On Monday I bit the bullet and ordered a Czur ET-24 overhead scanner. It arrived Yesterday.
.
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In one word - brilliant.
The spur to getting one was OneSwitch.
He asked me if I would be interested in scanning a UK software catalogue for 1991. Can a duck swim?
When the catalogue arrived it was obvious that my normal scanner could not touch it. It had a hot glue binding and only 6mm margins into the binding, often less. Slicing off the binding was obviously out.
Four years ago I investigated the Czur ET-16 and found it severely lacking; the resolution was low, the page splitting was buggy and the quality of PDF output was poor. In essence it was an expensive toy.
Now the ET-24 is a different proposition. I tested it with OneSwitch's software catalogue, a really difficult job for any scanner. At about 400 pages the catalogue took a fair time to scan, not to say the least because of my inexperience. However, the upshot was that I was able to produce a searchable PDF of the whole book in about 20Mb. The scanner software was able to produce readable images of most of the book. Where it fell down was where I had difficulty reading right into the spine, so I can't blame it there. Check out the catalogue at the archive
here .
Since then I have been testing the scanner and found the only thing it cannot handle is a glossy book, magazine or poster. Those I have to scan on the flatbed scanner.
I am also going to plug the distributers,
D&H Innovations. They have been extremely helpful in providing lots of advice and were even willing to let me buy the scanner on approval, so to speak. If anyone else is thinking of getting a book scanner, try this - it works.
Oh, yes, the beer is essential to the function of the scanner.
A quick skim through the book and I think I know what a latch does now and why you use them (yes, I'm slow!) - just need to figure out the difference between positive and negative edge triggers. 
The quality is amazing, and I'm just so pleased with them right now. 
