Vupoint PDS-ST510R-VP Magic Wand Jr. Portable Scanner, Red

I have the regular size Magic wand. The pictures on this smaller one do not seem to be as clear as the ones scanned on the normal size Wand.

I'm in the process of converting a 1979 book into an ebook for the author's daughter, so I thought a scanner would speed things up considerably. This beastie, however, is NOT the ticket. The dead tree book is 5 inches, but the scanner won't read the whole page. I could live with that, more or less, but the ABBYY OCR software simply won't work at all. I've used scanners and OCR before, so I know how easy it can be.The Vupoint also loses a star right out of the gate for not coming with even a shred of memory, which cost me another week of waiting to even try it. Make sure you have a microSD card for it!!Lastly, the directions for the Vupoint are terrible and don't mention charging and deleting at all. The charging is particularly unfortunate because the "error" message comes on when it's plugged in, so a user can very well think there's something wrong when it's not. To this day I haven't figured out how to delete the files from the card, so I guess I'll have to reformat the card after it's full.Why do I give the Vupoint 2 stars when I'm so very unimpressed with it, you ask? I **suspect** that it would be OK for scanning photos and other small things, so I've given it the benefit of the doubt and an extra star.6/8/13: After one use, the battery has refused to take a charge. Enough is enough, and I'm sending it back (also taking back the extra star). This also leaves the separate problem of returning the microSD card and the adapter. Sure wish I could have negative stars...6/11/13: It turns out the battery's OK and, apparently, it won't work plugged in. Oh, how I wish for good directions! It also does, indeed, work nicely on pictures, so I gave the star back. I finally managed to get the ABBYY OCR software to work once, although it made gibberish, and I'll try to give directions on that as soon as I figure out what I did.2/16/14: This scanner really does a fantastic job with photos, so I've added back stars. It IS easy to use for that, but it still doesn't do OCR worth mentioning. You can, however, scan print and use the JPG, like as a way of taking notes or something.

I like the design, size, and price, but got a lemon. The SD card slot is defective. It clicked when the card is only half in.I wonder they make in China.... I returned.

I love this scanner! Couple of things that might be helpful. 1st it appears that this scanner ships with incorrect instructions. The instructions make it appear you don't need to charge it before use- WRONG! When I tried to use it after following the instructions I kept getting a red "err" message and it would shut off. I googled it and found another set of instructions almost identical to the set included with the scanner. EXCEPT the other instructions tell you that you WILL get a red " err" UNTIL the battery is fully charged. Once it is fully charged the " err" will disappear. The other instructions said it will take 6-8 hours to fully charge the lithium battery for the 1st time. After I charged the battery for about 8 hours it worked perfectly. Now I only get a red " err" if scanning too slow or fast or if I didn't turn it off or on when connecting to my PC. I have scanned documents much bigger than the scanner with no problems by stitching them. The instructions tell you that there is a Microsoft Image Composite Editor (ICE) a free software which is used for panoramic images but you can also use it with this scanner. They give you the website address to download the software. This software will " stitch" two or more images together like magic! If you have a problem with the stitching - like you get a message you need more than one pic - and say you already have 2 or more just right click on an image in the folder on your PC, click copy and add the copy to the folder and try again ( this has fixed most stitching issues for me). Make sure you click the stitch button on the scanner( a white light comes on ) before you scan images you want to stitch together. Since this will create a separate FOLDER for your images on your PC. Once you have the images you want to combine into ONE image in your folder, click the stitch button on the scanner again and the white light will go off -indicating the folder is closed. Then add the images in folder to the ICE software by clicking an image and holding down the shift key and the down arrow on your keyboard to select all images in the folder to add at once to ICE. Remember the stitch button on the scanner organizes images into a folder ( it doesn't combine the images together you need the Microsoft software to do that). Make sure you pay attention to the marks on the scanner which tells you what area is being scanned. Make sure you practice at home before taking it to the library etc especially if stitching images.Don't forget you need a micro USB card which can run $5.00-$10.00 on amazon. Also the USB card is inserted with the metal facing UP.The scanner comes with a cloth carrying case. It had been several days since it was charged and the battery has only dropped from 4 to 3 bars and i've used it several times. I purchased another one since I like it so much! It's small enough to easily fit in my purse.

1. You must be extremely slow & accurate while sliding it over an item. Make a small mistake (very easy to do) and your scanned item now looks warped. The wheels get caught on the edge of items (IDs, biz cards, etc) and then jerk when you get them over, causing a warp.2. The scanning area (where they show the little arrows to align to) is off by 1/4th of an inch. So the left-side of anything you scan will get chopped off.3. It scans things in reverse , and you have no way of knowing if you are doing it reverse. SO if you scan a document, all your text will be backwards (right to left).4. Does not scan straight to PC. You must first disconnect it, then scan it, then reconnect it to the PC to see the images.5. This is my biggest problem with this. You have no idea if you screwed up the scan, until you get home and find out that the items you scanned are all unusable.