this book written in 1983 said "the office of the future is viewed by some as a paperless office
where everything is processed electronically and all messages are stored on electronic files"
well apparently we're still not living in the future because even today 40 years later you
may still have quite a few paper documents and photographs that you would like to scan
in and turn into those electronic files this book from 1983 was talking about
the mainstay of such a task has long been the flatbed scanner
either standalone like this or as part of a combination printer copier scanner device
and these can produce very high quality very high resolution results
but that's not necessarily the most convenient because these take up a lot of space they can be
rather slow and they produce rather large files that may not be very convenient for e-mailing or
uploading and of course usually they need to be connected to a computer in order to work
and at the other end of the spectrum I've seen a lot of people use their smartphone
to take a picture of a document which will do in a pinch but it's very difficult to get the
framing and focusing right and you usually end up with glare so it's not a very high
quality solution it's only something you'll do if you're really desperate
so you may be looking for a scanner which is small and
easy to use and doesn't require being connected to a computer but still has
pretty good quality and that's where products like these can come into play
now I will say right away both of these products have been discontinued and these
were actually thrift store finds but new products which are pretty much equivalent
in features and functionality to these are still available so nonetheless what I show
in this video can still be useful if you're interested in a scanner like one of these two
first is the Brookstone iConvert portable document and photo scanner
make digital files from any image cordless portable wand captures full color scans of
documents business cards letters photos and more just glide the scanner over any document
or photo then download your images to PC, Mac or other device via USB cable or Micro SD card
and this one is the Pandigital personal photo scanner converter simple one touch instantly
saved to your PC or memory card scans photos up to 8½"x11" in seconds and without a computer no PC
required turn on the scanner converter insert your photos images instantly saved to memory card or PC
here's the Brookstone scanner I put in the two AA batteries and the Micro SD
card it's only four gigabytes but that should be plenty for scanning
there I just turned it on and we get choices of color or black and white so that is in color and
then DPI you get choices of high or low I'll set it to high and those are the only choices you get
so the way I think this works is you put down your photo or document you want to scan you got to kind
of hold it in place so it doesn't move around on you then you put the scanner on one side of
it you push the button once to start scanning the green light comes on you drag it across
and when you're done scanning you push the button again and the light goes out
well not bad for a first try but the image is a bit vertically compressed so either I
was going too fast or it was slipping and I also noticed a dark line going down the image
so this time to help improve it I taped down the document so it's not going to move
around on me and I also cleaned the scanner window so we can give it another shot here
there are two little marks which indicate the width of the scanning so I lined it up with my
document push the button once to start scanning and this time I'll try to go a little bit slower
this time the aspect ratio is correct and the cleaning did get rid of that
line although the image is a little bit crooked so with a few more tries
I think I would have been able to get a pretty good result out of this scanner
but one thing I didn't realize is that every time you turn this on it defaults to low resolution
and that caused a pronounced herringbone pattern on this image of the computer and I think that's
because this kind of document the way they printed it it has a very fine grid of dots and
that's clashing with the resolution of the image sensor on this sort of like when you try to take
video of an old color CRT and you get that moire pattern the same basic thing is happening here
so I tried again this time at high resolution and that herringbone pattern
is very much reduced is still somewhat visible but it's not nearly as bad
and one of the advantages of this kind of wand scanner is that it is not limited to
scanning loose sheets of paper you can actually scan images from a book or magazine so that's
what I'm going to try to do with this issue of PC World Magazine from November 1996 has
this interesting ad for an Everex laptop with a built-in MO drive that's Magneto Optical
an early format that predated burnable CDs so I'll set this to high resolution
I tape down the edges just to see if that helps and push the button to start scanning
I am pushing down a little bit on it to try to flatten the paper which see the the red light
came on I think that comes on when it detects that you slipped so this time I took off the pieces of
tape I don't know how good of a job they're going to do anyway push the button to start scanning
and just try to use friction to hold everything and see it's it's crinkling
on me so I don't know how good this is going to turn out... what? the light already went out?
it didn't show the error light that time so I don't know what happened then
maybe it just gave up on me because I wasn't moving fast enough so try once more
yeah this paper is crinkling around on me so this
is not going to be a very good scan but we'll see what it turns out as
well as expected it ended up with a lot of wrinkles in the image because of that thin
paper so that's a struggle you're going to face it's just not gonna turn out well
but this time I think I have a more suitable object it's still technically a magazine but it's
very thin and it's made with much thicker paper this was actually the first issue of Wolfsburg
Magazine I don't know how long that lasted it's from 1999 first edition so I'm going to try to
scan this ad for Rapid Parts I'll turn on the scanner this time it's a black and white image
so I'll set it to black and white high resolution and see how this turns out
see it's... there's staples here so that's going to be another struggle
try to get past these staples without stopping so let me try again
well that worked okay except the image turned out a bit wavy because of the way
the paper was moving around so this time once again I taped it down and it should
be pretty nice and flat and stable so we'll give another try here in black and white mode
see those staples are still going to be an issue because they're like speed bumps
and this time despite taping down the paper it still turned out wavy so this
thing is really just a novelty I think the image sensor would be decent but
the main problem is going to be dragging it across whatever you're trying to scan
and trying to get it lined up perfectly and make sure it's perfectly flat and it
doesn't move around on you it's going to be a struggle to get good results out of this thing
now here is the Pandigital scanner it is a little bit bigger than the first one but the
main advantage of this one is is that it has an automatic document feeder so that means you
cannot scan books or magazines but as we saw this that's probably more hassle than it's worth anyway
so if you're scanning photos or single sheets of documents this one should do a much better job
this one uses a full-size SD card instead of a Micro SD card and when you're done scanning
you can either take this out and pop it into a card reader on your computer or
you can connect this to USB and use the scanner itself as a card reader
but one thing I did not expect is that this does not run on battery power
you have to use the included AC adapter which puts out 6 volts DC with this mini barrel jack so
even though it has a USB port you cannot power it through USB either you have to use the AC adapter
so if you're thinking you can use this on the go anywhere well you'll have to be near an AC outlet
once you have it connected to power and you have your SD card inserted you're ready to begin using
it you just push the button to turn it on and this one there's only one option one the light
is green is going to scan at 300 DPI and when the light is orange it's going to scan at 600 DPI
so first I'll try 300 DPI I'll stick in my document here
and it automatically begins scanning the document don't even have to push any buttons
I think that looks pretty good for 300 DPI and one of the nice things about this scanner
is that it automatically crops the scan to the size of the image now I'll try 600 DPI
of course it runs slower due to the higher resolution
again an excellent result and this time there is no visible herringbone pattern
unlike when I use that handheld Brookstone scanner now let's try scanning some photos
now let me try scanning a document that's black and white and mostly text so
300 DPI should be fine for this
one thing I noticed about this scanner is that it tends to underexpose the scans which I
guess is better than overexposing them but you might want to use some photo editing software
on your computer to boost up the brightness and contrast a bit to help make the scans look better
you can scan a full page image that is landscape
instead of portrait you'll just need to rotate the image on your computer
on this one I noticed some banding across the top
of the image I think that could actually be from light leaking into the scanner's
image sensor because I was scanning this under my bright studio lighting
and in case the image sensor gets dirty and you get lines on your scans you can
use the included cleaning stick now I don't know if they tell you to but I'm
gonna put a little bit of isopropyl alcohol on it just to get it damp
you probably can use it dry but I think this will just do a better job now you just stick it in
and swipe it back and forth
and now for the grand finale I'm going to do a direct three-way comparison
between the handheld wand scanner the portable sheet feeder scanner and the
conventional flatbed scanner to prove that there's more than one way to scan a cat
surprisingly the handheld wand scanner has what I think is the most pleasing
color balance and contrast it's a shame it's so frustrating to use because
otherwise I think it could actually produce some very nice looking images
the portable sheet feeder scanner has better detail but overall the image is darker more
reddish and a little bit washed out so it's not as much of an improvement as I had hoped
and even though all three scans are done at 600 DPI the flatbed scanner is the only one that
actually has enough detail to show the rosette pattern of the original color printing so if a
little bit of retouching this obviously would be able to produce the highest quality results
so out of these two portable scanners clearly the Pandigital personal photo scanner converter is
the easiest and most convenient to use I just wish it had a built-in battery so you didn't
need to run it on AC power and unfortunately the quality of its scans are only mediocre at best
and the Brookstone portable document and photo scanner actually surprised me of the quality
of its scans but unfortunately it's just a very frustrating experience to use part of the problem
is these rollers are just too small to get a good grip on whatever you're trying to scan
maybe it was a little bit better when it was brand new and the rubber was more tacky but
it's just a frustrating experience overall and that's the major disappointment with this
and neither of these is going to be a replacement for a flatbed scanner
so if you have access to one that's obviously going to be your best choice