Customer Reviews
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This reader is excellent
Posted By: John Hung
Date Posted: 2007-07-29 22:05:57
I don't know where to begin with this scanner. First, the special design edge really eliminate the shadow problem that ususally would happen with traditional scanner. Just like in the demo, you really don't need to press down the book hard. Also, the close to real life voice is absolutely astonishing. Last but not least, it really comes with an affordable price. If you're looking for a user-friendly reader with excellent quality, fucntionalities and is also at a reasonable price, I strongly suggest this Plustek BookReader.
Student
Posted By: Jenny Yeh
Date Posted: 2007-07-30 13:09:21
Excellent product to help reading and learning.
Best for text-to-speech translation of all print
Posted By: James King
Date Posted: 2013-05-22 23:30:13
I've been happily buying from LS&S for more than 15 years, after testing hundreds of low-vision products for my increasing blindness from a 44-year history of glaucoma. The Plustek Bookreader has been the single most helpful product, first in the earlier version that I bought in 2006, and even more the V100 I bought last year.
It reads all kinds of printed matter, ranging from academic books with difficult formats, and newspaper and magazine articles and their contents pages,to catalogs and medical forms.. I have completely digitized and listened to many non-fiction books, including their notes, pages (index pages are not done perfectly) into MP3 files and transferred to various MP3 players for later listening on trips.
The text-t-speech voices are very good, and the accuracy of the reading and pronunciation are outstanding. The controls for changing the speed and loudness of the reading voices can be handled fairly easily if you can use a mouse or "hotkeys." Scanning from any printed matter to full-formatted or unformatted PDF, unformatted text files, and some MS Word files is easy -- and translation fo WAV or MP3 files usually easy.
The biggest problem for the partially sighted is getting started and learning how to do all these things (e.g.,trying all different orientations of the original page or spread on the scanner when the reading voice stops in the middle orat the beginning of a page because of its formatting or a defect in the printing, deleting defective pages, and adding to and naming files in different folders. All these things you learn by practice, re-staring the computer and scanner, or reinstalling the software. Make sure of the time limit on the ORIGINAL manufacturer's return policy and then try it out for a few weeks. I've never tried the Magnifier feature because I've always used Zoomtext installed before the Bookreader for all these years. I've used the whole program only on Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7. Installation is easy on machines with these operating systems, especially if you have a fully sighted person to unpack it and read the instructions to you. During the 6+ years I've had my 2 Bookreaders, neither one has broken or needed any servicing. Take it for a trial run, and return it if it doesn't work for you.
Clarification of My Earlier Review
Posted By: James King, Axiologist
Date Posted: 2013-06-02 23:29:06
My earlier review appears to be attached to a review by "Student" -- and I can't see the 5-star rating that I gave this product.
Also, it may help for me to explain why I say this Book Reader V100 is "Best for text-to-speech translation ..." I mean that compared to the other reading machines, this one is the best VALUE because it is much cheaper,has all the features I need, and can be attached to any computer with a Microsoft operating system.
