Small scale scanning and printing service

[Shaun]

Does anyone know where I can go to get the spine cut off a 600 page hardcover book nice and straight, and have every page scanned in medium-high resolution, with OCR applied so text is actual text, not just an image, saved as a PDF - then after the scan, the physical pages are rebound by whatever method is best? I have maybe a dozen or so books I'd like to get scanned. Much easier to transport as softcopy and no degradation over time even when used heavily as a reference.

Also have some PDFs I'd like to print. Maybe 400 or so, averaging ~10 pages each.

Rough indication of pricing would be useful.

[pilotsnoopy]

Best place I can think of is Bras Basah...

be prepared to be a little frustrated by some of their "I don't know...*shrug*" attitude though...

Perhaps mockngbrd might know better.

[sszone]

i think Bras Basah can only do the de-bind and rebinding and at most photocopying. pdf-scanning wise is pretty time-consuming so i think not all of em are willing to do that.

[phil]

i think that would cost a bomb. Shaun, probably better do it in the States

[centurion]

cheapest way to do it:

Ask the shop to photostat using a pro scanner or office scanner like the Canon IR 3180 into 2 bit TIFF (black and white is best, no grayscale) then run a software like SimpleOCR or omnipage on the 600 pages yourself.

[Shaun]

Thanks guys, I was hoping not to have to do it myself. Surely there is an industrious primary or secondary school kid that has some free time and wants to make some money?

OCR is nice, but depending on how much it costs, I might even settle for plain image, no OCR.

Mike, I thought shops will not photocopy or print copies of a copyrighted book?

[Shaun]

Another misc. question..

I have a 1.5 year old HP DV9000t laptop. The area around one of the hinges has split and now it won't close or open without the trying trying to pry itself open even more. I hear it is a common problem so anyone know of the rough price to get it fixed if I take it to HP? Trying to decide if I should even spend time going down, or just keep it at home and use it as a real crappy PC.

Worst computer purchase ever by the way.. Vista is slow, webcam and lightscribe never worked from day 1, and the computer loaded with big hard drives and lots of ram just drains the battery like nothing and gets hot along the way. Like the high res display, that's about it. Never again.

[Crufty Dusty]

IMO, if you're going to the extent of scanning into PDF you might as well do OCR since you can search which is a big win. Anyway here is a cheap software that does image to PDF but no OCR.

Snapter - "Goodbye, scanner. Hello, digital camera."

[pilotsnoopy]

Originally Posted by Shaun

Another misc. question..

I have a 1.5 year old HP DV9000t laptop. The area around one of the hinges has split and now it won't close or open without the trying trying to pry itself open even more. I hear it is a common problem so anyone know of the rough price to get it fixed if I take it to HP? Trying to decide if I should even spend time going down, or just keep it at home and use it as a real crappy PC.

worse computer purchase ever by the way.. Vista is slow, webcam and lightscribe never worked from day 1, and the computer loaded with big hard drives and lots of ram just drains the battery like nothing and gets hot along the way. Like the high res display, that's about it. Never again.

had that problem...got it fixed at HP Alexandra for about 30bucks..but I went cos it developed other problems -_-

[Shaun]

Thanks Will, I'll definitely get it fixed in that case.. at least with portability (a function to fulfill) I can buy a proper desktop and not have to think about waste.