Scan When You Want To A new hand-held imaging tool takes the planning out of scanning.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
The Magic Wand from VuPoint Solutions may be the sleeper productivity tool of the moment: It's a scanner you can put in your pocket.
The 10-inch long, 7.5-ounce imaging scepter captures a high-quality scan of any photo, pattern or text up to 8.5 inches wide. And it's one-button simple to operate. Fire it up, slide it smoothly across the work and out comes a reasonably high-resolution, desktop-quality image of the original. No additional lighting required. Hundreds of images can fit into the 32GB max microSD card, and scanned content can be stored to your computer via a USB connection.
VuPoint, based in City of Industry, Calif., specializes in low-cost, easy-to-use gadgets that retrofit older technologies into newer high-tech trends. "We see today's small businesses archiving and recording important company documents with the Wand," says Brant Williams, VuPoint executive vice president.
The gadget, which retails for $99.99, is far from perfect. The control screen is so small that managing the scan library is best done on a PC. And be sure to edit all documents generated by the optical character recognition--some text translation can be rough.
Still, there's a legit small-business handiness to something that puts a business-class image-capture tool in the palm of your hand. No smartphone camera comes close.
