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As we reported earlier, freely downloadable drivers are no longer available from Umax's US website. In fact, if you want drivers, the company insists that you buy them on CD-ROM for US$32.00. Not only that, but even if you've created an account on Umax's support site, you have to create a new "Sales" account and your credit card information is a required part of that new account. A request for comment from Umax US has gone unanswered. However, not all is lost as it appears that only the US branch of the company is pursuing these egregious practices. An e-mail sent to Umax UK yielded the following response from Craig Morrow (not title provided): No such fees have been implemented in the UK so I am unsure as to where this information has come from. If this is regarding downloads from the United States or in the Asia Pacific region then they would need to be contacted directly. http://www.umax.de/support/drivers.htm is hosted in Germany and provides all downloads without the need for registering. Although the site is currently being updated no charges are being put in place to the UK's knowledge. I have visually confirmed that freely downloadable drivers are available from Umax support sites in Taiwan (English, Chinese also available), Japan, Germany and the UK. Hence, though this move won't further endear long-suffering Umax customers to the company, it appears that if you have one of their scanners on your desk you haven't been entirely left out in the cold. Analysis: It's likely few if any people will actually purchase driver CDs from Umax US. The more probably scenario is that users will simply download from sites that still offer free drivers. So, the cheapness exhibited by Umax's US operations will be paid for out of the pockets of the company's other operations. This is an untenable situation both for customers and the company.
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