If it’s been a while since you were in the market to buy a new scanner you may not know about the portable document scanners. Unlike the big bulky scanners of the past, portable document scanners are lightweight and easy to move about. Owning a portable scanner gives you the added flexibility of being able to use a scanner wherever you might be. Because of its smaller lightweight size you can even use it for travel purposes. Some are so small and compact that they weigh less than a pound. This makes it the ideal choice for business people who travel a lot and may have to stay out of town. Portable scanners are the perfect accessory for a laptop computer as they easily plug into any USB port.
There are several points to consider when deciding which scanner to purchase. Optical resolution is how well the scanner captures an image. The higher the optical resolution the better quality the image will have because it refers to the actual number of pixels per image. For basic printing purposes a 300dpi (dots per inch) is usually enough. If you work with photo quality images you will want a scanner with a higher dpi such as 600.
There is also a difference between a flatbed scanner and a sheet fed scanner. A flatbed scanner is exactly as it sounds – flat. It has a hard glass surface that you place the sheet of paper, or whatever the document may be, on then close the lid and run the scan. A sheet fed scanner has an automatic feeder in which you place your documents. The scanner then automatically continues to feed the documents through until completed. These scanners are used more for people who do high volumes of document scanning and need the continuous feed for bulk papers. You can also find this type available as a portable sheet fed scanner if you need something that is lightweight and easy to travel with.
Another consideration in choosing a scanner is the scanners speed. This is usually listed as pages per minute or ppm. Obviously the higher the ppm the faster the scanner performs a scan and the more pages you can get done in a shorter amount of time. Again, this is useful for someone who does a large volume of document work that needs to be scanned.
If you really want a small scanner then the portable handheld document scanner is the one for you. This item is the smallest and most lightweight scanner there is. It resembles a thin metal bar that is the length of a piece of paper. There is a version called the Docupen which operates on rechargeable lithium ion batteries through the USB port. It comes with an 8 MB flash memory to store up to 200 pages of scanned documents.
With so many choices available in scanners today you will want to do some comparison-shopping before making your decision. The prices for these scanners will vary widely depending on the features and the retailer who is selling them.
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