Compare Prices Plustek OpticBook 3800 Book Scanner
Plustek OpticBook 3800 Book Scanner Review
Plustek OPTICBOOK 3800 FB CLR 1200DPI PERP USB 2.0 8.5X11.69 A4 SPEED SCANNER
Price : $255.52
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Plustek OpticBook 3800 Book Scanner Feature
- SEE Technology for distortion free book page images
- Up to 1200 dpi resolution
- Fast scan speed 7 sec. for an A4-size color, grayscale, B/W scan at 300 dpi
- USB 2.0 interface
- 4 single touch buttons to simplify scanning task
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Costumer review
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful.
For the price...good product so far
By S. J McCartin
I wanted to scan some of my technical manuals for motorcycles. Some of these books are very hard to find and out of print and I didn't want to risk my precious originals in the greasy grimy sometimes damp shop...not to mention the sticky fingers of other mechanics. So far this works very well for that. While scans might not be described as perfect, they are very good. So now I just keep an old laptop in the shop to read the pdf versions of my precious manuals. I should say I scan for my own use as selling my files would be illegal. This is my first plustek product, I think they need a lot of work on their driver/utility from from what I've seen at least with this particular product under windows 7 64 bit (after setup be sure to hit plustek's website for the march 2012 driver/utility update). The scanner comes with a one year warranty (need RMA and proof of purchase). I haven't tried to contact them myself but I've seen complaints that they don't answer emails sent with tech questions. So apparently a typical foreign tech company.
I use paperport 14 as my scanning software. Generally this software has excellent support for scanning devices, it supports everything my old HP can do and then some. That's not so true here. The big itch under paperport is that previews don't show the settings, it doesn't support the buttons on the scanner and it would seem that sometimes the settings don't work. Paperport is not able to rotate scans but it can auto deskew (the plustek utility has the option but it's grayed out/not working), the auto crop and auto rotate function also doesn't work properly from paperport. The scan utility that comes with the scanner works a little strangely but it works, rotate doesn't work in preview but it does after you've actually scanned the page. I have windows 7 64 bit, perhaps earlier windows versions don't have that issue with the plustek utility, can't say. Once I scan to pdf when scanning through paperport, I have to rotate the pages that are upside down (you hang the heavy part of the book over the edge so every other page will be upside down) with paperport or the full version of acrobat (annoying). The plustek scanning utility has a "rotate 180 degrees odd or even scans" option which works perfectly, it also has an option to continuously scan with a settable gap in between each scan giving you time to flip the page and never have to touch the mouse or a scan button (haven't tried it yet). The scanner has three big buttons on the top for color, gray, bw and they're positioned so it's easy to hit them while holding your material down on the scanner, there's also a paperclip holder area (but not magnetic).
So far I have to say that at least under my OS the plustek utility works better than paperport but the lack of the auto deskew function is pretty darned annoying. Still it's not really too hard to make sure the scans are straight. When scanning the utility assumes you're making a bunch of scans in a row, you don't get any prompts for the next page you just keep hitting the proper scan button or click the button in the software each time and after you've made all your scans you hit the transfer button to get one big multipage pdf file if you're scanning to pdf. There is a single page option, but for books you probably don't want individual pages or if you do there is software that will "cut" up a pdf file to get only certain pages, paperport will do it and so will the full version of acrobat. If you accidentally scan the same page twice or your scan comes out skewed, there's a final scan view with a x button at the top right to dump that scan (it's on the same page with the rotate options after the scan).
The scanner goes quite respectably close to the spine but I have found a book with the text too close to the spine and it cut off the edge, but it's very adequate for most books and magazines. I've found you can press down a bit on the spine and shift the book up a bit to get that last bit too close to the binding and while you'll get a little shadow the text/image is still quite readable, not distorted as it would be with most scanners. If you don't have a thousand dollars for a more advanced book scanner this will do the job for you adequately. It can scan other things besides books, it's just that the "up to the edge" capability makes it more suited for books than the typical flatbed and it can do a MUCH better job without destroying the spine of your bound material.
Apparently the tech used in this scanner is the older bulb type, you may not get the longevity from this unit that other newer techs get but you should get enough to feel you got your money's worth. Installation was like any other usb device, load driver first, reboot, plug in scanner and it's ready in a few minutes. When you first turn it on it takes a few minutes to warm up, typical with the older bulb type units, it calibrates with every scan which is annoying but tolerable. The unit has a lock on the bottom to keep the scan bar from flopping around when you move it, be sure to lock it if you're moving it more than a little bit. Kind of a neat lock, it can be always unlocked or it can autounlock when placed on a flat surface. I haven't used it a huge amount yet but for the cost I'd call it worth it if you don't have the $$$$ for one of the more expensive units.
17 of 18 people found the following review helpful.
A good scanner for magazines and books.
By S. Moshier
Regarding the comment about imaging close to the spine of the book, I found that we lose five sixteenths of an inch from the edge of the housing to the beginning of the scan area. There is a fiducial line near the right front corner showing where that area begins. I did run into a problem with one book that had been rebound with the pages trimmed. There are situations that will just demand an alternative easel and camera approach.
I agree somewhat with the other comments about their software. It does seem a bit unfriendly. But I have the model 3800 and have been using the Book Pavilion program without any major problems.
I saw the horror stories about poor repair service but decided to buy one anyway.
I haven't had the unit long enough to judge reliability, but so far it seems to be a good product. It has already paid for itself.
18 of 21 people found the following review helpful.
Good luck finding scanner software support
By Michael
The scanner itself is fine, provided it is on an absolutely level surface (otherwise it will freeze and produce a "scree" sound until you manually turn it off). What it has over other scanners is how close the scanner bed is to the side, so that you can scan books along the spine without having to break the spine and hold it down with your hands. That said, the real problem comes when trying to use Opticbook 3800 with other software. I use an iMac 10.7, and while you can get the Opticbook image capture driver from Plustek's webpage, this still does not allow for support in Vuescan or any other software program I tried (and I spent hours on this). You can use the native software, but it is rather buggy. I lost scans on several occasions because the software crashes. It feels immature (in fact, I believe it is still in beta). It did work through image capture on the Mac, but this is rather unsatisfactory.
Having to hit the scan button each time you want to scan a page gets rather old. It is too bad there is not an option to autoscan (hence, why it is so sad that it is not supported by Vuescan, which has this feature and rocks-it also doesn't crash).
In short, I would send it back in a heartbeat-if there were any other book scanners in existence under the thousands of dollars range. Until then, I'll have to keep it and hope for some serious software upgrades.
Update: I decided to return this product. It simply felt cheap, the native software is atrocious (as others note if you do a www search to investigate further), and it simply doesn't work with Vuescan, at least on the mac. I've also been in email discussions with Plustek tech support as well as the creator of Vuescan, who has been trying to get it to work; both have been unsuccessful.
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