My motherboard is a Asus P4T which has pins for 2 extra USB ports, and an attachment for those pins. When I first connected the scanner, I did so to the USB port connected to one of these extra USB ports. I've had other items connected to them with no problems, but when I connected the scanner, Windows XP first recognized it, but then said it wasn't connected properly. I disconnected it and reconnected it, and Windows XP saw it, liked it, but when it came time to scan, it never kicked in the scanner and gave me back a page of black within 5 seconds. I moved the USB connector right to the motherboard's USB ports, and finally XP liked it. I was able to tell something was different because when I moved the scanner to the other port, the scanner started to reset itself, whereas on the other port nothing ever happened.

The scanner shows up on your list of devices, just like the digital camera. When you double-click it, it asks how you want to scan in a picture, using the Wizard, or via Photoshop. I suppose that if you don't have Photoshop installed it will just start up the Wizard.

Your options are limited, but adequate. Brightness, contrast, and cropping. You're even given a preview option so that you don't scan more than you need. I took the manual for my Asus P4T and scanned that. Before you scan your image, XP asks you where you want it stored. By default, it's in your "My Pictures" folder. There is an "Advanced" button for those of you that would like to tweak your scans.

The only downside is that the "Scan", "Copy" and "Custom" buttons on the scanner seem to be useless. The XP drivers seem to do simple TWAIN communication with the scanner, and that's it. Pressing these buttons does nothing.

I'm no expert on how scans should look, but they seem acceptable to me. If you'd like to see the scan of the Asus P4T cover, click here.

Digital Cameras
In previous years, getting your pictures off a digital camera was clunky, tedious, and there was no standard way of doing that. Recently, that all changed with the advent of USB. Nowadays, not only digital cameras, but many digital devices talk to PCs using a standard I/O protocol.

Windows XP has incorporated this kind of technology into its digital camera drivers. I own a Kodak DC-4800, and without any drivers, I plugged the camera into my computer using the USB port, and XP recognized it (letting me know with a little tune), and started up the "Scanner and Camera Wizard", asking me how I wanted to download my pictures. It could not be more perfect.

When you plug a camera that XP recognizes into your computer, it should show up on your computer as a device, just like your hard drives and CD-ROM drives. You can double-click on it and see the pictures stored on you camera as standard files! When you turn your camera off or disconnect it from your computer, it's no longer listed as a device. This comes in handy when you want to drag-and-drop images to a specific folder.

I mentioned before about the Scanner and Camera Wizard that starts up when you connect the camera to the computer. Personally, I didn't like how the Wizard worked. I was used to the previous Kodak application on Windows ME where the pictures are stored with their original filenames in a folder dated for when the pictures were taken. XP does that as well, but you have to know where to find this option. When the camera's mounted as a device, right-click on it and select "Properties". There you'll see the Properties dialog box with three tabs. Select the Events tab and inside there you'll see the options you need to change to allow your camera to download the images as Kodak did before. By default, when the "Camera Connect" event happens, it starts up the Wizard. Instead, select the option to download the images to the folder you select (default is "My Pictures"), and the files will be saved there in a folder for today's date, along with their original filenames. Unfortunately, it won't save the pictures in a folder for the date the pictures were taken.