I am of the opinion that you don't need a college education to become a good programmer. Though from a hiring perspective I would only hire people with degrees. It would be too time consuming for most to take on an apprentice. Most people, from what I have seen, that work in IT already have a vast workload as it is. The college system is a good way to see how fit a person is for that industry while giving them a base to work on. Where I am from the drop-out rate is quite high, only about 25% that start the course actually finish it. If this were the same for an apprenticeship (I am sure it would not be this low considering interviews etc.) it would not be worth taking anybody on. When hiring if I had a choice between somebody that had 4 years college behind them and had somewhat proven their ability vs somebody that was self thought but not formally qualified I am afraid I would always have to choose the person with the degree.

Ah I see :-O , I will take a further look into this. Many thanks for pointing this out Gebri. Much appreciated. :)

Hi Gerbi, This is one of the sites I came accross. It provides a very good introduction to using java with scanners though the only downfall is that the solution uses JTwain (highest liscence fee i have seen) though if i cannot find any opensource APIs this may be the way I will go. I may also start looking into a C# implementation. Much thanks for your reply :)

Thanks Richard, I should have been more specific in my original post. After being unable to find any useful information through google for free apis, I can use JTwain etc if needs be, I thought I would post here to see if anybody has been down this road before and could provide me with useful information on getting started.

Thanks Richard, but i have already searched that. Links provided are mainly products already developed or apis that have a large liscence fee behind them. :^) (Only posting here as I have exhausted my google searching abilities) :)

Hi All, Does anybody know of any good tutorials for java and WIA integration? I am looking to create a java application that will integrate with a WIA compatible scanner and am just looking for a good place to start. Many thanks, Graeme