Occasionally, I’d see some nice art in a print magazine and want to scan it. Except I can’t because I’ve boxed up the flatbed in the attic since I rarely use it. And I’m deeply averse to bringing it back to clutter up my desk. The LG LSM-100 Scanner Mouse should get rid of that problem.
As the name implies, it’s a mouse that doubles as a scanner. That way, you don’t need to bother with a separate scanning machine on your desk — just put that bill, poster or old photograph you want to scan under the mouse to create a digital copy.
The LG LSM-100 can work like a conventional mouse, moving that cursor and clicking through stuff on your Windows screen. Hold the Smart Scan button on the left hand side, though, and it turns into a handheld scanner which you hold over the material you want to get on the computer. According to LG, it supports faster pass-over rates compared to regular handheld scanners, so a quick swipe is all you need to get a proper image.
Pages up to A3 size can be scanned, which it will save into your choice of PNG, JPEG, TIFF, BMP or PDF. There’s a bundled OCR software, too, for automatically converting scanned text to XLS or DOC formats (expect the usual OCR problems, though, like inaccurate conversions).
While LG will be showing off the LSM-100 Scanner Mouse at the upcoming IFA, it’s actually available now from one UK store, where it retails for £89.98 (around $150).
[via Dabs]