The Latest in Portable Computer Scanners
admin | February 4, 2008 Image scanning has grown to the point that most computers in the United States now have either a flatbed or sheetfed scanner attached to them. Users are filling their hard drives with digital copies of family photos and letters, contracts and wills, and a host of other images. Lately, the trend in home, school and office scanning applications has been toward the use of portable scanners. This technology is advancing rapidly, with new models appearing at an increasing rate.
The latest portable scanners take two forms. Some are small sheetfed scanners, about the size of a handheld three-hole punch. The other is a wand-shaped scanner that the user sweeps horizontally down the page, building a scan of the entire document. Almost pocket-sized - not quite, but still very portable. Many of these are now designed to operate either connected to a computer, drawing power through the USB connection, or just by themselves, powered by rechargeable batteries and storing the scanned images in memory for later download. With built-in memory, a couple hundred images may be stored in the portable scanner, and many models will now accept memory cards like a digital camera, expanding the number of images it can hold. It’s beginning to sound like something out of an old spy movie. Read the rest of this entry »