fatcat Posted September 30, 2009 Report Share Posted September 30, 2009 Right. We (the wife) wants to have all her handy cut recipes from various cooking mags (that she has collected 'over the years') scanned onto a laptop so that she refer to them in the kitchen. I want one better, but have no idea if it will/can work. I want to wall mount a touch screen unit in the kitchen, this will allow her to go through all her scanned recipes and create wonderful food that I (we) can eat. So. how do I do it ? My idea is to have a wireless touch screen display (if they exist) and scan the recipes onto my main PC and wirelessly transfer them onto the touch screen. or I suppose I could download them onto a memory stick and download then onto the display. Is what I'm on about in any way possible ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
techieboy Posted September 30, 2009 Report Share Posted September 30, 2009 (edited) Cheapest option would probably be to scan the recipes to a memory card of some form and stick the card into one of the LCD photo frame type devices. I think there are some wireless versions that could pick up a shared folder on your PC but they're probably only setup to read image files (jpg's and their ilk). Better option would be to get a very small PC like the Acer Aspire Revo and add a touch screen to it. Might need to wait for Windows 7 so that you can use the built-in multi-touch navigation options unless the mac OS can be hacked to run on it. With this route you'll at least have internet access through it and be able to hook up with other kit you've got at home. Alternatively there is the Asus eee Top which is an all in one touchscreen PC but not sure how flexible the operating system is. Only other options are to look at some of the new Internet Tablet devices. Archos have just launched one and Apple are rumoured to be doing something similar. You'll probably paying a fair bit for features that won't really be of any use though. Biggest problem you're likely to run into is scanning in the various recipes and getting them into a usable format. Running them through some OCR software would be good so that you could save them in a searchable file format (like a pdf type format) but not sure how well OCR would work with the kinds of text formatting of the original recipes. Edited September 30, 2009 by techieboy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fatcat Posted September 30, 2009 Author Report Share Posted September 30, 2009 Bloody marvelous, I checked out the Asus unit and at first glance is has all I need ! Touch screen - YES Operating system - YES Windows XP (so should be able to read scanned images !!!!) Wireless internet - YES (although not really that important). USB connections - YES, so I can download recipes. Is it really that simple ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Posted September 30, 2009 Report Share Posted September 30, 2009 certainly looks like what you require, and would not look out of place in the kitchen either. You will be firing up BBC iplayer on it next..... Amazon.com : Entertainment : ASUS Eee Top Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
techieboy Posted September 30, 2009 Report Share Posted September 30, 2009 Bloody marvelous, I checked out the Asus unit and at first glance is has all I need !Touch screen - YES Operating system - YES Windows XP (so should be able to read scanned images !!!!) Wireless internet - YES (although not really that important). USB connections - YES, so I can download recipes. Is it really that simple ! Excellent. I hadn't realised it had an XP option, thought it was a bastardised Linux OS. Might still be worth holding out for Windows 7 though (or being prepared to upgrade to it) as it will have a proper "multi touch" interface similar to the iPhone/iPod. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fatcat Posted October 1, 2009 Author Report Share Posted October 1, 2009 Their website is pretty naff, I have to call a UK number to find stockists etc etc. Still, bloody good find. I likey. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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