[poppa kristof]

Let me get the details out before I get into theories.

OS's I use are X 10.3.4 & WinXP Pro
Machines I use, 1.25Ghz Al PowerBook & IBM ThinkPad T40 1.5Ghz
Scanner is HP ScanJet 5550c
Latest up to date scanner software.
All machines and the scanner are all USB 2.0 aware.

I do scanning of business items every day, some are paper archival and others are for image editing. The PowerBook works great for imaged editing, the ThinkPad works great at scanning. By that I mean I have timed how long it takes to scan using 200-bit B&W colour depth, single letter size page and no cropping, the scanner has an ADF built into it.
When I use the ThinkPad, it scanned a single sheet in approx 7 seconds, the PowerBook takes approximatly 20 seconds.
My question is why would it take nearly 3 times longer on the PowerBook to scan the same page? All machines are USB 2.0. I checked in the System Profile and my scanner shows up with speeds up to 480 Mb/sec so it knows that the scanner is USB 2.0 compliant and OS X knows that.
My guessing is that this is a software problem. HP as usual, cannot help, they say that is the speed of USB 2.0. They also recommended buying a faster macine as that would speed it up a bit. Let me tell that to accounting. But I know otherwise per my expereince with the ThinkPad speed. Both are close enough in terms of raw speed.
Could this be an OS X problem? I know that printing is much slower also, both use USB so could this be related? Or is Apple crippling the USB 2 throughput since they are the backers of FireWire?
Anyone have any ideas or thoughts? I prefer to use the Mac for this type of work, but if it takes me 3 times longer, whats the point?

Thanks,
PK

[Supervince]

"The Windows PC implementation of USB 2.0 puts the Mac to shame. "


http://barefeats.com/usb2.html

[poppa kristof]

so what can be done?

[Joe Cool]

Get FireWire hardware....

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by Supervince:
"The Windows PC implementation of USB 2.0 puts the Mac to shame. "


http://barefeats.com/usb2.html

That test used HFS+ as the file system on the Mac side, and NTFS on the Windows side.

It would be nice to eliminate that factor from the equation, so we could know if HFS+ was partially to blame (it isn't exactly the fastest or most advanced file system around these days). I wonder if they could be persuaded to repeat their tests with FAT on both systems to eliminate the FS type as a factor.

[wataru]

USB2 is well known to be slower for overall transfer speed (thus Firewire's continued preferred use in video applications) but that doesn't explain the Mac vs. PC disparity.

[Toyin]

This is a coincidence, because I hooked up my iPod using the USB port (just for s**ts and giggles) and I found the transfer of files to be as fast and possibly faster than firewire (I added about 150 new aac files). Sounds like poorly optimized drivers for this scanner (what else is new).

What are you using to scan? Give Vuescan a shot. I've never used it, but it's been around for a few years.

[poppa kristof]

I will check out VueScan, but I do not think that my scanner is supported.
I am begining to think that this is a driver/software problem also.

[Landos Mustache]

I know Canon does not support USB 2.0 on Macs.

Perhaps it is using USB 1.0 on your setup also.

[RooneyX]

I read Apple made USB 2 slower on Macs so people would use more firewire devices. Apple owns the firewire patent and for each firewire device made they earn a small license fee. That means hard drives, cameras, etc.

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by RooneyX:
I read Apple made USB 2 slower on Macs so people would use more firewire devices. Apple owns the firewire patent and for each firewire device made they earn a small license fee. That means hard drives, cameras, etc.

That makes little sense. Even without crippling USB 2, FireWire 400 still is faster in real-world performance anyway. FW 800 beats the crap out of it without question, so I don't see why it's necessary to artificially limit the speed of the protocol, the report of which would just make it look like USB 2 isn't really slower after all.

[SSharon]

Its probably in my head but with both of my external firewire/usb2 hard drives firewire is always faster when transfering large files and USB seems faster for small files like mp3's. Well maybe not faster than firewire, but it seemed like a significant difference in speeds.

[poppa kristof]

Now things are getting a little unclear for me. If someone uses an external hard drive or cd-rom drive, they believe they are getting speeds close to FW400. But when I am using my HP scanner it is slow. Shouldn't all devices be using OS X's built in USB2 driver? Regardless if there are any back end software. To me the arrow still points to HP for fault.

[turtle777]

Originally posted by poppa kristof:
To me the arrow still points to HP for fault.

HP suxx when it comes to drivers for OS X.
I had endless problems with drivers for an All-In-One machine including a scanner. Forget the scanning, too slow.

I have never heard that anyone was overly happy with HP drivers on the Mac. I guess it's political as well...

-t

[zen jihad]

Originally posted by Landos Mustache:
I know Canon does not support USB 2.0 on Macs.

Perhaps it is using USB 1.0 on your setup also.

That's one of my gripes too. I bought a Canon 3000F for our house, USB2, and so on. Works great on the PC, but Canon still won't commit to releasing any Mac software for it, not even a driver. It's quite annoying too, because I'd rather do my scanning on the Mac rather than the PC.

Live and hope I guess.

[absmiths]

The protocol can only do so much. I could easily demonstrate two programs where a 10MB network connection could outperform a 1GB connection. The OS can deliver data to the driver (or application), but the OS has no control how quickly the app can deal with it.

Comparing two protocols like USB2.0 and FW800 (or FW400) using a subjective experience with two hard drives (or scanners) is flawed at best. If you really want to test, write your own driver and experiment with throughput (my Brother did that with FW on the Mac and PC and that was why he (Lockheed) decided to use FW on Macs instead of PCs).

[poppa kristof]

While I agree that writing a driver might solve some problems. The fact that remains is writing a scanner driver can be very difficult if not impossible. VueScan clearly stats some drivers are too hard to create due to undocumentation. Now if there was an USB to FireWire cable to try. Hello mac hardware vendors? Imagine using USB2 devices at full speed using firewire on a older iMac, Cube or an older PowerBook, now that will be nice.

[turtle777]

Originally posted by absmiths:
If you really want to test, write your own driver and experiment with throughput.

Right.

So, any volunteers that write me a driver for my HP PSC 950 ?

-t

[moreno]

"The Windows PC implementation of USB 2.0 puts the Mac to shame. "

lol! more one reason to switch to pc.