ELMHURST, IL., August 9, 2012 – Let’s say you want to scan magazines without ripping the pages out. Or textbooks that you plan to sell back at the end of the semester. Or even fabric swatches while you’re shopping for new curtains.

A flatbed scanner won’t do the trick. They never seem to pick up words or images close to the binding. Plus they’re not very mobile. And a sheetfed scanner is smaller, but requires you feed individual pages through, and it might struggle with those fabric samples.