With so many mobile workers and executives lured in by the lightweight appeal of the MacBook, it seems crazy there isn’t already a raft of compact, Mac-specific scanners on the market. Now, Canon is putting things right with the launch of the lightweight, portable imageFORMULA P-150M Scan-tini personal scanner, designed to shine with the Mac operating system.
Measuring 11 x 3.7 x 1.6-inches and weighing in at around two pounds, the P-150M should be compact enough to fit into a briefcase. For added portability, it powers up via USB.
Plug the device into your Mac for the first time and you’ll find the Scan-tini comes with embedded Canon CaptureOnTouch software, so there’s no need to install drivers. However, if you do want the added functionality of using a TWAIN driver then this is an option too.
Performance-wise, the P-150M is able to fire through letter-sized documents at a rate of 15 pages-per-minute or 30 images-per-minute with duplex scanning. There’s also the scope to hold up to 20 pages in the scanner’s ADF.
It has the ability to scan both sides of a document in a single pass and is intelligent enough to automatically cut out blank pages. Additionally, if you’re feeding in a smaller paper document that skews on entry, it will auto rotate the final scan straight.
Those keen to have a bit of control over image quality should be pleased to hear there are a few correction features available within the CaptureOnTouch software, including Color Dropout and Auto Color Correction. If you’re scanning documents, you can be sure you’re word perfect with an Advanced Text Enhancement feature. After completing the scan, the software will save to TIFF, BMP, PDF and JPEG file formats.
The Canon imageFORMULA P-150m Scan-tini personal document scanner is available now through all Canon resellers and has a suggested retail price of US$295.