I recently received the MobileOffice D28, a very portable duplex sheetfeed scanner, from Plustek. Overall, it's a very capable, compact, and relatively affordable (compared to similar models from Fujitsu and others) scanner with decent performance and capable, if not very polished, host PC software to support it.
Plustek lists the following as some of the D28's core features:
The user interface on the scanner is dead simple. It has a numeric LED that displays which of 9 user-settable scanning modes it's in, a button to change the mode, and then two buttons to select Simplex (single-sided) or Duplex (double-sided) scanning. That's it. Oh, and a power button on the side. The top cover flips open to clear jams and the back part slides up and down to let the user select where outgoing media go (either straight out the back or diverted straight up for easier retrieval). The only other user-accessible moving part are the sliding media guides on the front, which vary from 8-1/2" to business card width.
Setup includes plugging in the removable cord (with power adapter), plugging in the USB cord to your PC and the scanner, running the setup software, and feeding in the special calibration sheet included in the box. All told, it took me less than 10 minutes, with most of that unpacking and letting the software install.
Plustek includes a raft of software titles with the scanner: "ABBYY FineReader 6.0 Sprint for OCR and NewSoft MaxReader 4.1 for organizing Asia language, and NewSoft Presto! PageManager 7.10 for document management, NewSoft Presto! Image Folio 4.5 for photo management." Pretty complete, but obviously, Plustek used all of its HR budget to hire engineers instead of English-language web editors.
The one piece of software that the user will interact with most often is the DigiDoc scan control interface. This is where all the settings for each of the 9 user-determined scanning modes. Each mode can be individually configured along a variety of settings, including output type (e.g., image file, PDF, etc.), resolution, color depth, save-to directory, file autonaming scheme, and so on. It is impressively flexible and fairly straightforward, if rather bland and uninviting.
Here are a couple of sample screen shots. The first one is set up to save modest-resolution, grayscale JPGs. The 9 tabs each correspond to a different profile, and the checkmarks indicate whether or not the scanner should make them available via its mode selection button.
Plustek lists the following as some of the D28's core features:- Compact design & easy to carry
- Fast Scanning Speed ( 2.2 sec per page)
- Special design for Embossed / Plastic card scanning
- Duplex / Simplex Full Color Scanning
- Power & Time saving (no warming lead time needed)
- Multi function with user friendly software
- Support Asian Language Recognition (Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Japanese)
The user interface on the scanner is dead simple. It has a numeric LED that displays which of 9 user-settable scanning modes it's in, a button to change the mode, and then two buttons to select Simplex (single-sided) or Duplex (double-sided) scanning. That's it. Oh, and a power button on the side. The top cover flips open to clear jams and the back part slides up and down to let the user select where outgoing media go (either straight out the back or diverted straight up for easier retrieval). The only other user-accessible moving part are the sliding media guides on the front, which vary from 8-1/2" to business card width.Setup includes plugging in the removable cord (with power adapter), plugging in the USB cord to your PC and the scanner, running the setup software, and feeding in the special calibration sheet included in the box. All told, it took me less than 10 minutes, with most of that unpacking and letting the software install.
Plustek includes a raft of software titles with the scanner: "ABBYY FineReader 6.0 Sprint for OCR and NewSoft MaxReader 4.1 for organizing Asia language, and NewSoft Presto! PageManager 7.10 for document management, NewSoft Presto! Image Folio 4.5 for photo management." Pretty complete, but obviously, Plustek used all of its HR budget to hire engineers instead of English-language web editors.
The one piece of software that the user will interact with most often is the DigiDoc scan control interface. This is where all the settings for each of the 9 user-determined scanning modes. Each mode can be individually configured along a variety of settings, including output type (e.g., image file, PDF, etc.), resolution, color depth, save-to directory, file autonaming scheme, and so on. It is impressively flexible and fairly straightforward, if rather bland and uninviting.
Here are a couple of sample screen shots. The first one is set up to save modest-resolution, grayscale JPGs. The 9 tabs each correspond to a different profile, and the checkmarks indicate whether or not the scanner should make them available via its mode selection button.
The second is for generating high-res Acrobat files. Notice the handy setting to allow each page to create its own unique file or to automatically append pages to a single PDF file. Also, notice that you can have different settings for the front versus the back in duplex mode. I've not seen a scanner with that level of flexibility, certainly not one in the price range of the D28 ($275-$325 street prices).
I tested the D28 out on a few different jobs. One was a stack of business cards I'd been collecting. I was able to churn through all 150 in about 12 minutes, and that was mostly determined by how fast I could stick the next card into the scanner each time. Output was just fine, although auto-deskew didn't straighten out some of my more misaligned feeds. I configured DigiDoc to save each scan straight to a PNG file (a nice touch) and then mass-uploaded them to Evernote where they're now all searchable online.
I also scanned in a couple of my daughter's drawings on the D28's max resolution (600 dpi) and they looked very good. This isn't the right machine for scanning in photo negatives or slides, but printed materials up to about the thickness of a CD work great. I tried sending a piece of paper with an 1/8th-inch thick sticker on it and it got caught up every time, so it's not nearly as flexible as a flatbed scanner, but then those aren't usually very portable, either.
All told, I'd definitely consider the D28 a strong contender if I regularly had small scanning jobs, moved locations fairly often, and wasn't trying to scan books or other non-feedable materials. The flexibility of DigiDoc plus the simplicity of the D28's interface make it really simple to set up and use right away. While I have no idea about the D28's build quality (many scanners, even expensive units, suffer feed problems even after a few hundred pages), at this price, you won't feel too bad replacing it if it stops performing up to snuff.
I tested the D28 out on a few different jobs. One was a stack of business cards I'd been collecting. I was able to churn through all 150 in about 12 minutes, and that was mostly determined by how fast I could stick the next card into the scanner each time. Output was just fine, although auto-deskew didn't straighten out some of my more misaligned feeds. I configured DigiDoc to save each scan straight to a PNG file (a nice touch) and then mass-uploaded them to Evernote where they're now all searchable online.I also scanned in a couple of my daughter's drawings on the D28's max resolution (600 dpi) and they looked very good. This isn't the right machine for scanning in photo negatives or slides, but printed materials up to about the thickness of a CD work great. I tried sending a piece of paper with an 1/8th-inch thick sticker on it and it got caught up every time, so it's not nearly as flexible as a flatbed scanner, but then those aren't usually very portable, either.
All told, I'd definitely consider the D28 a strong contender if I regularly had small scanning jobs, moved locations fairly often, and wasn't trying to scan books or other non-feedable materials. The flexibility of DigiDoc plus the simplicity of the D28's interface make it really simple to set up and use right away. While I have no idea about the D28's build quality (many scanners, even expensive units, suffer feed problems even after a few hundred pages), at this price, you won't feel too bad replacing it if it stops performing up to snuff.
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