Visioneer 9650 USB

Be very very careful when purchasing anything from Visioneer. I have owned a One Touch 9220 scanner for about 4 years, and just learned they will not support it, and there will be no drivers for Vista. Not only that, but because the scanner is out of production, I had to call a #@%^%& 900 number and PAY to find out I had been ripped off. Visioneer's level of corporate greed exceeds belief. If you ever think you might have to upgrade your computer, I would advise finding a company which supports its products.

I have had no hardware problems with the two 9650s I have in the office, but the software bundled with this scanner is terrible (at least on XP). (1) There's a broken online registration stage during the install, which wants you to register but then can't connect to the server; (2) possibly related to 1, the scanner is not detected when you are asked to plug the USB cable in, despite what the docs say - you just have to click finish and hope it is detected after reboot; (3) DO NOT EVEN ATTEMPT to set this thing up for a limited user. Textbridge won't work. You need to be at least a power user. Even then, you have to make sure you run every piece of software in the bundle, especially ScanDirect, first, as admin, before you can do so as power user. (4) other fun problems with this software include the mysterious presence of two Visioneer TWAIN drivers in every 'select scanner' list, only one of which works, a weird problem where all scans from within Acrobat 7 came out inverted (white on black) after running the TextBridge setup utility, the TWAIN interface previewing fine, but refusing to scan, the TWAIN interface ignoring what you set as paper source (flatbed or ADF) and color/bw settings and doing whatever it wants, with no recourse. I have reinstalled this entire package once on for one of the scanners, and three times for the other.

I have been doing IT support work for over 5 years, and consider myself reasonably competent. I acknowledge that most of these problems probably originate in trying to run this software as a non-administrator (although obviously I installed them as admin) but come on, this is hardly an unusual situation. Stay away from this thing.

The ADF motor burned up and melted the plastic after 3 months. After numerous aggravated phone calls to visioneer tech support, they sent a replacement that is a refurbished one. The light on the refurbished model now takes a whole 1 minute to warm up. So I'm sick of calling into visioneer tech, went out and bought a fujitsu scanner, more expensive but much better quality.

This is a decent scanner with respectible specification. It works as well as comparible scanners on the market and includes a good software bundle. But do yourself a favor and buy the Xerox Documate 510 if you like this scanner. It is the exact same hardward/software bundle with a different name on the front for almost half the cost.

I purchased this scanner, and it worked fine until one day the document feeder stopped working. For a few months I thought It was something I was doing, and worked around it. I finally called tech support, and was told I was out of warranty. Said ok, I will pay to get my ADF fixed. They do not fix anything. If you are out of warranty, you are stuck. Connected to Customer support, same thing. Can you imagine buying a car, and after a year, the tranny went bad, you were told you have to buy a new car because they do not fix cars over a year old. This is the type of company that has made us a disposable society. How can you charge $600.00 dollars, then when it breaks, tell the people to buy a new one. Something stinks with this logic.
Larry McKinnon