VuPoint Magic Wand Portable Scanner
This portable scanner from VuPoint can be easily carried wherever you go, but it still allows you to quickly make a color scan of an area as large as 8 ½" x 50". No need to take a computer with you either, since the device stores the scanned documents in its internal memory for you to download them onto your computer later.
Why It’s Clever
When I first saw this thing, I thought “What’s the point?”. But recently I needed to check some paperwork elsewhere and had to take some copies for later reading. So I had to drive to a bookshop to make photocopies, meaning I lost a lot of time and paid for the copies as well. When I got back home, I needed to scan the documents anyway for archiving on my computer. Just this one incident cost me an hour’s work and $10 in photocopies, things I could have avoided if I had had this kind of scanner.
Thinking about it, the possibilities are endless. You can take it with you to the library to scan parts of books that are important to you. For the youngsters among you: A library is a place where you can get access to books. Don’t know what books are? Books consist of text and images printed on paper, for you to read (and no, you can’t enlarge pictures in books by touching them with your finger).
You can scan virtually anything. Contract drafts, proposals, receipts, manuals, restaurant menus. But also documents posted on a wall or even the wallpaper itself if you’re particularly struck by it. Next time I visit a fair, I’ll consider taking the scanner with me instead of carrying around each of the leaflets that can be taken from the different booths.
But don’t get caught scanning articles from magazines to avoid buying them!
Here’s a video review of the product
Summary
- Scans color and B&W
- 300 or 600 dpi
- Up to 8 ½" x 50" surface area
- Micro-SD card slot
- Weight: 1.0 pounds
- In contrast to page-fed portable scanners, it can also scan books.
Tips
Several portable scanners are on the market. We decided to cover this specific one because, at the time of writing, it was getting the best reviews on Amazon.com.
Some portable scanners even recognize the fields in specific documents such as receipts or business cards and even interpret the text found on them, so you can easily import the data into your office programs. If you need such features, do some reading before deciding.
Where to buy
They can be bought from Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk, where you can also find some positive reviews.
Approx. price: $80 (October 2010)
Categories: space-saving, productivity,multimedia,time-saving
© Copyright Clever & Easy
-
|2010-12-19 11:34:36 Clever & EasyI believe to have read that there is a sample version of some OCR SW in the box, but maybe not the best solution around. But you could also use another OCR software, of course.
Btw, recently after incidentally deleting a folder on my wife's PC
, I needed to recover some documents. Fortunately she printed most of them some time ago. I played around with an OCR SW from IRIS, and I was really surprised with the results. Can't say that it was a 100%, but at least 99% correct (Arial font). Saved me lots of time.
I wish there was an option to set the width of the media you were copying, as smaller forms wouldnt need as much RAM..