My first scanner was this …thing… about the size of the desk it hunkered on, welded together from what appeared to be parts cast from old battleship hulls. It was slow, noisy, and cost hundreds of dollars. Maybe a grand, I don’t remember. It was the shiny pride of mid-’90s technology.
It was replaced through the years by progressively smaller, better and cheaper scanners.
The new scanner is virtually silent, and isn’t much bigger than a spiral notepad. The real DPI is higher than any photos it’ll scan, and its color range is better than your monitor can display (or your eye can perceive).
But here’s where it gets deeply cool. It uses a high-powered LED to scan, yet draws so little power that it works off a single USB 2.0 cable. That’s right, no power cable needed. That means Melissa can scan all our old pictures, laptop in lap, right here on the sofa while we enjoy some grownup time together after work — no need for her to be wired to her desk while she gets all project-y.
And for under $60? Best device we’ll purchase all year.
But it’s the convenience that’s priceless.
At this rate, in another 15 years, we won’t have flatbed scanners anymore. There’ll be a swarm of intelligent nanobots (scanobots? trademark that name!) which, for 30 bucks, will roam around your house, scanning anything pretty, and beaming them directly into your BrainPal.
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