This article is more than 1 year old

Ion readies book scanner for e-book buffs

Pump up the volumes

CES 2011 Fed up of paying through the nose for e-books? Ion, the company best known for its USB turntables, is readying a gadget that will help you digitise your paperbacks, hardbacks, magazines and comics.

Called the Book Saver, it's a large frame into which you place an open book. Tap the Scan button and the spread is digitised and dropped onto an SD card, ready to be transferred to your computer. Each page is saved separately, thanks to the unit's two flash-equipped cameras.

Ion Book Saver

Book Saver angles the tome to prevent as little as possible pressure being placed one the spine. You don't have to hold the pages down to get a flat, even surface.

The upper section sits on top of the book. When a pair of pages have been snapped, just lift Book Saver up, turn the page, and put it down again to take the next shot. Scanning a spread takes around seven seconds, Ion said.

Ion Book Saver

The gadget will come with character-recognition software, allowing you to extract the text from the images.

Book Saver is due out in the March-April timeframe. No price has yet been set. ®

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like