Canon’s ‘Scan-tini’ is a portable scanner, not the name of a bad cocktail

By Ted Needleman Published January 14, 2013

Image used with permission by copyright holder

When you think of a scanner, you probably imagine a large standalone device that sits on your desk. As scanners have become an integral component of multifunction printers, standalone units have become niche products and aren’t in demand by consumers as much as they used to be. But one type of standalone scanner is still popular: the small, portable scanner like the one Canon just added to its “Scan-tini” lineup.

The $230 imageFORMULA P-208 “Scan-tini” is great for digitizing your receipts, bills, business cards, and anything you want to get rid of in paper form. Only about 2-inches wide and a bit longer than a sheet of paper, the P-208 is powered via USB, so there’s no heavy power supply to weigh you down. The slim form factor and light weight make it easy to pack into a laptop case for on-the-road business scanning. The bundled Canon CaptureOnTouch software lets you scan directly to cloud applications including Evernote and Google Docs. Also included is optical character recognition (OCR) software to turn scanned documents into files that can be edited in a word processor, which is a huge time-saver for anybody who has ever had to manipulate text.

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If you use the P-208 with Canon’s recently announced WU10 Wireless Adapter and Battery Pack, you can transmit scanned files wirelessly to Windows and Mac PCs, as well as to smartphones and tablets by using the additional free Canon CaptureOnTouch Mobile app.

Former Contributor

Ted Needleman has been covering the world of technology for more than 30 years. Although his experience in reviewing products…

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