Scanner speed?

Factual Questions
1

Mine is just way too slow !!

What is the biggest factor that I should consider in trying to speed things up?

CPU?
Scanner?
Software?

My computer and scanner are about 4 years old and I use Picasa.

2

It’s going to depend on the scanner and the type of cabling it uses to connect to your computer. If you have an older scanner that connects to a parallel port, it will communicate much more slowly than a newer scanner that connects through USB.

3

What model of scanner do you have? Some are just slow by design; I bought a Canon bus-powered USB scanner a while back and it was dreadfully slow - probably mostly on account of not being able to draw more than half an amp from the USB port to drive the motor.

CPU isn’t going to be the most significant factor in scanner speed, I would say its:

  • Bus speed (Hi-Speed USB2 is preferrable)
  • System RAM (if you don’t have much, then your software is going to use virtual memory to store part of the image data as it arrives)
  • Scanner resolution setting. There is no point setting the driver to scan at any resolution higher than the native hardware resolution of the scanner itself; 2400dpi high resolution scans interpolated from a 600dpi scanner are (mostly) a waste of time - if you need to interpolate to a higher resolution, you can do it in an image editor after scanning (and it will probably be better than letting the scanner software do it).