hp officejet lx scanner in winxp

[phaydid]

Does anyone know of anyway to allow the scanner on an officejet lx to work in windows XP?

[Robert-Jan Goossens]

Hi Phaydid,

Check these instructions.

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?lang=en&lc=en&cc=us&docname=bpu01855&product=59874〈=en&cc=us

Best regards,
Robert-Jan

[phaydid]

I think that it totally unfair of hp not to offer at least a twain scanner driver for the officejet lx.

Is there a 3rd party driver out there?

[Wolfram Verktyg]

It's not an HP issue. MS has provided most of the drivers for their NT operating systems (NT3, NT3.5, NT3.51, NT4, NT5-Windows 2000 and NT5.1-WindowsXP).

MS designed the NT operating systems for networked use in "enterprise" settings where there were IT personnel to maintain the computer networks.

Up until NT5-Windows 2000 matured, Audio and Video drivers plus drivers for printers and other peripherals were pretty rudimentary.

MS had no vested interest in making drivers to work with all of the bells and whistles features on newer peripherals. They were competing against Unix and other business oriented operating systems and they wanted their software to be easy to maintain.

Windows 95, 98 and ME were designed for regular consumers. Later Win2k became the choice for "power users" and it's since been replaced by WinXP home and Professional. XP is still NT!

The HP OfficeJet family was designed for SOHO use - Small Office/Home Office! They are considered consumer products rather than the high end scanners and laser printers that were used in most larger business settings at the time these Parallel Port cabled devices were sold.

The NT software architecture makes writing drivers for peripherals like the earlier HP OfficeJets and other multifunctional printers difficult and expensive.

In all versions of NT, Parallel Ports are only used for printing and no other functions. Multifunctional printers that communicate with an PC through a Parallel Port cable can only utilize minimal printing functions from within the computer with NT.

I bought my 1st OfficeJet in 1994. I replaced it with an OfficeJet LX with scanning capabilities in 1995 and I'm still using it as a fax in my home office. That's 10 years ago! Are you still using a 10 year old PC? You can get very inexpensive scanners and software today that will far outperform the original HP OficeJet software.

Chas.