Many of my friends and colleagues, including Photo Detective Maureen Taylor, have long been singing the praises of the Flip-Pal to me. (You can read what Maureen has to say on her blog.) I joined my brother and his family at my parents’ house in Florida last week to celebrate their anniversary, and decided to get a Flip-Pal to scan some of my mother’s photographs.
I ordered the Flip-Pal quite easily and had it delivered there. Within minutes of opening the box I was scanning. The lightweight scanner was so easy to use I was zipping along in no time. The scanner operates on 4 AA batteries, which avoids cumbersome electrical cords.
One of the great things about Flip-Pal is the included software that stitches together images. Although the scanner itself has a small platen, you can make multiple scans of different areas of a large image and the software automatically stitches it together. The result is quite impressive. I had only one stitching problem, and that had more to do with the scans that I made than any limitations of the software.
By the time I left Florida two days later, I had made more than 1,500 scans and gone through seven sets of batteries. But I had hundreds of high-quality scans of photographs and other documents, including my mother’s entire wedding album (composed entirely of 8x10” photographs). While it won’t replace your heavy duty office scanner, it will be wonderful for bringing on the road. You can find out more at www.Flip-Pal.com.