If you're looking for an affordable flatbed scanner that turns photos into high-quality digital images, the Canon CanoScan LiDE 200 is a worth a look.

The Canon CanoScan LiDE 200's main limitations are that it scans only reflective items (no film scans) and it can't do much in the way of OCR. We were able to create searchable PDFs and plain-text (.txt) files from various documents, but we couldn't ...

At under £70, can the Epson V30 flatbed scanner compete with the scan facility on the more popular multi-function printers?

The V30 doesn't have everything â€" if you want a built-in transparency unit, for instance, you'll need to pay around £20 extra for the Perfection V300 â€" but the scan specifications and results are significantly ahead of those offered by most MFDs. ...

A digital pen with ICR software, the Dane-Elec Zpen captures handwritten notes, and converts them to word processor documents with the supplied intelligent character recognition (ICR) Windows software.

Accurate and intuitive, the limitations of ICR mean the Dane-Elec Zpen will be useful only to takers of neat, concise notes. If that sounds like you, and you can cope without a preview, the Zpen could be the ultimate, portable accessory for lectures ...

The HP ScanJet N6310 is a flatbed document scanner.

The HP ScanJet N6310 is versatile, and majors on document conversion, although it does take its time. For slides and negatives, and the flatbed facilities, it will suffice â€" but for the price, we feel it lacks performance and quality in a few key ...

Epson's WorkForce GT-1500 is a colour document scanner designed to simplify the tedious task of scanning stacks of text documents in an office environment.

The Epson WorkForce GT-1500 is Epson's answer to the growing need in small businesses for a fast document-focused scanner that can scan multiple pages of text in short order. The results with photos weren't disappointing either, making the scanner ...

Epson's Perfection V300 Photo is an inexpensive flatbed scanner that can scan legal-sized documents, as well as 35 mm slides and film.

Although its appeal is limited by its stand-alone nature, the Epson Perfection V300 Photo, with its 4800 dpi optical scanning resolution and transparency scan support, is a good choice for those looking to take their snapshots, negatives, and slides ...

The Veho VFS-004 Deluxe Negative & Slide Scanner is a standalone USB device dedicated to 35mm slides and negatives.

In our book, simple can be very good. The mainly manual Veho VFS-004 isn't the height of sophistication, but if you want to transfer your collection of slides or negatives to hard drive, the results should be much faster and of a higher quality than ...

The Fujitsu ScanSnap S510 is a well built document scanner with duplexing facilities.

The Fujitsu ScanSnap S510 is a wonderfully executed scanner that might just allow you to throw out those piles of documents and magazines and reclaim some floor or cupboard space. Our only criticism is the price. At £347, it's far from cheap, and we ...

The Plustek OpticBook 4600 is a 48-bit USB colour flatbed scanner that is easy to install and can digitise documents, books, and photos.

The Plustek OpticBook 4600 handled OCR work very nicely, but for PDFs and other image scans you may have to invest a fair amount of time and manual labour to obtain pristine copies. That drawback, coupled with the Plustek's high price, makes the ...

Fujitsu's ScanSnap S300M takes the technology from the company's well-received desktop document scanners, such as the ScanSnap S510M, and puts it into a device that's easier to carry from location to location.

The paperless office is a nice sentiment, but there are professions that are slow to evolve from creating reams of paper on a regular basis - law, estate agents, and medicine, to name a few. For mobile professionals looking for a way to manage paper ...