Now a lot of document scanners are everywhere.But which kind do you need? And what’s the best for you?Here are some advice for you to get the best handheld document scanners.
What they Offer
There are as many uses for handheld document scanners as there are people. The most popular application is probably for anyone studying in public or college libraries. These devices save you the trouble of queuing for a photocopier and, of course, you can use your scans to get editable text from the printed page into a word processor- a massive time saving.
Other uses include scanning text from old books and magazines- recipes, old comic books, retro fashion, public and church records- the list is endless.
What Kinds of Handheld Scanner are there?
Some hand held scanners are purely for text- the pen kind which reads a line at a time. Others like the Vupoint magic wand below will take everything on the page, including images.Full page handheld scanners will never be as quick as their desktop brothers but with a little practice, they give good results. And, of course, there are a thousand and one places where you can never take a full sized scanner.
Which Kind do You Need?
Pen scanners are great for lifting sections of text from any document and beat using a desktop scanner at home for simple quotations.
Wand scanners will take whole pages including images. If you do not want everything on the page, they can be a slow way of saving snippets.
Best Full Page Scanners
VuPoint Solutions Magic Wand Portable Scanner (PDS-ST410-VP)
Amazon Price: $85.00
List Price: $99.99
VuPoint Solutions Magic Wand
This is probably the most popular of all the handheld portable scanners mainly because it was one of the first and it works!
It has a few quirks but with a little practice you can scan more or less anything accurately. The trick is it get the document or image to be scanned as flat as possible then move in a steady way. If you pause for any reason, hit your elbow against something (or sneeze!) you will get shaky images and text.
Related: PDF to Image Converter For Mac
Wolverine PASS -100 Portable Battery Powered Hand Held Document Scanner
This is one of the newest devices on the market. It is amazingly lightweight and compact- the kind of thing you can carry around without even noticing.It copies to a SD card so you can print or input to Mac or PC swiftly.It also comes at a good price and feels solid in the hand.
Amazon Price: $84.59
List Price: $99.99
Ectaco C-Pen 20 Handheld Scanner
This is one of the older pen scanners but it has consistently delivered what people want over the years and still sells well.It needs to be connected to a PC by its USB cable, which is a limitation. Almost all languages are supported and it is quick in operation.On the plus side it will never need a new battery!
Amazon Price: $99.00
List Price: $169.95
Ok, this is not a handheld scanner. It is worth mentioning though, as a reminder that portable scanners do not have to be handheld.
If you want to know about other document tools, PDF to Word Converter For Mac must be the first I think.It is the best solution to save your PDF files to Word documents on Mac OS Lion. To know more about the pdf tools: http://www.doremisoft.com/pdf/save-pdf-to-word-document-mac.html
