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Pandigital PhotoLink portable scanner review
If you're anything like us, you may find yourself in need of scanning in a few last-minute receipts for reimbursement. Or maybe your oldest youngster left his essay sitting on the kitchen table, and you need to shoot him / her over a PDF on the double. Or maybe you've just got way too many tax-related documents cluttering up your basement. Point is, just about anyone could find a reason or two to invest in a scanner, and Pandigital's making things a lot easier with the PhotoLink personal photo scanner / converter. The $149.99 device was launched last week, and we've been toying with it a few days here at Engadget HQ. If you've been on the fence about buying a portable scanner, join us after the break for a few impressions along with a riveting video of this thing... well, scanning. %Gallery-97761%
Pandigital Personal Photo Scanner/Converter cuts the cable, writes to memory cards
The act of scanning a photo generally entails something along the lines of placing the photo onto a device, loading some photo software, waiting while the scanner groans away, cropping the resulting image, and then shuffling the resulting bits off into a folder somewhere. Pandigital's latest, the Personal Photo Scanner/Converter, helps to cut down on that process -- a little bit, anyway. You can simply feed documents through it (up to 8.5 x 11 in size) and have them written straight to memory card (SD, Memory Stick, etc.) at 600dpi resolution, which could certainly speed up your workflow and let you run through reams of photos without lugging that dusty 'ol album to your computer. (You can still connect it via miniUSB and do it the old fashioned way, if you like.) The one thing we're not seeing in the specs is a battery, which would make this thing truly portable, but for $149.99 you can't have everything. It is, at least, available now. Update: We've updated the post to include a pic of the new model.
TUAW review and giveaway: Doxie portable scanner
The dictionary defines "doxy" as a lover or mistress, so it's not surprising that the new Doxie portable scanner from Apparent has pink hearts as a defining graphic feature. The hearts are in the dock when you have the Doxie software running, there's a pink heart over the "i" in Doxie, there's a string of eight progressively smaller pink hearts along the front of the device, and to scan, you push a big button with a pink heart on it. Apparent's product is a very capable product, despite the graphics which make it appear to be something designed for little girls. Fortunately, the company realizes that the pink hearts might not be acceptable to manly men, so the scanner comes with a choice of stick-on skins that provide it with more masculine zebra hide, wood grain, plain black, blue and white sky scape, Scottish tartan, and black-and-blue plaid appearances (see below). Read on as I give this new entry to the portable scanner market a full workout, and then enter our giveaway to get a chance to win a Doxie for yourself.
Epson intros LED-equipped Perfection V500 flatbed scanner
It's been a hot minute since a flatbed scanner was able to impress, but Epson's USB 2.0 Perfection V500 manages to do exactly that. Sporting a 6400dpi optical resolution and 48-bit color depth, the V500 steps it way up by also throwing in the firm's ReadyScan LED technology, "which delivers fast scans and no warm-up time." Furthermore, you can expect nonexistent wait times when flipping between reflective and film scanning, less power usage, and a LED that automatically "adjusts the color of the light source based on the type of original being scanned, using white light for positive film and blue light for negative film." Not too shabby at all for $249.99, and for those needing an Automatic Document Feeder, the optional add-on will soon be available for $199.99.
