4. PlusTek OpticSlim M12 Corporate Mobile Scanner

by Barry Gerber

Whether your dad or grad is a student, businessperson, spy or just a fun loving scan happy individual, scanning documents on the run can be a problem. And even if you manage to scan some text, you really don't want to work with it as a graphic image. Plustek's OpticSlim M12 Corporate Mobile Scanner in league with a battery powered notebook computer lets you capture a document anywhere and convert it into a searchable PDF file or export content to Word, Excel, WordPad or Internet Explorer. The scanner and included software can even scan business cards and convert them into a format that can be imported into contacts databases such as those from Microsoft and Palm. See the Features Table below.

Connectivity is via USB 2.0. The scanner is powered by the computer's USB port, so PlusTek recommends attaching the M12 directly to a USB port on the computer or to a powered USB 2.0 hub. If you're using a portable computer and scanning a large number of documents, you'll need to watch remaining battery power closely.

Two one-touch buttons help make the scanning process easier. With one touch you can save scanned images or convert images of a text document into text files that are editable in a word processor such as Microsoft Word. You can also send scans to your own image editing software, to a printer or to a new email message as attached files.

The M12 scanner comes in three packages: OpticSlim M12, OpticSlim M12 Plus and OpticSlim M12 Corporate. As you go up the product ladder, from the M12 to the M12 Corporate, you get more and more software-based functionality. I recommend the M12 Corporate, because for not too much more cash you get considerably more capability. For example the M12 Corporate package can export scanned text to Internet Explorer, de-skew crookedly scanned pages and it can do much more with PDFs than the other two packages.

In addition to software, the scanner comes with the following accessories:

Features Table

Other vendors have built packages around the scanner used in the PlusTek packages. One of the most interesting is NeatReceipts. You use this product to scan and categorize receipts for various transactions. The data can be imported into a spreadsheet or even into money management and tax calculation programs.