Plustek OpticBook 3600 Plus B68-BBM31-C 48bit USB 2.0 Interface Fast Single Pass Scanner

Pros: Takes about 30 minutes to scan a 200-page book (depends on how quickly you turn the book and flip pages). No more shadows on the scans. Does not destroy the book. Unlike most USB scanners I've used to scan books, this one is extremely fast - about 8 seconds per page. If scanning a book using the “text scan” button, it will scan pages as sequentially numbered images. This is good in case the program crashes or freezes. You can assemble the images in Acrobat. The one button scan allows you to concentrate on scanning. Works fine with Acrobat, but the 1-button scan and then combining in Acrobat is more efficient (see other thoughts). Cheaper on Newegg than anywhere else. Same price here buys the OpticBook 3600 (NOT plus) on other sites. About 1/5 the cost of a camera-based book 'scanner'. Shipping was on time. NewEgg probably has the quickest shipping of any online retailer.

Cons: Known issues with VIA chipset. Did not work on my desktop. I have a feeling this is because of TWAIN and nothing else. It works fine on my laptop. ABBY FineReader is version 5.0 - they're up to version 11. I've yet to figure out the OCR I guess. From what I see, if you scan to OCR, you can only scan to .doc, .txt or .rtf - but not OCR .pdf. ABBY doesn't do a good job on OCR. Too many errors for non-standard font or foreign languages. Acrobat is superior. Software is buggy in general. The Digibook software only allows for 107 scans before freezing. Hitting the 'transfer' button crashes the program almost every time. If the program crashes or freezes, you lose your scan dimensions. You have to learn to work around this issue. (See other thoughts) Claiming the rebate prevents you from being able to return the item to Newegg. Get a comfortable cushion for your chair! ^o^

Overall Review: I scan about 100 images and then close the Digibook program. I then use Acrobat and create a PDF from multiple files, save the PDF, then delete the scanned images (If you do it this way, your settings - i.e. scan area - is saved.) I repeat the process and end up with book parts. I then create a new PDF from multiple files and select the PDF parts I made. After that, I run OCR in Acrobat and save the entire book. It's a little more time consuming, but it works out well. Although it didn't work on my desktop, it actually works out better as I can work on my desktop while my laptop runs the OCR on the assembled PDF. When scanning, leaving the lid up and covering the 'free' area of the scanning glass with a piece of thick paper keeps you from blinding yourself. Maybe the other features work well. I wouldn’t know as I purchased this only for books. Soon my reference library will be portable. Can't think of anything else at the moment.

Pros: Fast scanning. You don't have to tear and break your books. Very fast in b/w mode. NO PROMLEMS AT ALL! Never any shutdowns or lamp waiting - maybe I'm the lucky one who just has the lucky scanner. 5 books 1200-1340 pages each in 1 day - no questions!! Better then regular.

Cons: Not yet.

Overall Review: Buy it if you need books scanning - for any other purposes - think twice - it a good scanner but for this price you can get from 3 to 5 regular ones (not pro but good enough for every day usage). This is specific device which can do the regular jobs.

Pros: Good scanner for books, efficient scanning. Software is now fast and reliable.

Cons: Book scanning is a slow process, scanning a typical book might require 2 hours. Software setup for scanning is very cumbersome. For example, the software defaults to storing the scans in a very strange location, every time I scan, I have to change the location. The scan preview window is a small fraction of the screen, so scans cannot be checked properly during preview.

Overall Review: I reviewed the scanner shortly after I first received it from Newegg. The software was then quite buggy. The software crashed frequently, and useful features simply did not work. The software is now much improved. I still avoid scanning more than about 100 pages at a time, then I collect the PDF files together into a single file. Most books I scan are 19th century antiques, this scanner treats them better than any other I know of. The scanner could be improved with simpler and more efficient software, faster scanning, and a design that did not require the book to be opened as far. Many antique books have fragile bindings, even the 90+ degree opening required by this scanner is sometimes a problem.

Pros: Very good scanner for books, very reasonable price. Can scan hardcover books without damaging the binding or the pages. Good scanning speed.

Cons: The software barely works, and is very buggy. On approximately 10 scans of about 10 pages, the software either crashed or discarded all pages after scanning on approximately 2 of them, apparently randomly. The software update was posted as an RAR file, not a ZIP file, requiring a separate download to obtain a decoder. The updated software deskew function is broken - it takes minutes to run, and badly skews an image, even of a page that was scanned almost without skew and with lined paper (should be easy to deskew)! Check all your settings, the software appears to keep some and lose others each time you restart.

Overall Review: Use the scanner buttons to access the scan-to-PDF function most easily, start with the 'preview' button. Make certain to select 'book' on the scanner panel.

Pros: This was the best computer peripheral I have ever bought. Great for making perfect copies of books. The best part is you can do it without stressing or breaking the books binding. It is also very fast. If memory serves I believe I can scan around 330 pages per hour.

Cons: The only con is the bug in the software that it comes with. Once you scan past about 100 pages it will crash the program. Not a deal killer.

Overall Review: Software bug work around: Like a previous reviewer said, close the program at 100 pages and reopen it.

Pros: Does exactly what it is advertised to do - quickly scanned my books. After the initial lamp warmup, I could scan 311 pages per hour - much higher than any other scanner. Each scan takes about 8 seconds.

Cons: Software is very confusing. I opted to get Acrobat pro instead of the included PDF software.

Overall Review: I scanned a textbook. The best method for me was to make all the pictures in .tif format, and put every image in a folder. Then use acrobat to merge all the images into a single PDF file. The pdf file, after the quick optimization from acrobat, was only about 300mb for a 1000-page book

Pros: Works as advertised. This is Not a photo scanner, it is probably also not designed to scan whole books. But, to scan a few pages, sections, or chapters it works great. Also works great for periodicals and journals. Very happy with my purchase.

Cons: The software is a little finiky, and not as userfriendly as others, and I have also lost a few scans. But if you take a little time to learn its pecularities, its works.

Pros: The scanner is fast (5-7 seconds) and does what it advertises, scans the pages of a book evenly, without dark edges.

Cons: I have the software installed on 2 machines, both using Vista. It works flawlessly on one but not on the other. It can't seem to find a required piece of software on this machine and continualy asks to have the program reinstalled. Technical support has been no help. Online searches re: the problem turn up other people with the same problem, but no solution yet.

Overall Review: Expensive, but worth it if you scan a lot of books, if and only if you can get the SW to work. Can't recommend it otherwise, until tech support gets it's act together.