Handy, trendy scanners finally come of age

The Hartford Courant Generations of students have relied on yellow highlighter pens to emphasize significant passages in textbooks. But a ne...

The Hartford Courant Generations of students have relied on yellow highlighter pens to emphasize significant passages in textbooks. But a new generation of handheld scanners could send the venerable highlighter the way of the slide rule.

These new portables, sometimes called pen scanners or wand scanners, are in effect mini-versions of the flatbed scanners that have long been used to convey printed text into a PC.

As effective as those flatbed scanners have been in homes and offices, they’re too cumbersome for many kinds of serious scholarship. After all, you can’t very well toss a PC and flatbed scanner into your backpack for a quick trip to the library. Portable, handheld scanners skip over this problem.

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They’re small, light and, in some cases, able to operate without any connection to a PC or laptop. This allows studerial cable, or ‘‘beamed’’ to a digital organizer using an infrared wireless link.

A small black-and-white screen built into InfoScan lets users monitor progress on the scan and text conversion, allowing for a retry if something goes awry. Wizcom claims the InfoScan pen scanner is 97 pc accurate in recognising standard text.

But like other handhelds, the InfoScan does require a steady dragging motion when scanning and a proper tilt in order to achieve best results. At 3 ounces in weight, and 6 inches, by 1.5 inches, by 1 inch in size, the InfoScan is light and easily portable. It fits comfortably in adult-size hands, but extended use can be tiring. With a retail price of about $120, the InfoScan pen scanner is best used for extracting individual sentences or paragraphs, rather than pages-long passages.

If you consistently need to scan a whole page, a better alternative might be the DocuPen portable scanner.

—LAT-WP

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