Searching for a scanner to take with you on the road can be a trying experience. Thankfully, Plustek is trying to change that with its OpticSlim M12 Plus portable scanner. This unit weighs less than three-quarters of a pound and is about the size of a three-hole punch. It doesn't even need an AC power supply, as the scanner gets its juice through the USB connection to your computer.

Installing the scanner was quite easy. We plugged it into our computer and inserted the software CD. Windows grabbed the right driver for our operating system and installed the bundled software. We did have to stop it from installing an older version of Acrobat Reader than we already had, but otherwise the installation went smoothly.

The software bundle includes a variety of applications from NewSoft, such as Presto! PageManager for PDF creation and file conversion, Presto! ImageFolio for editing and organizing pictures and Presto! Mr. Photo for creating greeting cards and calendars with your images. There's also ABBYY FineReader OCR software for scanning documents and converting them to digital format for editing in a word processor.

Scans are easy to perform with the M12 Plus. Just press the Scan or Custom button on the top of the scanner, insert a document or photo and the scanner pulls the paper through and rapidly transfers the image to the computer. By default, the Custom button is set to scan to PDF, which is a handy way to share documents between systems.

Images can be scanned at up to 600 dpi. While this is a much lower resolution than provided by desktop scanners, it is not bad for such a compact scanner as the M12 Plus. There are lower resolution settings that scan faster, but 600 dpi is what you will want to use for rendering pictures.

Plustek includes a handy desk stand (with a base that opens to house the USB cable) and wall mount for storing the scanner when it is not in use. There's also a carrying bag to protect it during transport.

The Plustek OpticSlim M12 Plus is a very portable and usable USB scanner to take with you on the road.

Pros: Very portable, good-quality scans
Cons: A bit pricey

Warranty
1 year, limited