Hewlett Packard C6301B CapShare 910 Hand-held Scanner

I have to admit, I was a bit sceptical when I first heard about the Capshare. Why would I want to pay all that money for a glorified half-page-width B&W hand scanner? After all, I bought one of those a decade ago (Logitech Scanman, for the curious geeks out there) for far less than the street price of the Capshare.

But my scepticism faded fast as I started to play with a friend's new Capshare. What an amazingly useful electronic tool! The Capshare really works, and really works smoothly. Pages are sewn together seamlessly, and displayed on the LCD panel on the back; no fuss, no guesswork. And ah, the applications! When I'm at the library, no longer any need to remember a copy card or a pocket full of change and find a copy machine (for fair-use copying of course!) Better still, when I get back to the office, I can file the copies on disk, and thus accessible from anywhere, rather than in my filing cabinet. When I get a travel receipt, I no longer carry it for a week before losing it; I scan it, and turn in the scan for reembursement. When I receive reviews or other documents that I need to share with collaborators abroad, simply scan, save to .pdf format, and email. And doubtless there will be plenty of additional applications that will come to light as I get used to having my Capshare around.

The downside? The software. While it is not bad, I do wish that the included text recognition software (conversion from graphics format to actual text) was better, but this will doubtless improve in time. And I really wish that the software ran on Linux, but knowing the Linux community, it's only a matter of time until something even better will.

I purchased one of these HP Capshare scanners as a closeout at $300, significantly less than the then current asking price of $900. I was very skeptical.

But YES... a very useful device. Contrary to what some reviewers claimed, I found this HP Capshare worth its high asking price, and very easy to use. It worked right out of the box, with my separately purchased Ricoh Magio sub-miniature laptop, which was a netbook, sold before the term "netbook" was coined. With the Capshare, I could scan text from bound books. My netbook would then volunteer to collect the scanned pages when the Capshare's IR port was within range of the netbook's IR port. Using Pagis Pro software (bundled with the Capshare), my netbook could then OCR, or convert the Capshare's bitmapped images to ASCII text, with 98% accuracy. The text could then be passed on to my Palm Pilot through the Palm Pilot's IR port. The three pieces of hardware were quite a technological team! (Along with Pagis Pro software.)

Of course, many complained that the Ricoh Magio was too difficult to use, because of its tiny keyboard. And the HP Capshare could not do a decent job at copying photos or even line drawings. It could only accurately copy black and white text. But the value of these devices was proven by the fact that I wore them out, unlike some other computer gear that was purchased and little used.

Has anyone found equivalent technology?

Or do I need to cobble up some improvised solution with a digital camera and additional software? If so... what software?

Buy Hewlett Packard C6301B CapShare 910 Hand-held Scanner Now