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[ Go to March 1997 Table of Contents ]
NT Enterprise
-- by John D. Ruley
It's an ugly scene. Even as Windows NT gains popularity across servers and desktops, the operating system lacks adequate support for scanners. The picture improved a bit with NT 4.0's arrival, but more work needs to be done. NT 4.0 supports 32-bit TWAIN drivers, which work with SCSI-based scanners (available from companies like Epson, UMAX and Intergraph). However, NT still lacks support for bidirectional parallel ports used by popular scanners from Brother, Hewlett-Packard, Logitech and others. (Ironically, HP is standardizing its own corporate desktops on NT Workstation.) NT's built-in parallel port driver supports only Enhanced Parallel Port (EPP) "nibble" mode, which isn't sufficient for scanners. Enhanced Capabilities Port (ECP) mode, used by Windows 95 Plug-and-Play scanners, won't be available for NT until late 1997 or early 1998. Copyright (c) 1997 CMP Media Inc.
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