Costly mobile scanner rich in features

As full-featured pocket cameras become cheaper and more capable, we think that fewer mobile users need a scanner on the road.

Suppose you have a few pages to steal, you can just place them on the desk, set your pocket camera to wide angle, aim, hold your hand steady and voila! Yet, when I browsed the computer store in Changi terminal recently, I was surprised to see the range of mobile scanners they put on display. Apparently, scanners that can be tossed into the computer bag have many buyers.

Indeed, if you check the web, mobile scanners are still widely available from leading companies such as Visioneer, Xerox, Fujitsu and Canon. These mobile scanners are not the same as the card scanners, which scan business cards, read characters and then place them in the right fields in a phonebook-like application on our notebook.

All mobile scanners can scan documents in A4, letter or even legal size. Some can scan paper with smaller width such as sales receipts. Thus, staff, students, insurance agents and journalists are potential users of this type of scanner.

These mobile scanners are also called sheet-fed scanners, because we feed them with the documents we want to scan. They are definitely different from the flatbed scanners that we have at home. On a flatbed, we place the document on the scanning glass and then the lamp and the sensor unit will move along under the bed to capture the image.

As they are meant to be portable, the mobile scanners must be as compact as possible.
Preferably they can be operated without a separate AC adaptor. Almost all brands today draw power from the notebook via a USB connection.

A good mobile scanner can be expensive. They are in general more expensive than flatbed models. Courtesy of Datascrip, I got the chance to explore the capabilities of one of the most expensive mobile scanners on the market, the Canon imageFORMULA P-150. It carries a price tag of US$425, but it has several features that even some of the top flatbed scanners do not have.

First, let me describe the exterior. The black body is made of plastic, so we have to be a careful when placing it inside our computer bag. When we open the lid, we have a tray for the documents we want to scan. There are paper guides that we can flip open, too, so that the pages will go in a straight path through the scanning mechanism. While other mobile scanners can only accept 10 pages at a time, the P-150 can accommodate up to 20 pages.
The unit weighs around 1 kilogram.

The P-150 draws power from the notebook. If you like, you can buy an optional 6 volt power adaptor, but I do not think it is necessary. A separate USB cable transfers the image files to the notebook. This scanner turns on and off automatically as we open or close the cover. There is a button to start the scanning job, and its function can be set with a switch at the back.

It is the software that makes this scanner really shine. Because it supports ISIS/TWAIN, we do not have to install the software driver and application first. Just plug the USB cable, the software called “CaptureOnTouch Lite”, which is pre-installed on the scanner, will load and we are ready to scan. The benefit is that this mobile scanner can be used with any notebook without having to install any software beforehand.

However, if we want to make adjustments, then we have to install the full CaptureOnTouch software that comes on a CD. This software enables us, for example, to set the scanner to automatically detect the width of the page to be scanned (A4, letter, etc). The smallest width of paper that it can scan is A6, which is 105 x 140 mm. I did not test whether it could take credit card payment slips, which are getting smaller nowadays. Also, I do not know whether it can scan plastic or laminated cards such as our ID cards.

The P-150 is capable to scan in 24-bit color, 256-level grayscale or black and white. It can also scan in simplex or duplex. When scanning in duplex, the scanner will scan both sides of the page. Of course we have to grab the page as it comes out, turn it over and place it back on the feeder tray. We can also tell it to automatically delete any blank page that passes through the feeder.

Sometimes when scanning a copied page, we have pictures, tables or charts that are somewhat slanted. Good scanning software can automatically deskew them, and this feature is available in CaptureOnTouch. The software can also automatically recognize the orientation of the characters and rotate the images accordingly. To help us organize the files, the product comes with a utility called “PaperPort”.

Of course, when reviewing a scanner, the most important capabilities to check are the maximum resolution and speed. The P-150 can be set to scan at 150, 200, 300, 400 and 600 dot per inch (DPI). The lower the resolution, the faster the scanning process. Canon claims that we can scan 12 black and white pages a minute. In duplex, the speed can be higher. In my test, it took around 6-8 seconds to scan a grayscale page in 200 DPI and in the simplex mode, which is fast enough.

Canon has also added a feature called Advanced Text Enhancement II, which attempts to maximize the contrast between light colored text on a light colored background. Other features are the same as other high-end scanners, including the features that allow us to save the scanned page in the PDF format and directly email the scanned result as an attachment.

Canon imageFORMULA P-150 is a great, full-featured scanner that accompanies your notebook well. For the price, however, I wish Canon had also included a decent Optical Character Recognition (OCR) utility. I also wish it could read business cards.



Source : The Jakarta Post