James,
Roger - thanks for your comments.
Re
resolution - I've dealt with some IA scansets that Irfanview has reported to be
96dpi. My Abbyy 6.0 Pro upconverts them to 300dpi and seems to handle them
OK.
Re its
price - in Canada, it's about $600, which is about twice the price of my Plustek
Opticbook 3600. For the amount of scanning I do, the Opticbook was a
time-saving bargain (15 seconds/scan) compared to my previous scanner's
minute or more. Aside from any resolution questions, if the Scansnap can
do a scan in 4-5 seconds, it would eventually pay for itself in my time
saved.
I've
looked into DIY scanners occasionally over the last couple of years, but it
involves more space and complexity than I have a taste for, and they all involve
manual involvement (turning pages, pushing buttons), which is something I'm
trying to minimize or do away with.
If wishes were horses, I'd have one of those
robo-scanners that you put a book into, set things up, and it turns pages
itself, but my budget doesn't run to five and six figures, which is what they
seem to cost. (Several years ago, DPCanada was negotiating with
someone for such a scanner, but it didn't work out for reasons unknown to
me.)
I've
got stacks of pre-1922 books that aren't in IA, and more stacks of
post-1922 books that are public domain in Canada. And with Canada being a
life+50 country, more authors enter its public domain each year, e.g. C.S. Lewis
(Narnia Chronicles) in 2014, Winston S. Churchill and Thomas B. Costain in 2016,
etc, etc. So many books, so little time...
Al
What concerned me was the resolution it would
produce. I know Abbyy is okay with 300 dpi, The SV600 optical resolution
horizontal is from 285
dpi to 218 dpi. Vertical it is from 283
dpi to 152 dpi. Optical
resolution differs due to different scanning angle on the same
document. Depending
on the typeface size, that may not be enough.
it says you
can select the resolution to be 300 or 600, so are they doing some
interpolating? The screenshot there even shows 1200 dpi for b/w. All that from
something that’s optically as low as 152 dpi? Smoke and mirrors,
perhaps.
—Roger
Frank