New Scanner for College

I never wanted an all in one scanner/printer/copier for college.  I always wanted a laser printer, which are cheaper in the long run.  However, I often found myself in the situation where I needed to scan in, and even on rare occasions copy documents, but I didn't want a bulky costly all in one.

My old, old, old scanner, an HP ScanJet 4200 just retired to the great computer junk pile in the garage and a new scanner will grace my dorm room next week.  My extent of shopping consisted of looking at several online retailers that sold scanners, realizing they all cost more than I wanted to spend, then going to Staples and buying the cheapest one in the store.

I will admit, it wasn't the most informed purchase I've ever made but I'm satisfied with it.  I purchased a Canon CanoScan LiDE 70 - flatbed scanner (I even reviewed it on CNET and you can see my review here).

My biggest decision was between a single document feed scanner and a flatbed scanner.  I went with the flatbed because I sometimes end of copying and scanning out of books and I wanted to leave that possibility open.

Now for the reasons I really like this scanner.  This scanner is different from older technology in that it uses LEDS as a light source.  As a result it uses a fraction of the power of older scanners.  This technology is the LiDE part of the scanner name.  Since it uses less power it can run off of a USB cable.  This scanner is also very compact.  One of the problems I face with my old scanner was storage and cords.  My new scanner will store upright and take up a fraction of the room.

An additional bonus is this one will run on Vista.  My pervious scanner was too old and will never have any Vista compatibility and I was forced to do all of my scanning from my desktop.  While I've not really scanned many things yet, I'm excited that I'll now be able to scan materials from my classes directly into OneNote 2007.  Scanning paper documents distributed in classes allows me to have everything with me at all times by having it stored on my Tablet PC.  This scanner will hopefully make that process a little easier.