{"id":7,"date":"2016-05-14T23:30:08","date_gmt":"2016-05-15T06:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/saccade.com\/blog\/?p=7"},"modified":"2016-10-13T17:02:55","modified_gmt":"2016-10-14T00:02:55","slug":"czurtek-et16-scanner-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/saccade.com\/blog\/2016\/05\/czurtek-et16-scanner-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Czurtek ET16 Scanner Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Czurtek<\/p>\n

This post originally appeared<\/a> on Medium.com.<\/em><\/p>\n

I like scanners. See, at one time I was really into books. But after a decade or two, you come to the conclusion books take physical space. Lots <\/em>of it. So when my tax guy showed me his Fujitsu ScanSnap I was hooked. Mine ingested most loose papers, statements and documents. This cleared a shelf or two. I also scanned many books by sawing their spines off, and feeding them to the ScanSnap fifty pages or so at a time. It works great, and this cleared several more feet of shelf space.<\/p>\n

However, there are some books I just can\u2019t bear to saw up to feed to a sheet-feed scanner, and this is the niche the Czurtek ET16<\/a> falls into. I also had fantasies of using it to replace my slow, clumsy flatbed scanner. So, I signed up to the Indiegogo campaign<\/a>, for $234.<\/p>\n

First, let give big kudos to Czurtek for delivering within a month of the their promised date. This is incredibly good for such a complicated crowdfunding project!<\/p>\n

The Hardware<\/h2>\n

The ET16 scanner comes nicely packaged, but it needs some minor assembly\u200a\u2014\u200ayou attach the scan head to its base. They pack a very nice screwdriver for this task, and some rubber stickers to hide the screws (hint: you\u2019re not meant to take it apart).<\/p>\n

Then the first realization hits: This product takes a lot<\/em> of space. You should plan on a square meter or so on your desk to set this up and comfortably use it. And when you\u2019re done, you have a fairly large device that does not neatly fold up, so you\u2019ll need half a cubic meter to store it.<\/p>\n

The scanner itself feels solid and well made. It\u2019s packed with both desk and foot switches to operate it as you scan through your books. It has a nice LCD on top to monitor your scan and progress. A black rubber mat for placing your artwork is provided. Finally, it uses three lasers to determine the curvature of the book pages, so it can flatten them out in software.<\/p>\n

The Software<\/h2>\n

Um, the software. Yeah. So this part is awkward. Fortunately, it might get better over time, but it took me a good hour or so to figure out how to use it, and I\u2019m a professional software engineer who\u2019s used<\/em> to arcane technology. [Note: I\u2019ve only tried the USB\/Windows software, I have not tried the WiFi\/Web usage.]<\/p>\n

The software does little to guide you through the workflow of using the scanner. It was developed using some sort of alien UI toolkit that looks nothing like the native Windows it runs on. It also doesn\u2019t look like a web page, or a Mac, or a phone, or anything else you\u2019ve ever used. It insists on running as an admin process, which is creepy. Normally providing step-by-step instructions is beyond the scope of a review, but I found using this software so convoluted I\u2019ll do it as a service to others struggling to figure it out.<\/p>\n

Scanning documents<\/h3>\n

Getting the scanner to work at all is the first challenge. There\u2019s no USB driver for the device, so Windows complains when your first plug it in. After much trial and error, I discovered that you must:<\/p>\n