Best Affordable Book Scanner? (email, software, camera, copy)

[Jesse69]

Sometimes I'd rather have a book in digital format - like a pdf. So I'm thinking of scanning some of my books but big book scanners cost a lot. Here's an affordable one: IRIScan Book 2

Anyone have this scanner? How good is it? Is it the best one to get or is there a better one out there?

Sometimes if I can get the pdf version of my book then why bother scanning? Then I'd ebay my book. But scanning a book takes a lot of time! Sometimes I think it's better just to take a quick photo of the book pages. I did that to some of my cookbooks - I took a photo of my favorite recipes and kept it on computer. Maybe it's just better and faster to photo your book than scan it? I've taken photos of newspaper articles I'd like to keep but sometimes the photo is blurry.

[Skunk Workz]

That one gets pretty good reviews, but most of the reviewers I saw were using it for scanning documents for email or faxing while traveling.

Scanning entire books would only make sense if the book is not available digitally, or is out of print. The hours it would take to scan and convert even the smallest book would quickly outweigh any cost savings over just buying a digital copy of the book.

You might look into a more automated solution. There are a bunch of DIY versions that use a cheap digital cameras and free software. Still not very cost effective, but for in the right situation they could be handy.

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