Digital cameras, scanners

[bee2423]

Does anyone know if just any camera, scanner or printer will work on a Mac?
Are they transferable if you have had a PC and switch to Mac?

boastberry1@hotmail.com

[MacMoore]

I've had occasion to plug in (USB 1.1) 3 different cameras and they all appeared as drives containing files that I could open in iPhoto.  NOTE: Drag drive to trash before disconnecting USB connectors.
Scanners and printers need drivers.  Mac OS scanner drivers can often be found on a disk that came with the scanner or on the manufacturer's website.  This also applies to printer drivers.  When you install (or reinstall) Mac OS X many printer drivers are installed unless you do a custom install and deselect various printer drivers to save hard drive space.

Brian

[Michael Humphrey]

To add to that, the connection of your PC compatible device would probably have to be USB-based (or Firewire). If it's serial or parallel port based connections, I almost 100% certain that you wouldn't be able to connect the older legacy-PC based devices. If the PC compatible device has a SCSI connection, there again may be a problem: newer Macs have dropped their SCSI ports. And only G3, G4, and G5s have PCI slots to be able to add in a SCSI card. I believe there are SCSI-to-USB conversion connectors, but you might as well buy a new/used USB-based device. Scanners and printers are pretty cheap these days.

If you get a USB flash-card reader appropriate to your flash media, you can transfer your pics from your camera that way. It seems to me, though, most brand-name digicams offer at least some form of basic software to get your pics from the camera onto your mac. (based on camera reviews I read about 2 years ago when deciding on which digicam I wanted to buy. The PC software bundle may have had more features, or a larger bundle, but the Mac software would do what you needed it to do.)

-Mike

[cuyler]

A bunch of complicated answers.

Any modern digital camera will liekly not have any issues.  I've used several Sony, Olympus and Canon digital cameras (current favourite is the Canon A620).  Every single one I've used iPhoto loads up and I can import the photos. 

Scanners - now those are a little tricky.  Mac's use SANE to interface with the scanners and technically any TWAIN compatible scanner.  To see what scanner's are compatible check out http://www.sane-project.org/sane-supported-devices.html.

Just today I got a new Brother MFC 7820N (on sale this week at Staples). I did have an issue with the drivers that they provided.  I installed the drivers off the CD then upgraded to the latest.  Since the ones they provide on the CD were for OS X 10.2 even after upgrading I had issues.  They recommended before install any drivers to go to the website and download the latest - forgetting about the ones on the CD.