Another New Toy

I have asked for a portable flatbed scanner for Christmas. I want something that I could drag around on trips and hook to my laptop to use. This would allow me to do quick scans and never have to take their photo copies when I am visiting relatives.

In the meantime I found another handy gadget that will live in my briefcase. Pandigital makes a photo scanner that is so tiny it is amazing. I have benefited with the store closing of Linens and Things here in town. Everything is 20 to 50 percent off and they had a couple of these handy items. Original price was $99.99 and with 40 percent off I purchased it for $59.99.I brought it home and tested it out.

It will take up to a 4 x 6 photo and I ran several through it to see how it does. The scans seem to be relatively clear and it has a quick recovery allowing you to sit and feed it one photo after the other. It loads all of the data to a removable SD 256 MG disk that is included with the purchase. It will scan photos as small as a business card and can be used for that purpose too. Also included is a cable that lets you view the scans on the SD disk after the machine has completed the scan.

The entire unit fits in the palm of your hand, about an inch and a half wide and deep and about 6 inches long. It is very lightweight. I would recommend running the cleaning tool on it frequently when scanning older photos as it does pick up dust which leaves lines through the scanned image. Running the included cleaner on it is quick and simple. I found that running the calibrator through it, also included, before starting helped the quality of the scans. I ran both black and white and color, aside from a little editing for color and contrast it did real well and would be a fast way to work through boxes of family snap shots.