Tony Hoffman The Best Scanners for Macs Finding the right scanner for your Apple computer can be tricky. Here's what you need to know, along with our top Mac-friendly picks. There's no secret ingredient in determining the best scanner for your Apple desktop or laptop, as the factors that make a Mac-friendly model great are, by and large, the same as those that set the best Windows scanners apart from the pack. As with any tech product, prospective buyers look for the ideal combination of performance and features based on their needs, and set it against the price. For a document scanner, common criteria include speed, the ability to scan to various formats, the paper capacity of the automatic document feeder (ADF), optical character recognition (OCR) performance, the ability to scan and read business cards, the presence of a flatbed, the ability to scan over a network, and portability.

'Unable to get write access to the virtual hard disk. Do you want to open it in the read-only mode?' I clicked OK, and got the message that 'Parallels Mounter is unable to open the virtual hard disk...' So I tried to reconfigure Hard Disk 1 by reselecting the.hdd, but it was grayed out, and nothing happened. I am using Parallels 7 for the Mac, installed MS-DOS 6.22 ok. I want to access the HD of the virtual machine with Parallels Mounter. Yes - I did get info and I have write and read permissions. I also ran disk utility to correct permissions. I saw other posts of this in the forum from about a year ago but. Parellels for mac drive mounter can't get read write access. Group have read/write permissions. If I enter the username and administrator password for the I tried updating MacFuse to v2.1.7 (beta), but that didn't affect the Parallels Mounter behavior. I also tried to copy files to an external server, but got the same administrator password prompt, which leads me to My account has administrator privileges, and has read/write access to the.pvm and.hdd files.

Among the desired traits for photo scanners are speed, high resolution, the ability to scan slides and film, as well as prints, scan quality, and dust and scratch removal. For most of these factors, it makes little difference if your scanner is connected to a PC or a Mac. But there is one area in which Mac users are at a distinct disadvantage, and that is in software. As popular as Apple computers are with certain segments, such as graphic artists, Mac users are underserved when it comes to scanners and some other peripherals. As a Mac owner myself, I'm keenly aware that it's still largely a Windows world out there. In order for a scanner to work at all with a Mac, it has to have an OS X driver. Beyond that, the software that's usually bundled with a scanner may or may not be Mac-compatible.

Most recent photo scanners can work with Macs. Photo scanners often just come with drivers and a scan utility, leaving it to the user to provide a photo editing program. Popular choices, including Photoshop Elements and Photoshop CS, are available in both Windows- and Mac-compatible versions. Fewer document scanners are Mac compatible, and some are only partially so. Mac mail settings for hotmail.

A mac is in some cases better for business, as the calendar and reminders apps etc automatically sync with your iPhone, iPad, etc. It is true that the ms office suits are used most in businesses, but those can easily be installed to your mac. Works great with my Mac.There have been a few times that the scanner would cut off half a picture, and a few times it has had an issue connecting with my computer, but all in all it is a good scanner.

Most document scanners (with the exception of some high-end models) come with a software suite that includes, at the minimum, document management, OCR, and business-card programs. A good bundled software package for a scanner intended for both operating systems should include a full suite of both Windows and Mac programs. However, it's not uncommon that an otherwise Mac-friendly scanner will be missing parts of the suite. You can buy the programs separately if they're even available, but that's an extra expense that you'll have to factor into your costs. Statistically, there are far fewer Mac-friendly scanners than there are, say, printers, though their numbers are growing. It may take a bit more hunting to find the perfect scanner for your Mac than it would for a Windows-compatible model, but we've come across some excellent choices, which we present below.

For more on what to look for when choosing a scanner, check out our. And if you're in the market for a model specifically for photos, see our list of. Pros: Very fast at scanning to searchable PDF.

Met its rated simplex and duplex scan speeds. Good optical-character-recognition (OCR).

Did well at reading business cards. Misfeed-free in our testing.

Wi-Fi and USB 3.0 connectivity. Cons: You can't give a scan command from within an application. Scanning to some programs may require several steps. Only connects wirelessly to one computer at a time. Documentation could use improvement. Bottom Line: The Fujitsu ScanSnap iX500 is a capable and reliable document scanner that is fast in scanning to searchable PDF and did well in both text recognition and business-card scanning.