Scanners

Digital document management on your computers is an essential part of any business. Scanners play a vital role in this process. The truth is that one never knows when a disaster may hit your business. Therefore, keeping all your paper files and documents in virtual storage is mandatory.

The scanning devices help you scan and keep all the vital information virtually safe when the worst happens. So, it is evident that scanning machines are crucial devices. But when did these nimble devices come into being? The scanners that we take for granted today were unheard of only a short century ago. They owe their existence to early telegraphy and facsimile technologies during the 1920s. The process involved sending images and texts via telephone or telegraph. From this to the modern machines, people used them until the twentieth century, especially in the newspaper industry. Digging through its history isn’t enough to buy a quality scanning machine. You just need to understand their various types of machines and how to get one online. Well, you’re lucky! We are going to talk about all of it in this article. So, sit back and read on.

Types of scanners to keep your documents safe

You would’ve gathered that having scanning machines in the office is an asset. It simplifies record keeping and also helps you retrieve them easily. However, do you know that there are several types of scanners on the market? From simple small ones to enormous high-end scanning devices, you’ll find them these days. Now, this is why you tend to confuse yourself when you set out to buy them. Well, that’s because you aren’t aware of them. We are sure that most of you would’ve had just seen the commonly used scanners in the offices. Well, know that there are many apart from those. Below we have listed a few major scanner types and their specifications and functions. So, the next time you shop for scanners, you wouldn’t feel oblivious to these smart devices.

Flatbed document scanners

However, flatbed scanning machines take up some of your desktop space and offer a lot of bang for the buck. They look like a miniature printer and come with a flip-up cover protecting the scanner glass platen. Moreover, flatbed scanners can fit standard or legal-sized documents, depending on their size. Apart from that, the flexible cover on top allows you to scan large items such as books. The make and model apart, these scanning devices are a great choice when you occasionally need to scan newspaper articles, book chapters, or photographs. Further, you could also scan bulky items like the cover of a DVD. Above all, these document scanners are built into multifunction printers.

Scanner for photos

High resolution and depth of colour aren’t even criteria to look for when scanning normal documents. But, that’s not the case as we speak of scanning high-quality presentations or graphs. Of course, many regular scanning devices can also scan photos. That means you do not need a separate scanning machine for photos alone. But if you plan on digitising film negatives or slides, then a photo scanner is a better deal. The dedicated photo scanners come with specialised technology to deal with slides and negatives. Moreover, they also come with built-in software to clean up old pictures. With these, you could scan your images at exceptionally high resolutions.

Portable scanners

As the name states, these scanning devices are small enough for you to carry them around on the road. Some are so small that you can carry them in your pocket too. As a result, most of these are wireless scanning machines. For example, the pens scanners. Though they are a little bigger than the fountain pen scanners, you could readily scan the text of any document line by line. Alternatively, you’ll find some that are wide enough to roll down the page easily. But remember, you wouldn’t get high-resolution scans with them. Therefore, you should avoid scanning images and high-quality pictures with this scanner. Well, you can always buy them if you are a student, researcher or even a spy.

Sheetfed high-speed scanners

Sheetfed, the name says it all. Rather than placing it on top of the platen, you feed a document or a photo into the scanner’s automatic document feeder. These scanning devices are smaller than the flatbeds and hence spare you some desk space. However, you’ll lose resolution in the process. But, if you are only planning to scan documents, this would be a worthwhile trade, especially if you’ve got many documents to scan. You can feed them into the printer in bulk and then sit back and wait to scan everything. Hence, you can consider these scanners to be far more superior than the flatbeds as for flatbed scanning machines, you need to feed in documents one by one.