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Pen-Sized Color Scanner Reviewed

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the other-kind-of-spyware dept.

moto writes "ThinkComputers has a review up of a cool pen-sized scanner, the Planon RC800 Portable Color Scanner. From the article: 'I've noticed one major constant about most technology, as it changes it gets smaller. Take scanners for instance, I have a few of them, an older one that is pretty big, you could use it for a computer case if need be, if I lined them up in order of age you would find that they get smaller as they get newer. Today for review I have the smallest scanner yet, it's from Planon, and they actually made it into the Guinness Book of World Records.'"

2 of 125 comments (clear)

  1. I remember my first scanner by Ralph+Spoilsport · · Score: 4, Interesting
    300 dpi, 3 pass scanner, 8.5in x 11in, slow as mollasses and cost me $1500.

    Now I have an 8.5 x 11 scanner that does 2400 dpi in a single pass and it only cost me $89 on sale at Best Buy.

    Amazing what happens in a dozen years...

    RS

    --
    Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
  2. There's a reason scanners are big by fm6 · · Score: 4, Interesting
    While a handheld pen-sized scanner may intrigue, it's not very new...
    Indeed, Slashdot's sibling site, ThinkGeek, used to sell little monochrome scanners meant for OCR work. I actually bought one, but found it too hard to hold it steady enough to work reliably. And come to think of it, the first scanner I ever bought was a little handheld thing. I didn't buy it (ten years ago, I think) because it was small, I bought it because it was cheap. But again, too hard to hold steady.

    If you look carefully at a typical $100 scanner, you'll realize that the electronics contribute very little to its size. Most of the bulk is due to the mechnical stuff that holds the paper in place and moves the sensors across it.

    That kind of mechanical engineering has clearly hit its fundamental limits in terms of size. To get a real breakthrough, you'd have to find a way to do without moving the sensor over the image. You can already image a piece of paper with a digital camera — and some digital cameras are very tiny indeed. But they don't include the ability to correct the image for the arbitrary positioning of the camera. Invent that, and you'd have a handheld scanner worth talking about.