Pandigital Photolink One-Touch Photo Scanner

Check the reviews. I got one in spite of the reviews, and sure enough, the dang thing leaves 1 pixel wide white lines randomly the length of the photo. Sometimes not so much, but there appears to be no positive cure.

Product Website

Reviews:

TestFreaks

cnet

Retrevo

Stay away.

My grandmother bought one of these off QVC a month or so ago (for $100, so this is cheaper) and asked me to help set it up. Very unreliable on the scanning being able to feed straight through every time, and the rollers it uses to pull in the picture mark up the picture (the physical one you are scanning) terribly. You have to use a little plastic sleeve to avoid this, which is not only annoying, but also then requires you to resize every single scan.

Absolutely a horrible item. Glad we used some easily replaceable photos.

Previous Woot

Demo Video

Here’s the manual

if you have to spell out your acronym doesn’t that defeat the purpose of putting the acronym in there in the first place?

Good point. And it’s not even a TLA (Three Letter Acronym). :wink:

The white lines are caused by dust on the scanner. The sleeve (which you really need to use) is full of static electricity. Not such a good combination… Clean it regularly (cleaning tools included in the box) and you shouldn’t have a problem. I’ve scanned around 100 pictures with mine (same model, not from Woot) and once I figured out that I couldn’t use it near dust, haven’t really had issues.

I bought one the last time it was offered, yes the pictures do get some white lines across them. The colors seem to be a bit off too. I wouldn’t say the qualilty is horrible though. I’m looking at pictures that were originally 3X5 or 4X6 and now I’m looking at them on a 24 inch monitor, something that wasn’t even possible when I took the photos 20 years ago.

Here is a link to a set of the photos that I scanned in. So you can see the quality. I’d say it’s a good deal for the price but I can see myself buying another scanner in the future when the prices drop or I get serious about archiving photos.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wildpokerman/sets/72157625455191351/

Got one last woot, and am generally happy with it, if only because of the low expectations I had for it due to the comments I read before I bought it–comments like this one is about to be.

The white lines are a problem, though not a huge one. They are indeed intermittent and seem unrelated to any of the variables I’ve tried to test.

On the other hand, as others have pointed out, I’m not scanning museum-quality artwork here. They’re just family snaps for the most part, and it’s great to have a cheap and relatively easy way to get them into digital form.

Last time this was up, someone pointed to the fact that Radio Shack was clearing them out for $29. Someone else contacted their local RS and found it had been reduced to $15. I called mine and the same was true. I got 4, 1 for me and three for Xmas gifts.

PERFORMANCE

Multiple people on the thread had mentioned they didn’t bother with the sleeve…that the pics came out fine without. So that’s what I did and had no problem. It certainly speeds things up.

  1. I have yet to see one of the white lines people are talking about. (Wipe your pics off before feeding to reduce the chance of introducing dust into the unit).
  2. SPEED - This unit scans insanely fast. You can just sit there with the TV on and scan away comfortably @ 5-10 secs per image. Then just move the SD card to your puter and dump the images.
  3. QUALITY - The scans are fine for basic photos. Obviously you can get superior results taking your time and tailoring with a good flat bed scanner, but for most computer viewing/internet/family situations these scans are fine.
  4. CON - As another user posted here, it is hard to get the pics to track perfectly straight. Since I use photo editing software a lot, I just set up photoshop and straighten them back out all at once, then crop. I can do this pretty fast but it may be a dealbreaker for some.

For $15 to $40 this is a really handy device for scanning a ton of small photographs. For my family members who do, and would never take the time to use a flat bed, this will be a godsend.

Recommended

This was the best post ever (for this product). I went the the RS website, and sure enough, it’s listed as a store-only purchase for $15. Luckily, a store near my workplace had one, new-in-box.

This thing is great, as far as I’m concerned. I was able to scan about 65 photos in 45 minutes or so, including re-calibrating every now and then. I scanned right to the PC and if I noticed a photo with a line through it, I would simply run the calibration card through the machine and that would take care of the line. True, it’s a step I’d prefer not to take, but even with it, it’s about 10x faster than putting 5 photos on a flatbed scanner, cropping them down individually, then saving.

Well worth it for $15. I’m happy. I think I would have been just as happy for $40, but this was a lucky find, and satisfied my instant gratiification problem (woot’s only flaw).