And also install their spyware/crapware, deal with terrible performance, watch it fail every update, etc.

Vuscan is a gem for making computers just work the way people assume they should. I used to have deal with printer/scanner problems regularly for a particular family member; now I sometimes proactively ask to see if any issues have arisen - nope. It has just been working across two printers and a major OS upgrade.

> And also install their spyware/crapware, deal with terrible performance, watch it fail every update, etc.

Just to clarify: you mean the software that comes with new scanners, not Vuescan, right?

For sure he meant that.

Not necessarily true. I have one mono laser printer and one color MFP for almost 7 years now, both were dirt cheap and now both are still going strong, nothing to complain really.

My Brother printer becomes 20 years next year. It's still working as new, have changed drum once and the support page on Brother even says it supports windows 10 and yes it does, it just worked. No extra installation needed. My Brother MFP (scanner, printer) I found in a second hand store for 10 euro, also just works but is a bit newer.

Interesting. I had a Brother duplex wi-fi laser printer die on me last year. It was about 10 years old but had led a very sheltered life - only on its 2nd or 3rd toner.

Didn’t seem to be anything mechanically wrong with it, but one day it just stopped printing or receiving commands properly. Still booted up ok and menus were responsive, but would freeze up on any attempt to print, even a test page. Sad day, but I’ve learned to live without a printer now.

Nothing surprising IMO as it's about 10 years old. Since you did not use it much, I would say the mechanical structures would be still very sound but it's the electronics were the culprits. If you kept it turned on, current would have aged the components and if any of the critical ones failed, it's done. But it might have failed even sooner if you rarely turned it on as moisture accumulated in the components and when it should get to some threshold, it got busted as soon as it turned on.

We have used lots of Brother printers at work. All of them worked just fine except one that we exchanged before the 2 year warranty ran out. They are rated at a certain number of pages per drum and that has kept pretty well so far, after two drum changes the paper jams starts to get higher and after a while they will be pensioned. My much older one has outlived them all though. At work we don't use printers the same way any more so not much need for them thankfully.

A much cheaper and better solution is to use an opensource OS that use Sane.

I ditched it 2y ago when I changed country but I have been using an old usb scanner whose latest drivers were only installable on windows ME and 2000 for years on my different linux distros. If you don't want to use linux as your main OS, most virtualization solutions support USB forwarding and shared folders which allow one to scan on a vm and get the files directly on the host OS.

You were absolutely right about that. The catch is that for fair bits of ordinary users, they might even be struggling using Windows, and maintaining a VM under Linux would be a huge undertaking. Don't take me wrong, I'm not saying Linux is not good but rather than it's still fair bit of work to be done for ordinary users. I used Windows for almost two decades now, and I'm now at the verge to ditch Windows myself...

I don't think the task is hard but it requires patience as nothing is more complicated but you need to learn to do everything in a somewhat different way.

Despite being a sysadmin I have always been clear with my partners that I would never provide support for their windows computer. If they were willing to switch to linux they could and I would help them, otherwise they were on their own. I never tried forcing anyone. Might look extreme but after a day of work I didn't want to fight an OS/ecosystem I hated for its lack of transparency while I could rest or spend quality time.

When I was married to my first wife we had only one computer that I configured with dual boot so she sometimes used my linux to browse something when I had it open as she didn't care about rebooting and thus ended up curious. After some kind of frustration on windows she started learning a bit deeper how to do things on Linux (I was using slackware at the time!). The thing is she was unemployed at the time so had plenty of time to learn. She was also interested in illustration and we were simply too broke to buy the Adobe Suite so she started using sodipodi and then its fork inkscape that weren't initially ported on windows and gimp. Later on when we divorced she kept that computer as I had purchased a laptop. I have lost contact now but 5y later she told me she had been given a faster one from friends and had replaced the windows that came with it with an ubuntu.

My 2 subsequent long-time partners never did the switch. I believe the difference is not that they are more clueless about computer but with kids and/or a job it leaves little time to dedicate on learning something new despite all the frustration and swearing they get from their windows computer. Current partner is frustrated a lot as her windows 10 simply takes ages to boot and be usable so she sometimes borrow the laptop I dedicate to my daughters which runs on Fedora when she want to consult something quick. Main barrier I guess is the data she already has on the original computer which I patiently wait for it to die or she throw it through the window. I did an exception with my no support rule to set up some backups so she doesn't lose anything when it will happen

> If you don't want to use linux as your main OS, most virtualization solutions support USB forwarding and shared folders which allow one to scan on a vm and get the files directly on the host OS.

This sounds cheaper. It doesn't sound better.

VueScan is nerdy in places but it is simpler than this.

In the early days of Vuescan, you got unlimited updates for something like $40 and, as far as I can tell, those agreements are still being honoured. I suppose Hamrick could have said "Sorry, your license is for Vuescan, but now it’s vu-scan, that’s different", but he hasn’t.

Anyone know the current update price? The website says you get a year of updates included but no mention of what each additional year now costs.

> All licenses come with one year of free updates. You can continue to use any version that is released within your free update period forever.

I purchased a lifetime license 16 years ago for US $90. Indeed, the license I have is as valid as ever.

Hamrick is an upstanding guy who deserves a lot of respect for the way he’s run his business for over 20 years now. He seems like a one man shop that just never sells out and goes on indefinitely. I guess the software will die when he does.

Startups are all the rage on HN but here is a great example of a lifestyle business that is long-lived and well-respected by many.

> Hamrick is an upstanding guy who deserves a lot of respect for the way he’s run his business for over 20 years now. He seems like a one man shop that just never sells out and goes on indefinitely. I guess the software will die when he does.

I'm a vuescan license holder since 2004. 18 years! I could have sworn I was using it 2 years earlier, though.

Good news: He has a "farmers continuity plan" - He gave birth to his successor. He now runs it with his son, who he raised as a developer :-)

https://www.hamrick.com/about-vuescan.html#about

Well said. Also in the Mac world—I can't speak to other platforms—I'd say your description of Hamrick the person and business also applies to Peter Lewis, the person behind Keyboard Maestro.

My license from 1999 is still valid. I originally purchased it for doing slide scanning on an LS-2000 and once I stopped shooting film I did not use vuescan until a few years ago when I needed to do a bunch of flatbed scans. I was pleased (and rather surprised) that it still worked. I then purchased a standard edition license as a thank you for what to my mind was a remarkably principled commitment to his promise of a lifetime license.

Great story. It is also worth mentioning that Ed Hamrick himself answers all support emails. They are only a sentence or two, but it’s just a remarkable thing.

Wow, I just realized this was the same VueScan. Back in the day, it opened up almost every "Made for Windows" scanner for the Mac. I'm impressed it's still going!

Yep, that's something to appreciate. So far I'm happy with my printers but I'm not sure if I'm going to be happy with my next printer really.

I have been trying to replace my old Canoscan LIDE 200 with a newer LIDE 400 for some time now (because I have a line of dead pixels), but there actually seems to be a scanner shortage on the German hardware market right now. Might be related to Covid and people buying scanners to work from home. For Canon definitely, but some other manufacturers seem to be sparse and more expensive as well. So this is a welcome alternative to at least be able to upgrade my MacOS finally.