.com.au/products/multifunctional/photorx510.asp So a quiet weekend gardening, levelling student outcomes and sorting out our tax papers became one of unpacking and setting up this beast to run on 10.3.9 (Ruby) and 10.4.3 (PowerBook). Some 10 hours later, over 2 days, I finally got what it appears to be its main software driving force, the "Smart Panel" software, to run without crashing and locking the scanner option mid scan. That was about 10 pm last night and I'm loath to fire it all up again now to see if it's still functioning. You see, after installing the myriad nice programs on the two Macs from the installer disks, the "Smart Panel" proves to be quite dumb. What should be a nice interface bringing all the scan and photo programs together, consistently crashed mid scan, particularly when doing multiple slide scans on Ruby, and it simply wouldn't open on the PowerBook. Aha, a quick websearch shows some updates on Epson's Australian website so bug patches are downloaded and installed. Still it crashes. Maybe there's not enough memory. On Ruby maybe, with 356 MB ram but not surely on the Powerbook with 1 GB! See here http://tech.epson.com.au/downloads/product.asp?id=photorx510 and here http://www.newsoftinc.com/tech-Support/show-Patch.asp?uid=202 for updates to Version 3.10E Smart Panel On Versiontracker and other websites, reviewers describe this software and updates variously as "crippleware", "not a useful product feature", "getting really pissed off now", "can't they (Epson) ever do anything right", and "Why must I pay £3.99 for a software update that should come with the product!" Indeed! Aha, so what am I to do. It's Sunday now and I'm not going to let this b***** beast get the better of me. I find an update to V3.14 but it's no better. Then an update to v3.15p01from 3.15, which incidentally won't open as Stuffit tells me its "...an unsupported archive version". So where's the missing link, v 3.15? About 8 pm last night I discovered this: http://uk.newsoft.eu.com/products/product-main.asp?productid=UK0018&productmenus=250&submenus=856 The missing link. Now I've parted company with £3.99 GBP - note above comment about paying, but I decide, stuff it, if it works, it's worth it NOW!!, bugger the cost - and downloaded a 51.4 Mb Smart Panel v3.15, deleted all reference that I can think of to previous Smart Panels, preferences, etc, said many choice words about Epson (not my lovely wife of course who's since long gone to beddibyes), installed it on Ruby and Powerbook, and guess what? It worked. Ask me tomorrow. Maybe it's still flaky. So tell me, why should I need to pay for software updates to get the machine working properly anyway? I shouldn't. Should I tell Epson? Probably. Why isn't this available on their Australian website? Who knows? Should I tell the Harvey Norman guy who sold it to us? Probably. In fact I think I might even burn the download to disk and give it to him, just in case some other poor soul stumbles through the door up here and wants to buy a RX510 to run on Mac OS X. Interestingly there were a lot of patches for Windows versions too, so maybe Smart Panel is really, really Dumb? Thanks for reading. Regards Reg PS If you need a copy of this software, let me know off list. We'll come to some arrangement. I'm sure Epson won't mind. Grrr. -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- Archives - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml> Guidelines - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml> Unsubscribe - <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> WAMUG is powered by Stalker CommuniGatePro
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