HP Scanner hardware-software question

I do a lot of scanning. My 3-4 yr. old HP flatbed scanner sadly died. I don’t remember the model number (Scanjet 3300C?). What I loved about it was the dumb software interface - HP Precisionscan Pro 3.1.

I bought a new HP scanner (Scanjet 4850), naively assuming I could continue to use the old software. No dice, apparently. HP Precisionscan Pro 3.1 doesn’t recognize the new scanner. The new software, of course, is totally bloated with a thousand features I don’t want and so I hate it.

I probably haven’t given enough info, but any ideas how to use the old software with the new scanner?

Dunno about the old software but you might want to try imaging.exe which you may already have loaded in Windows. It’s a simple app that will do TWAIN input (the common language for scanners).

You may want to give something like VueScan a try.

Have a dig around on the installation CD - it may be that there’s a folder named \drivers from which you can just install the bare essentials, without the rest of the bundled software.