Chris Barton: Get ready to scan much wider horizons

Not many restaurants greet you with: "Take off your shoes and get into bed."

But the Bed SupperClub in Bangkok is no ordinary eatery. From the outside it's a cross between a high-tech sausage roll and an alien spacecraft.

Inside, the all-white, futuristic decor merges Stanley Kubrick with an exotic Hugh Hefner fantasy. Beautiful Thai women in split-to-the-waist white tunics and hot pants wait on guests lounging on long beds with snowy pillows - "the ultimate horizontal dining entertainment experience".

At the bar waitresses parade a blue mini-skirt airline hostess theme. Oh, and the food is quite good, too.

Why am I at the Bed SupperClub? For a Hewlett-Packard press conference.

I don't know how they come up with these concepts, but computer companies often get quite inventive - not to mention lavish - to make the launch of a new product newsworthy. They can also be excruciatingly corny.

Earlier, journalists flown in from all over the Asia-Pacific region at HP's expense for its "Big Bang 2" preview of 89 products, received a mock front page from the Daily Scandal: "Senior HP Executive Caught in Bed with Supermodel!"

The executive is Bob Gann, a mild-mannered, 40-something engineer from the imaging division, apparently caught in bed "touching and fiddling" with a "slim, sexy and beautiful supermodel" and "playing with the model using various objects!" Shock, horror, probe.

Bob duly arrives to unveil the sleek Scanjet 4670, a "SCANdalous" see-through scanner.

It's actually quite impressive. Resembling a photo frame rather than a scanner, the 4670 allows users to scan objects placed in front of its tempered glass.

Instead of having to lay things flat, you can use it face up, face down, vertically, or any way you want. Just lift the scanning frame from the cradle and place it on whatever you want to scan - even on your skin. In fact, you could do a full body scan by stitching together multiple images.

For the technically minded, the machine features a 2400dpi (dots per inch) optical resolution and 48-bit colour with a 6-second preview.

Plus, it comes with a separate adaptor for scanning 35mm negatives and slides.

Bob tells us he kept the Scanjet thin by combining technologies from reduction optics and contact image sensor scanners, to a custom gradient index lens array and ultra-thin glass mirrors. Cool.

The new supermodel is likely to be a tad expensive - about $550 - when released in New Zealand this year. But it will go a long way towards making scanning of images and text from books and other media a lot easier.

It is, however, still tethered to the PC - via a nicely combined power cord and data cable - so objects for scanning need to be brought close by.

Gann says a battery-powered version with wireless connection is under consideration, but the big problem is that the cold cathode fluorescent lamp used is a power hog.

HP hopes the Scanjet will revive a falling market for standalone scanners - due in part to the immediacy of digital camera images, but also because "all-in-one" multifunction devices combine a scanner with printer, photocopier and sometimes fax.

But just what else would people use the 4670 for? HP is not exactly sure, but thinks it will particularly appeal to creative types. For a sample of what might be possible, type "scanner art" into Google's image search.

One of the journalists suggests more humane cat scans. This was the website (www.cat-scan.com) which in July 1998 launched a contest that involved cat-owners holding their felines on flatbed scanners in the name of art.

Thankfully, the site is no longer live but if you need to see some of the results go to the Wayback Machine at www.archive.org.

The site drew howls of protest, but with the 4670, kitty could choose whether to pause in front of the scanner - which may lead to a renaissance of this art form.

* Email Chris Barton