I want to buy a scanner (preferably one with OCR software bundled) but I’m concerned that the operating instructions may only be in Chinese. Has anyone bought a scanner with English instructions here? Are there any particular brands to go for?
most scanners, and pretty much everything else, come with chinese only here, but if you buy a brand that is sold internationally, you can almost always get English versions of the user manual, drivers etc. from the company’s website… Epson, HP, BenQ all likely candidates…
If i were you i’d do some searching for the one you want on the net, check all the documentation is available, then go find it at NOVA or something suchlike…
Actually I’ve found a mix of different manuals. Sometimes you get chinese only, sometimes they have bilingual chinese/english and sometimes you even get just english manuals. But yeah, choose a brand based on good tech support on their web site, not just for manuals but also drivers as well. A lot of the smaller companies (and even some of the big ones) do not do this. You never know when you may need to reinstall the driver and can’t find the CD, or find out the old driver doesn’t work with your OS upgrade or something like that. A company that keeps up their support section on their web site will really save your bottom.
I recently bought an Epson Perfection 2480 USB 2.0 2400dpi scanner. It only came with Chinese software and Chinese user manual. While I could download the main driver and the user manual from their website, the other software was not available on their website for download due to licensiing issues.
When I first contacted Epson Taiwan, they told me, sure, please hold. When they got back to me they said, no they were mistaken no English. Can’t help you. When I complained and said, of course you can get it, blah blah, blah, they said they would get back to me. I have practised this over the years. A few days later, thanks to me not taking no for answer, I got word the disc was in the mail with the cool free software bundle in English.
If you buy the Epson 2480 (great value for the money and great reviews) then I can send you a copy of the English installation disc and software. I think English software works with many of the Epson line scanners, not just the 2480.