The time for spring cleaning is upon us. I’m the kind of person who usually prefers moving things around than actually getting rid of them, so anything that’ll help me compress the space an object takes up is a good thing.

In that spirit, I’m going to share a few devices that will do just that. Today: the Veho Film and Slide Converter.

If you’ve been holding onto boxes of family slides and you’d like to put them into a form where they’ll actually be seen by family members, digital is a natural. According to the company description for the Veho, this “negative” scanner hooks up to your computer via USB 2.0 port. It works with Vista and XP and features five megapixel resolution. It includes photo editing software too, to let you do some editing and cropping on the fly.

If you’re on a Mac, one reviewer suggests looking at the 8800F color image scanner. And that brings up a good point. Can you use a regular flatbed scanner to capture a slide and convert it into digital form?

I picked one at random: the Epson Perfection V500 Photo Flatbed Scanner, which sells for about $70 more than the Veho. Its description mentions working with slides. One reviewer points out that it includes holders for slides and negatives, which eliminates the problem of having to figure out where the slide should go for optimal conversion.

So it comes down to this: Do you go with an addition to your household arsenal that addresses a single solution and takes up a little bit of space or spend a bit more and get a solution that has a bigger footprint while tackling more jobs for you? What’s your take?

Posted on May 5th, 2008 by dian