It works!

Yesterday I started to uncable my 9900F scanner, with the intention of hauling it upstairs, so I could connect it to the old PC that I keep on the gallery. The scanner sits on top of an Ikea PC desk that has a sort of string bag arrangement at the back, to keep cables tidy. I fished the scanner's power supply out of the bag, and noticed the original USB cable that shipped with the scanner. So I thought, "let's have one last go at getting this thing going under Fusion", extracted the cable, resumed the VM, and plugged in the scanner. Viola! The VM of XP recognized the scanner immediately. I went "What the...?", put a greeting card that was handy on the platen and did a test scan. It worked. I unplugged the USB cable: it is completely unremarkable. I tried one of the USB cables that I was working with over the weekend, and it worked, as well! I do not understand how or why, but the scanner now appears to work perfectly under a VMware Fusion VM of Windows XP on top of Leopard.

I hate transient faults: they were one of the nightmares of my life when I still worked in technical support. If something suddenly starts working, and you don't know why, when it stops working again, you still have no idea how to fix it. I should have my new iMac by the weekend, and I plan to conduct some tests to see if I can reproduce the original fault. However, right now, it works. So I don't have to replace my scanner any time soon - I would like one that works natively under Leopard, but I can now wait until the various manufacturers sort themselves out (which they seem to be very slow to do. It looks as though they all updated their printer drivers for 10.5, and sort of overlooked scanners). I should point out that I require a flat bed scanner: many of the documents that I need to scan are old and fragile, and not suitable for running through a page feed. So until someone brings out a decent, reliable, flat bed scanner that is supported under Leopard, I shall wait. As Robert Heinlein wrote, "Never do today what you can put off till tomorrow if tomorrow might improve the odds".

And if you've got a scanner that won't work under Leopard, a license of Fusion may be a cheap way to keep it going until updated drivers are available.

Irritation

There can be few things quite so irritating as reading the morning paper, and finding that one of the more popular actors of the day has apparently borrowed your hairstyle. I don't wear my hair quite that long, and my white forelock isn't quite that large, but mine is a family thing - my brother has it, too. Mr Depp's forelock is makeup for a character, and not a very nice one at that. The film opens next week: I wait to see if anyone I know is foolish enough to comment.

I sat the Juniper Networks Certified Internet Associate exam (JNO-341) last week, and passed (100%, all the study paid off), so I can think about something other than routers for a while.

What I'm thinking about at the moment is which Mac to buy next. To be honest, the MacWorld announcements were not all I was hoping for: I love the look of the MacBook Air, but the spec is just too low for me. I bought a MacBook Pro last year (I'm using it now), and I can't justify spending such a large amount of money for a machine with a slower processor and half the RAM. If I was still working for Sun (thank God I'm not!), with a lot of travel for work, I'd probably be more enthused by the thought of an ultra lightweight Mac. But I only carry my laptop bag from the house to the car, and from the car park to the office; if I need to carry a lot of additional tools or equipment, I have a laptop bag with wheels. So, much as I desire to possess those slim, shiny curves, I have to decline at this point. So I think my next purchase had better be an iMac, to replace my ancient Dell PC.

The Dell is definitely on its last legs: still running Windows 2000, getting very slow, and I think the hard disk is going to fail soon. So I'm going to replace it with an iMac, and run VMware Fusion for access to other operating systems. But the one problem that I cannot get past is my scanner - a Canoscan 9900F. Canon evidently don't intend to update the drivers: they will only support Leopard on a range of their newer models, and I can't get the drivers to install in my VM of Windows XP. So I suppose I shall have to buy a new scanner. Somehow I don't think I shall be buying another Canon!

I believe that Adobe are releasing or have released their new Mac product, but I don't think I shall be buying it. I've come across Pixelmator, which seems to do everything that I want to do at a bargain price. Furthermore, right now you can get Pixelmator and a bundle of other goodies from MacHeist, for the princely sum of $US49, 25% of which goes to charity. The bundle includes 12 applications, but it's only available for about 6 more days, so don't delay.