Getting My S2W 3300U to work

I have been trying to retire my last Windows XP machine at home.  One of the reason I was keeping it is my scanner, Benq S2W 3300U.  It is a good scanner but is not supported by anything beyond Windows XP.

Today, I got a work around for it.  I run it from my Linux virtual machine following the instructions on

http://zoffix.com/other/Installing-Benq-SZW-4300U-Scanner-on-Ubuntu

In short, in download the firmware from http://zoffix.com/snapscan/u176v046.bin and put it at /usr/share/sane/snapscan

Then use pico to update the /etc/sane.d/snapscan.conf file

I looked for the line

firmware /usr/share/sane/snapscan/your-firmwarefile.bin

and replace the path with the path where I stored my firmware, e.g. /usr/share/sane/snapscan/u176v046.bin

That's it.  The scanner just work in SimpleScan! Hurray!

XSane

Linux hardware supports have definitely improve dramatically. Many devices that previous was a pain to install now work faultlessly. I have this scanner, which previously won't work under Linux. Today, I thought, well give it another go with the latest Ubuntu (under virtual machine). To my surprise, it works, and to certain extend, it is better than working under Windows. One of the problems I found under Windows is that you often need to throw away working hardware because drivers of these old devices are no longer working under the version of Windows (Vista...pain) It is a comfort to know that my perfectly working scanner has a long life as it will work under Linux.