I need this! I am slowly converting a few hundred books and magazines at home to scanned documents and storing them on my computer. However, I find the process of cutting off the bindings and feeding the pages through a scanner's sheet feeder one at a time, to be really tedious. The newly-announced Book Saver Book Scanner claims to solve that problem: it will scan a 200-page book and convert it to e-Reader format in 15 minutes. Best of all, there is no need to cut the pages from the binding!
Ion Audio is a company well-known for producing record players with a USB cable that can be connected to a computer to convert old vinyl records to modern MP3 files. Now the company has moved into a new business: machines that scan books and magazines.
The Book Saver holds the book in an angled cradle. An upper frame supports two cameras – one pointing at each page and each having a built-in flash. You place the book in the cradle, press a button, and both cameras snap a picture. One camera takes a picture of the even-numbered page to the left, the second camera takes a picture of the odd-numbered page to the right. A human then lifts the camera frame, flips the page, lowers the camera frame, and presses the button again. See the video below to see the scanner in action.
If you cannot see the above video, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=annCmIa-a08
The digitized images are stored directly onto a SecureDigital card. Those images can later be copied to any Windows, Macintosh, or Linux computer or directly to some digital book e-readers. No computer is attached to the Book Saver Book Scanner during operation.
Now here is the best part: the price. The Book Saver Book Scanner is not yet available although a prototype was demonstrated at the recent CES show in Las Vegas. The company expects to go into production within the next few months and to sell the Book Saver Book Scanner for $149.
Which would you rather carry with you, or move to you new home? Two hundred or more books, with bookshelves, or two hundred or more books on a jump drive?
You can read Ion Audio's announcement of the new Book Saver at http://www.ionaudio.com/content380172
