I'm searchin for a fast scanner (under 150$) for scanning of books.
Is there any which does 6-8 pages per minute or more?
Copyright limitations aside (I think you can only scan 10% of a book)...
There are 2 typical solutions:
o Destructive scanning of the books
---- take a book to a shop with a guillotine + cut spine off = looseleaf pages
---- feed the looseleaf pages into a document-scanner's page feeder
---- they scan single sheets of paper at high speed (not a flatbed) & cost
o Traditional flatbed scanning of the books
---- plonk the book on the flatbed and scan away
---- speed is 1) scanning lines-per-msec 2) scanner initialisation 3) page turning
Document scanner - cheapest 400$, good ones nearer 1-2k$
Flatbed scanner - fast 120$, CanoScan 3200F
I use a CanoScan 3200F for invoices, paperwork, printer pdfs & OCR.
My priority is actually speed - and for that it does very well.
Problem with flatbeds is scanning speed is subject to law of diminishing returns:
o Pressing scan on the scanner or on the PC
---- 2 sec re scanner button press to driver ready, 1.5 sec if done on the PC end
o Scanner actually initialising to scan
---- 3 secs of light flashing re initialisation sequence
o Scanner bar scanning at its rated lines-per-msec
---- 7 secs for sub A4
o Scanner bar returning to initial point (during which time you turn the page)
---- 4 secs, quicker but there's no bi-directional scanning (not an inkjet
o Scanner streaming file to the PC
---- 1 sec, re tail end of image if the scanner bar returns quickly
o Scanner s/w saving the file before responding to another scan request
---- 1 sec delay, multi-threading doesn't seem too hot here
Document scanners are rated in pages-per-min as that's what they do.
Those times aren't absolute - but shows how lines-per-msec is just 1 component.
Book size is a factor here:
o 2-book-pages to 1-A4-scan = 6 book pages/min
o 1-book-page to 1-A5-scan = 4 book pages/min
o 1-book-page to 1-A4-scan = 3.5 book pages/min -- CanoScan @ 100dpi
I'm an author, so have actually scanned my own book recently (re graphics
done separately by the publishers compared to text-only Word document).
So the figures are pretty accurate - you will certainly not get 8pages/min.
I've tried 75dpi for receipts, and it's really quite scrappy looking.
So 100dpi should be taken as the minimum - and it's really quite readable,
and also usable in terms of small greyscale images with lots of fine print.
A note is the pure B&W scanning isn't faster and doesn't work well, you
would lose quite a bit of textual information and render graphics unusable.
