900DPI PS4400 Handy Scanner with 1" Color Display

This is a great scanner. Very small and light. It works fast and the image quality is good. Some things to note: The batteries it came with were dead, leading me to believe intially that the product was faulty. But if this should happen to you, just pop in a fresh pair and you're good to go. Also, there is no internal memory for scanned items, so to do any scanning whatsoever, you need the SD card. Best get that along with purchasing the scanner.

The scanner is perfect for the office or quickly capturing an image or two off a book page, however, although small and thin, don't expect it to get into those hard to reach corners of large books. Though designed to get to most places other scanners cannot, to truly scan an entire book, you'll need to separate the binding in which case you'll be just as well off with a flat bed scanner. But the scanner is still a good accessory for the student on the go.

Overall, I'm very happy with this purchase and recommend this product.

This is more than I had even hoped for. Love it to take to the library when doing research. It eliminates having to take notes as you can just scan and take home to put on your computer. It is a great time saving tool.

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Let me preface by saying this is my 4th scanner. Not the 4th scanner I've ever owned but rather the 4th scanner I have in operation. I would also add there's a bit of science when you're using this type of scanner (IE handheld you manually move over the document.)

I have a scanner dedicated to slides/photos, one dedicated to multi page documents (IE credit card/bank/investment statements) & one to thermal receipts (IE grocery, drugstore, etc.)

OTOH, this scanner will live in my tote bag & is for those items you do not anticipate. My 93 y/o mother lives in assisted living. There are times when she needs particular tests and I like scanning the paperwork before handing it over to the health care "professionals" but I don't have the luxury of going home & scanning it there. Also, since she's legally blind, there are things she wants me to look at & I like scanning it so I have a "copy" at home on my computer. (Very helpful when trying to help a legally blind person "over the phone.")

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I bought this so I can convert the highlights I make on my textbook to electronic format which makes it great for using quotes for research papers or open book/open note tests where you can search a keyword. I first bought a pen scanner, but it takes time scanning individual lines which can be frustrating when you highlight almost the whole page. So I decided to buy this wand scanner. First, unlike other wand scanners, this one came with an 8 GB microSD card, which made it an even better deal.

In terms of the hardware, for my purposes of using it on a textbook, I was disappointed at first. Then I discovered the best way to scan is from the binding, to the outer edge of the page. The image will come out sideways, but the scans are more consistent than going top to bottom because when you do that, the page tends to start bending inward. It's a good idea to scan each page at least 2x, even 3-4 times if you think you messed up, because there is no way to preview an image and it is better to be safe than sorry. With 8 GB there is plenty of space, I also suggest putting it on the high dpi setting. It's very important to try to maintain a constant slow speed across the page.

This unit DOES NOT COME WITH Mac software for OCR. So I had to get an OCR software and ended up with ABBYY FineReader Express which was not too expensive and had excellent character recognition.

I do forsee problems with this unit in terms of scanning smaller books. The problem is the scanning "window" is not right at the edge of the scanner. There is a gap on both ends "short edge" (one end does have a shorter gap of about 1/2" so you do need at least that much clearance. Also along the long edge, the scanning window is closer to one edge but still requires a clearance of about a 1/4".

It is nice that this scanner comes with a nice pouch and cleaning cloth. It does use 2 AA batteries though I am unsure of the battery life. At least the LCD does have a battery level indicator which is good.

If I ever have to scan something at a library, this unit will come in very handy because of its portability. On the other hand, if you have a recent smart phone with a high megapixel camera and good image quality, you can probably just take a snapshot and use an OCR program later. For smaller books, that may be your only choice because you probably won't be able to get good scans with this wand scanner because of the clearance requirements.

Update 2/19/2013:

After using this for about a month, I am still very satisfied with the product. I use regular alkaline batteries (which were in good shape when I put it in but not brand new shape) and they are still working. When you scan, the battery level may dip but upon completion of scan it goes back up. I'm down to 2-1 battery level with a 3 at the max, so I will need to replace the batteries soon. This time I'll try brand new batteries to see how long they last.

Scans are about 1 to 1.5 Mb in size depending on what you scan. But even if we say 2 Mb per scan to be on the safe side, you'll still be able to scan 4000 pages. If you scan 3 times per page to be on the safe side, you can still scan over 1300 pages. Hopefully you won't be sitting in a library scanning that many pages, I'm not sure how long that would take!

I have not used my pen scanner since I got this device and actually wish I got this earlier, because scanning line by line with a pen scanner was a pain. Once again, I do recommend a decent OCR software, the one I am using which I mentioned previously is cheap and it works very well.

UPDATE 3/19/13: I encountered a serious problem with this scanner. As I mentioned above you should scan slowly and make several scans of a page to be safe. I found out with certain books, even though I definitely move the scanner past the edge of the text, the text cuts off! I was at the library scanning a book and thankfully I brought my tablet to confirm the images. I tried rescanning very carefully on the effected pages but to no avail. If the edge of the book does not have enough white space you will most likely encounter cut off text. This is very bad and I no longer recommend this product, so I have downgraded the rating from 5 stars to 1 star. I have wasted couple hours because of this defect.

UPDATE 3/26/13: Today I scanned the same book though it was a newer reprinted book compared to the one I scanned last week at the library. As is what I usually do, I scanned each page 3 times, slowly, and 100% made sure the scanning window passed the edge of the text. I only scanned 1 chapter this time. Of all the scans only a few had the text cut off at the end but the other 2 scans of the same page made up for it. I did not have to rescan any pages like I had to do last week. But I still find it very strange that the text would cut off like that or come very close to the text margin even though I scanned sufficiently past the margin. This scanner is still useful for me, so I will upgrade my rating to 3 stars. If you use this at a library, you really need a laptop to double check the scans, that's the safest way to do it.

UPDATE 5/18/13: I downgraded this scanner back down to 2 stars. I scan book sideways from the binding to the edge. I am always worried that I will get the text closest to the binding, but that part ends up being scanned in properly. As mentioned in my previous updates, the problem is the text on the outer edge of the book I am scanning. Even though the wand goes sufficiently beyond the text margin, the firmware in the scanner tries to cut off the white space and ends up cutting off the text making my scans useless. It DOESN'T MATTER HOW SLOW OR STRAIGHT you make scans, the last bit of text is very likely to be cut off if you scan sideways. Again this is really the only way to scan books with this device.

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I was somewhat skeptical about getting this scanner. It just didn't seem like it should be able to do what it purported to do. But I really needed something like this , and at this price, well... It arrived, sans the micro SD chip, as promised. Since it only functions with the chip, they really should include one, but such is life. The gist of it all is that it works great. It does take some slight practice to make sure that you scan the pages smoothly, but it does most of the work itself. The results are simply amazing. The scans are crystal clear and exactly like the material scanned. I found myself scanning practically everything in sight just for the fun and practice. But it is not a toy. As a lawyer I often find the need to scan documents or reference materials. This tool fits easily in my briefcase with all my books and files. Its best function is that it does need a bulky computer to go with it. It scans right to the micro chip inside it. With a few gigabit chip, you could scan an encyclopedia (not that you would want to). Back at the office I simply plug the chip into a chip reader, or attach the included USB cord, and down load the file in PDF format. Couldn't be easier.

Although the soft cover that comes with the scanner is probably suitable, I would, and did, opt for the hard case. It provides a certain comfort level, considering all the other stuff crammed into my briefcase.