By Andrew Liszewski
Besides the included OCR/TTS (text-to-speech) software and the company’s patented ‘SEE Technology’ which uses a curved lamp to reduce text distortion along the spine of a thick book, I don’t really see what sets this Plustek scanner apart from the cheaper versions you can find at most electronic stores. But I guess in this case the whole is greater than the sum of its parts because the Plustek V100 BookReader makes converting a page of text into an MP3 audio file as easy as clicking a single button.
The Plustek V100 can also do standard scanner stuff like converting a document into editable text or spitting out an email-friendly PDF file, but it’s the text-to-speech functionality that seems to be its real claim to fame. The V100’s price tag comes in at around $700, but since it doesn’t feature an auto page-turning mechanism, the real price is the amount of time you’ll have to spend manually flipping pages if you intend to convert an entire novel into an audiobook.
[ Plustek V100 BookReader ] VIA [ Cool Hunting ]
