Looks useful.4.7 out of 5 on Amazon.
Photoshop Elements 10.0 is worth at least $50 by itself, so that’s something to take into consideration with thinking about this.
Seems like woot has video demos covered so I upped the user manual to my google docs account for easy viewing.
I was going to get one because it can save me hundred$ of dollar$ copying journals in our medical library. Not to mention not having to stand in line waiting for a copier.
BUT…
The scanning area is only 4"x6" --about the size of a photograph. The description claims that you can stitch together smaller scans but can you imagine doing that for hundreds of pages of text?
That said, I can’t see any practical use for such a small portable scanner. Small portable sheet fed scanners for photos, receipts and business cards are much cheaper.
Flip-Pal is a wonderful, portable scanner, much better than the wand type. It’s a must have for genealogists (me), crafters, and others. It’s especially good to take to copy family members photo albums.
The stitching program with it works the best that I have seen. The top comes off and you can see exactly what you are scanning. Very nice Woot.
It only uses batteries which last a long time and SD cards. No cords at all.
Digital cameras work best for copying books.
Hello to a fellow genealogist! Although I haven’t had much time for it lately.
With Creative Suite 3.0? You’ve got to change that. CS3 is a full fledged adobe product. Calling that disk CS3 is going to confuse the heck outta folks. It’s fixed on the second page, but not on the main product title / page.
An alternative to this small 4"x6" flatbed scanner is a small sheetfed scanner. While most need to be plugged into an outlet, they are much smaller than this Flip-Pal and also scan directly to an SD card (so it doesn’t have to hooked to a PC). One advantage of this Flip-Pal is that there is an LCD preview screen. Still, for photos, business cards and receipts – and virtually everything else 4"x6" or smaller – things go much faster with a sheetfed scanner; about 2-5 secs per scan. And I rarely need a preview.
For example, this VuPoint PS-CA6-VP-BW, which I bought Refurbed for about $25. I believe Woot has sold it for a similar price. You can see its size compared to the included CD. The identical scanner is often sold under other brands as well. And you can get similar scanners from Kodak, Pandigital, etc.
Yet another alternative to thus Flip-Pal flatbed scanner is a wand scanner, which is what I use in the library now. It’s advantages include the ability to scan full size books and magazines, and legal size documents. Like this FLip-Pal, they work off batteries and scan directly to an SD card. The biggest disadvantage is that you move the scanner manually over the paper. That means crooked images can result. And in general, there s no preview screen, Vupoint does make a model and with tiny color LCD preview screen, however. The biggest advantage is that you have full flexibility in scanning. Full size magazines are no problem. Nor are things posted on the wall; simply glide the scanner on the wall.
Models from VuPoint and Ion Copycat are often available for $39-$59. The one I’m using was $39, but I recently ordered one with a color LCD preview screen for only $49. You can see the tiny color screen in the second photo. Preview images can be zoomed and are navigated via 4 directional button.
No, they’re horrible because books don’t lie flat by themselves. And unless you have an overhead tripod, hand movement results in a lot of blurring. Using flash is often not an option because it distracts other patrons in the library. Flash is also not allowed on many rare and old books because the strong light affects the pigments. Finally, I scan a lot of medical journals, which have medical photos. A nearby flash is reflected off the glossy pages, resulting in horrible images and over-exposure. Even the Text setting on many cameras pale compared to a cheap scanner.
Unless you have an overhead mount for your camera, a camera that is optimized for books and something to hold your books flat, I wouldn’t use a camera unless it was an emergency.
What kind of files does it create? GIF? JPG? TIFF? PNG? I’ve been all through their website and the manual and no mention is made of the native filetype. Is one stuck having to use their software? UGH.
I did notice some mention in the FAQ that Apples might try to open with iPhoto upon card insertion, so maybe they are in a standard image file format, but why are they being so secretive about it? You’d think it would be a plus if it uses a standard file format, but instead they give the impression that their software must be used 
{edit}
AHA! It’s JPG. Was looking on their blog, and found a screenshot of the software where you can read the filenames:
http://info.flip-pal.com/Portals/43092/images/Flip-Pal%20select%20scans%20to%20stitch.png
first sign of amazonitis?
re: flippal et w/creative suite 3.0
hmm, seems it’s not creative suite 3.0 it is something called digital creative suite 3…
technical term for that (which I learned in 10 grade English back in 1962) is bait and switch…
Oh, good point. I’ll send that in for fixing as soon as someone is in the office this morning. Thanks.
Not a bait-and-switch. It’s a “whoops, didn’t notice that”.
I can’t tell you how many nice thin full-sized Canon LED scanners with USB power I find at Goodwill for under $7. There are other scanners, but they are often larger and out of date. Works great with my laptop or netbook. Drivers and such are found online.
In for one - we had been considering this for a while after discovering on Amazon.
If nothing else, it will give us something new to play with this weekend!
Genealogy.
The timing on this is so weird.
My mother (big genealogist) yesterday sends me a clip from one of her newsletters with a review which points out the portability and ease of use for scanning old photographs and small pieces of paper such as invitations, dance cards, etc.
This morning, I read the woot.com email and here it is! The best part is that the clip she sent me was bundling it with some other genealogical software she already has at the base $210 price, and here it is at almost 40% off.
Purchased and off to her as an early birthday gift. (Although all I am doing is enabling even more of her oversharing of her discoveries… sigh )
Can you share some TT genealogy?
While that’s true, the major advantage to this Flip-Pal and the two alternatives I listed (a small sheet-fed scanner and scanning wand) is that a computer is NOT needed. Like a digital camera, the image goes directly to the SD card. And the Flip-Pal and wand scanner are self-powered, making them extremely portable. I’ve taken my wand scanner to conferences where I scanned posters and text posted on easels, as well as the business cards of colleagues and restaurant receipts for reimbursement. You can do something similar with this Flip-Pal by placing the bed on the item on the wall, and aligning through the see-through bottom. A digital camera is simply not an option if you want to reproduce pages of text without fiddling with cropping and resizing.
Both the sheetfed scanner and wand scanner fit in my pants pocket, which is an advantage over this Flip-Pal and the full-size USB scanners you mentioned.