Canon Canoscan LiDE 80 Color Image Flatbed Scanner

The Canoscan LiDE series of scanners is perfect for those who are looking to save space or who are on the go but don't want to sacrifice quality and performance. As I've mentioned in previous posts (here), I'm a tablet pc user who is trying to go completely digital this year. And as a student, I get a lot of handouts and miscellaneous loose leaf pages and books that I have scan into my laptop.

Well I actually own a Canoscan LiDE 80 scanner and it has been absolutely vital for my everyday use. While I don't use my scanner to scan my textbooks (that's over 300+ pages to scan!), I do use it to scan class handouts, homework, and old notes. This Canoscan is absolutely perfect for those who need to take their scanning on the go. The scanner is a slim 1.5" thick, which is thinner than 80% of my textbooks and it only weighs one pound so it's lighter than most of my books and the scanner weighs about 1/6 of what my tablet pc weighs! The scanner's dimensions are about that of a legal sized sheet of paper so it even fits perfectly in my backpack or one of my laptop tote's side compartments. It's also powered by the same USB cord that connects it to your computer so there's no extra power cord or adapters to carry around.

While all this is fine and dandy, but what good is a portable scanner if it sucks. Well I can assure you that the Canoscan LiDE 80 does live up to it's claimed specifications of 48-bit color and a 16-bit grayscale and 2,400 x 4,800 non-interpolated resolution. Scans come out beautifully with rich colors and sharp clean text. The included software also has an OCR utility so scanning searchable text and pdf documents are a breeze. There's also an included film adapter unit which can hold 35mm negatives or slides for scanning.

I will have to warn you that when you scan a document, you'll want to align it so that the top left corner of your document is positioned at the bottom left hand corner of the scanner. Basically you'll want to flip whatever you're scanning upside down. And this is not the fastest scanner around, unlike bulkier flatbed scanners, the Canoscan LiDE 80 will not give you a scan in less than 5 seconds, much less the super fast speeds of 1 or 2 seconds of higher priced scanners, so don't plan on using this for heavy duty scanning. However, if what you're looking for is portability and the ability to scan quality high resolution images, then you'll find this to be an excellent scanner.

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