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Scanner Type
Handheld Scanners
Handheld scanners have scan heads 4-5 inches wide which
makes them very portable. They plug into your parallel port
so they're easy to share among people and can be a good
addition to your laptop. The down side is that you will have
to make several passes over a regular sized document to scan
the whole thing. Usually, software is provided that will put
the small scans back together, like stitching a patch-work
quilt, but this is often time consuming. Moreover, unless
you have the slow steady hands of a surgeon, your scans can
turn out unevenly.
You can get cheap handhelds for under $150, but their
declining popularity might make them hard to find. High-end
wireless models with superior image quality and stitching
software are available for around $750. Another kind of
handheld scanner is the pen scanner. You drag a pen scanner
over a line of print like a highlighter. The built-in
optical recognition software turns the scan into text which
can be downloaded to a computer via serial or USB port. Pen
scanners can hold hundreds of text pages and cost around
$200.
Portable scanners are like mini versions of sheet-fed or
flatbed scanners that are compact enough to fit in a
briefcase. Portable sheet-fed scanners are about the size of
a three-hole punch while flatbed models are smaller than a
hardcover book. These types of scanners plug into a PC Card
or USB port and can scan in colour or black and white.
Expect to pay about $250. Portable and handheld scanners
have weaker light sources so their image quality isn't close
to a full-fledged scanner.
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