Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)If you have to scan books, this is probably the best option below a few thousand dollars. It indeed scans book pages without the dark lines around the binding line. If you have pages with contents printed very close to the binding line, you may have to adjust the scanning area and the book position, but most of the time, you have more than 5mm of blank margin near the binding line, and there is no problem.
The image quality, build quality, scan speed, etc. compare with a general purpose flatbed scanner of 1/4 the price. If your main application is not scanning books, I do not recommend this scanner.
One problem with this scanner is that it requires Microsoft Windows environment to work. It does not work with Vuescan on Mac or Linux. The only solution is to use a virtualization software (e.g., Parallels or VMware) or use Bootcamp function of MacOS Leopard, and run a copy of windows. If you do this, the scanner works fine on Mac OS.
Another problem is that the software is not very good. It is buggy and awkward.
However, these problems may be ok if you set up perfectly and keep scanning the whole book.
Another problem is that this scanner is very slow. It takes 8 seconds to scan a page at 300dpi and then 4 more seconds before start scanning the next page. This is more time than I need to manually flip the page and place the book. The scanner needs improvement in this area. Ideally, I want the scan to complete in 3 seconds and proceed to the next scan in 1 second. If this is realized with less than doubling of the price, I'd give it a 4.5 star rating.
I use this scanner to scan old, borrowed, out-of-print books in the field of my research. If the book is currently in print, or abundant in used market, I think it is best to buy a second copy, break the binding, and scan it through ScanSnap or similar document scanner. This way, you can save a lot of work and time. The desktop ScanSnap is a truly a 5-star product for scanning documents.
Another area this scanner can be limiting is the scanning area. It can scan US letter size or ISO A4 size. However, some magazines and art monographs use page size larger than what this scanner can handle. What would be very nice is an ultrafast tabloid scanner that uses SEE technology and real TWAIN interface and works with any scanner software. Such a product may cost 4x the price but I'd be happy to use one.
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