Costing nearly £140, the Harvest Q-Scan is by no means the cheapest scanner that vnunet has reviewed, but at just 11.1in by 2in, it is one of the most diminutive. Aimed squarely at the laptop owner who needs to scan while on the move, Harvest's product is a world away from the familiar desk hogger.
It needs no batteries or mains supply, drawing power instead from its USB connection. With minimal moving parts and a protective bag that slips neatly into any laptop case, the Q-Scan is built for life on the road. In addition, the hot-swappability of USB allows the user to just plug in and start scanning without the need for a reboot. All this adds up to practicality and portability in a small package. Performance, however, is less impressive
The Q-Scan's forerunner, the Travelscan, was reviewed by vnunet in March of this year and was criticised for the quality of its colour scans. Harvest has increased the maximum optical resolution of its newer model to 600 x 300, but the Q-Scan still produces images that lack colour purity, primarily suffering from a slight colour 'banding'. It should also be noted that 36bit and 42bit scans are beyond the capabilities of this unit. However, users of the Q-Scan will probably be more concerned with its OCR strengths.
The software included for this task is the widely respected Textbridge and results are both extremely accurate and easy to manipulate. Facilitated by the USB connection, scanning speed is also respectably quick. At a resolution of 300dpi an A4 sheet took just over a minute to roll through the scanner.
The Q-Scan accepts all standard stationary from legal downwards with the auto-detect mechanism doing a good job of firing up the software each time a sheet is inserted into the slot. The process really couldn't be more straightforward. That said, the obvious limitations of sheet-fed scanners still apply: overly thick paper can cause headaches and a page from a book would have to be removed from its volume before it could be scanned.
While the Q-Scan is more than acceptable for occasional scans to bitmap, the fidelity of the colour images does not compare favourably with results from high-quality flatbed units. However, for the business person who has both a Win98 laptop with USB connection and the need for a reliable, practical and extremely portable OCR solution, Harvest's offering might well be the pick of the crop.
See also:
Scanners don't have to be left on your desk - here's one you can take with you wherever you go. 03 Mar 2000
All Scanners
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