LG to demo mouse with diddy doc scanner
The mouse that roared scanned
Remember those handheld documents scanners that became all the rage in the late 1980s? LG is bringing them back, kind of, by building scanner tech into… a mouse.
The LSM-100 comes with software able to convert pictures of letters into text files - hopefully with rather better accuracy than its 20th Century forebears - and to stitch separate scans into the bigger picture.
Just press the Scan key on the left side of the mouse and whatever you're pushing the gadget over will be scanned.
There's no word on the LSM-100's pricing or availability - LG will be saying more at the IFA consumer electronics show next week.
Update
As various readers have pointed out, despite LG silence on the matter, the LSM-100 is already out in the UK. Want one? Interact with your favourite technology hardware reseller. ®
COMMENTS
>"Remember those handheld documents scanners that became all the rage in the late 1980s?"
Late '80s seems a bit early to me, maybe there were some but wasn't the timeframe in which they became "all the rage" more like the early 90s, around contemporary with windows 3.1/WfW? I've been trying to google their history and couldn't find much but Mustek claim at http://www.mustek.com.tw/html/must/about_us2.html to have developed a whole bunch of "world's first [size/color depth/dpi] handheld scanners" starting no earlier than '89 for sampling and '90 for products.
Can anyone else find any earlier references?
A title
"There's no word on the LSM-100's pricing or availability - LG will be saying more at the IFA consumer electronics show next week."
"No word"? They've been available at some UK retailers for some time. I saw them online (and in stock) at Dabs/BT Business a few weeks ago, and they're also readily available on Amazon, ballpark of £90.
The demo videos/reviews from their launch (CES I think?) look quite effective, particularly with large or odd shaped objects bit have still not been convinced enough of a need to get one...
Steve.
But have they fixed the problem...
...where you have to have the hands of a brain surgeon to scan anything without stretching, shrinking or warping of the resultant image? As I recall, this is why flat-beds owned the hand-held scanners all over the place, despite hand-helds being able to stitch together just about any size of image and flat-beds being largely limited to A4 max.
I guess this mouse could work as a good quick text scanner, if the OCR is up to much. £90 is damned pricey though.
CapShare!
The HP CapShare was a GREAT device, except at the time, getting documents out of it was a PITA. I'd happily grab one now if it were available again.
