Tested Canon LiDE 600F and Windows 10 Surface Pro 4

Having previously written about the Canon LiDE 600F and its current support in Linux, macOS, and Windows 8 tablets, its only fair to include support for Windows 10.

The LiDE 600F is one of the earlier LiDE flatbed scanners that came with a separate film adapter. Canon, as mentioned in previous articles, discontinues support for products released as recent as 5 years ago. However, the Windows 8 driver and CanoScan Toolbox that can be downloaded from support.canon.com works fine on an updated release of Windows 10 on the Surface Pro 4.

Note: To be fair to Canon, I purchased the LiDE 600F in Nova Scotia on a business trip back in 2007, but the scanner works perfectly and the quality matches up to todays newer flatbeds. The provided USB cable feels a bit loose on the USB 3.0 port on the Surface P ro 4 due to age however.

The CanoScan Toolbox user interface has not aged well, even on a desktop as traditional as Windows 10. However, it does what it needs to do, and Windows 10 makes short work of image processing. You arent constrained to CanoScan Toolbox, however, and you can use image and desktop publishing software such as CorelDraw X8 to control image capture. Note that the LiDE driver now uses WIA, rather than the traditional TWAIN for communicating with Windows.

CanoScan products used to connect via TWAIN, but uses WIA in Corel Photo-Paint X8 on Windows 10.

Although I wouldve preferred that Canon maintains drivers for macOS and Linux, its nice to have it working on the fairly recent Surface Pro 4. Note, however, that users with a Windows tablet that doesnt have a powered USB port wont work with the LiDE 600F. Moreover, scanner connection is unreliable with a USB OTG adapter.