A great portable scanner at a crazy great price.
Written: Aug 05 '04
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Pros: Fast, good for text, very small and light
Cons: No USB; No XP drivers
The Bottom Line: Amazing portable scanner. At this price everyone should buy one.
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| elomin's Full Review: Antec Attache Handheld Scanner |
This is the third review of things I have bought in preparation for law school (the other two were the Gateway m275x tablet and the Ogio Metro Laptop Backpack. After getting the tablet computer, I made the decision to try and go paperless, or as paperless as possible, in law school. To do this, I would need a scanner. Of course I had an old flatbed scanner, but waiting 30 seconds for it warm up and another 30 seconds for it to scan seemed like it would take too much time with the amount of scanning I plan on doing. After reading how other tablet users had gone paperless, I started looking at sheet feed scanners, but stopped looking after about 10 minutes because I did not feel like spending $300 or more. My next option was a fast, portable scanner. I had heard good things about some of the Visioneer portable scanners, but the cheapest one I could find was still $150. Fortunately while looking at one of these on Amazon, I saw a link to the $39 Antec Attache. After doing a bit of research and reading some good reviews, I decided to buy it.
So far, I have been very pleased with my decision. It only takes about 5 seconds to scan a page and the resolution is much better than I expected at this price. I will mostly be scanning all text pages and everything I have tried so far has scanned in a very readably. I have not experimented much with OCR, since I plan to leave most of my scans as images, or convert them to PDF or another format to use for future reference. I have yet to try scanning color pictures, since I will probably never need to do this.
The software it came with (that I use) is Presto PageManager. This appears to be a standard scanner utility and does it's job adequately. One nice feature of the software is the ability to scan directly to a printer. This is especially useful for tablet users since you can scan directly into a program like Windows Journal or GoBinder and then make notations on the documents. I plan on reviewing GoBinder if it is on epinions, it is a must have for students with a tablet.
There are two complaints I have with this scanner. First, it does not come with Windows XP drivers. Antec's website tells you to email customer service to get XP drivers. If they have them readily available, why not make them available for download? I did this but grew impatient and found the driver elsewhere on the web with a simple search on google.
My second complaint is the connection. The Attache only has a PCMCIA connection. I have seen that a USB version is out there, but I could not find any place that had them in stock. This is only a minor annoyance, since the scanner connects to the PCMCIA card, I just leave the card in my computer all the time and connect the scanner when needed.
After getting the drivers, setup was simple. Just plug it in and install the drivers. I was up and scanning in about 5 minutes.
Another great feature of this scanner is its size. It is tiny and light. It is about two inches thick and wide and just long enough for a standard sheet of paper to fit (on the 8 1/2'' side).
If you are looking for a decent scanner at a great price or need a scanner you can travel with for any reason, you should stop thinking about it and buy one of these now. Even if you aren't completely happy with it or don't use it much, where else can you find such a great portable scanner at this price?
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 39
Interface: Don''t know
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Epinions.com ID:
elomin
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Reviews written: 3
Trusted by: 0 members
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