And for my next piece of gadgetry… I present the Doxie Go DX200.
A computer independent mobile scanner designed to copy and scan images, photos and documents at home and on the go.
Unboxing
The Doxie Go comes with a suede style protective case, very important if it’s going to be in your work bag all day, also included is a handy cleaning tool and a separate photo case. This presumably tells the scanner its about to scan a photo, and adjusts the settings appropriately, while offering a little protection to your snaps while they scan.
It comes with a USB charger, but no mains lead (you can get one of these if needed). Before you can use it though, the ‘Doxie Go’ will need to be charged for at least a couple of hours.
Scanning
This is where a bit of skill is needed to start with. The scanner has a small slider on the feeding edge to help guide your documents in straight, but it doesn’t really function that well as a guide. The paper can just go under or over it, so the key here is to get it lined up well first and then go for it. I did get quite a few distorted and stretched scans before I got ‘the nack’.
If things aren’t quite right, the software has cropping features and auto fixing stuff, and the Android and iOS Apps have similar tools to adjust from your phone or tablet.
The ‘Go’ has two different scanning options 300 dpi and 600 dpi. The higher being more suitable for photos, and you can toggle between the modes with just a tap of the power button. The higher quality takes a little longer to scan but the 300 dpi flies through a photo in about 3 or 4 seconds. When the auto adjust stuff does its job, you get a really good quality scan.
Saving
To use some of the cloud type services you will need to sign up to a free Doxie Cloud account. This enables you to tweet your scans, and then send them to various services like Picasa and Flickr.
This is useful for accessing files from anywhere, not just on your home computer. It’s also particularly good when used in conjunction with Evernote, the awesome free cloud based note taking/file storage App. Scan a document using ‘Doxie Go’, and seconds later it will show up on all your Evernote devices.
You can save as a PDF or as a JPEG, and you can also save with character recognition as well which is a useful function when exporting documents to different formats.
Onto the scanner itself, it’s slightly longer than an A4 sheet of paper and it feels pretty weighty for its size. It has an SD card socket plus 500mb of built in internal memory, that’s enough space to store 600 pages or 2400 photos. When connected to a computer it works in the same way as a USB-flash drive, enabling easy copying of files to, and from the device.
In the real world
My wife works for the NHS in the community, and as soon as she saw it she was saying how useful it could be for her staff. They often need to have digital copies of records, but being out in the community it’s hard to keep a copy. Despite its weight, the Doxie Go is portable enough to carry with you and allow for scanning on the fly.
I can imagine your average double glazing salesman may find it useful too, being able to email those all important sales orders and customer signatures to the boss whilst out and about. In fact anyone who needs to keep an organised online record of bills, receipts or documents could benefit from using the device.
Final thoughts
VERY impressed! They have taken the best feature of a desktop scanner, (the auto-feeder function) and turned it into a mobile device. It can be transported with your laptop or used on its own. There are no drivers, and no complicated software to configure or figure out and it works with vitually anything, from a PC or Mac to a Smartphone or iPad.
I could probably give it to my Gran, and get her using it, as long as she could get it out of the box.
The Doxie Go is available on Amazon priced £169.00 or visit Doxie for more info