Al Haines (shaw) writes:
I'm planning to purchase a new scanner sometime in the next few weeks, and am looking for comments and recommendations.
I have an Opticbook 3600, and I strongly recommend it. It has three built-in scan modes (black&white, greyscale, and color) tied to scanner buttons, so you can change scan modes in the middle of a batch scan process. It has Abbyy Finereader Sprint 5.0, but I've never used it, since I had FR6 and upgraded to FR8. Since I'm often scanning more fragile works, I usually scan a page at a time, and I get about 6 pages per minute in 300 DPI black & white, 5 PPM in 300 DPI greyscale, and 1 or 2 PPM in 300 DPI color. I usually batch scan using the Opticbook's book pilot, do some post-processing, and then run it through FR. I bought mine for about $250 USD. Since I use the Opticbook's book pilot to batch scan, I set up a preview image once, and then I'm usually turning the page and repositioning during the time it sends the data to the computer. With the book pilot, you can set it up so that it automatically rotates the image for either scan a page at a time (rotating the book 180 degrees for each page), or CCW 90 degrees for double page scans. Of course, if you're scanning an oversize book, you'll want to be using page at a time anyway. If you're using FR, I think you're better off using the FR twain interface (which I don't use), because you can set it to scan the margins of your book (no preview mode, so you need to know or guess the size) and then scan multiple pages, with background OCRing. With the FR twain interface, you can't automatically switch between scan modes though. Right now I'm scanning a book with a lot of color illustrations, so it's really nice to press the grey button for my normal greyscale scan, and hit the color button when I hit a page with a colour illustration. You can also use it for double page scans, like a normal flat bed scanner. I usually don't because I think I get better results (albeit at half the scan speed) with single page mode. Downsides: It's not SANE compliant, so you have to use Windows (not a problem for you, but it's a show stopper for others). The usable scan starts about 3 mm from the edge of the scanner, so that if you have really narrow gutters on the book, you will still have problems. The depth of field is only so-so, so the curvature with thick book with narrow gutters will make the edge very dark, and sometimes unusable. Greyscale scanning is better than B&W scanning for this.