I had a bad experience with a flatbed scanner. I wasn't an expensive model but if you plan on scanning books, on some models the glass will not support the weight of a book. Judy -----Original Message----- From: Rex Cherrington [mailto:cherrington@gallatinriver.net] Sent: Tuesday, October 17, 2000 5:23 PM To: ILKNOX-L@rootsweb.com Subject: Re: [ILKNOX-L] Scanning Equipment I have been using an Olympus C-2500L digital camera to make copies of fragile documents, much less trauma to the fragile paper using a scanner, generally. At the highest resolution it beats any scanner I could afford and does so much more, with copying photos, even takes pictures! I don't think there is any OCR software to link these images to Microsoft Word for easy editing. They require retyping. I will be anxious to see what other angles people are using. My primary concern is minimize the damage to the book or other document. Rex At 12:11 PM 10/17/2000 -0700, you wrote: > >----- Original Message ----- >From: "Bob Miller" <Bob_Miller@rdmiller.com> >To: <ILKNOX-L@rootsweb.com> >Sent: Tuesday, October 17, 2000 10:25 AM >Subject: [ILKNOX-L] Scanning Equipment > > >> I am looking to purchase some scanning equipment. >> >> I want to be able to scan the pages of fragile old books so that I can >work >> with the image or retrieve the text into a Microsoft Word for further >> editing. I also want to be able to easily scan from a volume of single >> sheets so that I can work with the images or text. I realize that I may >> need more than one piece of equipment to affectively work with both kinds >of >> source documents. >> >> Does anyone have any recommendations? >> > >Bob: I have 3 different scanners and all are Hewlett Packard's, and >certainly not and endorsement of their brand. > >If you are to do large numbers of single sheets I would recommend one with a >sheet or document feeder, usually you can scan 25 sheets at a time, if you >can find the older scanners they will scan 200 sheets. > >Also being able to scan large sheets 8 1/2 x 14 should be a consideration. > >Resolution and color is very important at least 600 dpi preferably 1200 dpi. >If you are to do lots of pages the scan speed becomes all important. > >Don't get a scanner that shares your printer port, they are slow and usually >will not work properly. If your computer has a USB ports, get a USB scanner >although some of the older USB ports are not fast enough. > >Another consideration is the Software that processes the scanned text and >photos is very important the soft ware that comes packaged with your scanner >is usually not adequate. > >I find that Paperport ver 7.0 works well and that can be linked to a good >OCR optical character recognition software. > >Ensure that you have hard drive of adequate capacity, I have 40 Gb and >starting to run low on space so will eventually will upgrade to a 75 Gb hard >drive. > >Hope this will answer a few of your questions. If you have any other >questions feel free to contact me any time. > >Sincerely Mike Baker > > > > > >