Jerry,
A good scanner with a good OCR type program (Optical Character Recognition) will enable you to copy text from a book to an editable document such as Microsoft Word, or to a simple .tif file (a "picture" file). I wouldn't really like to perform the task on an entire book as it would take quite a long time.
There are lots of good scanners available and most have an OCR program installed. You just need to make sure that there IS one installed.
Hope this helps.
Grif
I am interested in gettng a scanner for the purpose of transfering printed material from a book to my hard drive so I can copy the material into an email or forum post. I am wondering if that is practical and, if so, what kind of features and specs I should keep in mind. (I have Windows 98SE). Thanks, Jerry

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