FIRST IMPRESSIONS: There were three cardboard boxes: 1) The standard Amazon shipping package 2) The CZUR shipping box (my guess is this one is used to store the unit at a US distribution center. Taped to the outside of this box was a small plastic tool that can be used to cut packing tape. Nice touch. 3) A sturdy black cardboard box with the CZUR logo. This black box can be used to store and carry the scanner and accessories if needed. It featured a well-thought out cut-foam inside with cutouts not only for the components, but with finger holes to make extracting them easier (another nice touch). Everything was well protected. Components include the scanner (preassembled except for plugging in the sidelights), power adapter, foot pedal remote, hand button remote, USB cable for PC, sidelights, a non-glare black mat to define the scannable area, software CD, and something they call finger cots. These are plastic things with patterns on them that you put on your thumbs to hold pages down. The software recognizes the patterns and tries to remove the cots from the images. For me, it did a better job of removing my fingers than the cots. With the cots there was always a residual area of a different shade on the scanned items where the algorithm had tried to remove the cots from the image. It did a much better job of just removing my thumbs from the image.ASSEMBLY: Assembly was trivial and consisted of extracting parts from the box, connecting a few cables (power, USB to computer and one of the remotes - foot pedal or hand button), and plugging in the optional side lighting to the central column. This I thought was a weak point as the lights are only held by the plug and can be easily knocked off. All lighting is LED and there is a minimum of switches on the unit (on/off, light on/brighter/off, scan button (probably seldom if ever used, zoom out and zoom in). The unit also features a small LED screen to show the scanning area although it's easier to use the display on the computer. BTW, a laptop works just fine. There is a separate touch switch on the back of the sidelights to turn them on and off independently of the overhead lights.The packaging also includes a software CD although it's easy to download from the CZUR website and get the latest version. Start the executable and follow the instructions. There are drivers for MAC/Windows 7, 8, 10.USING THE SCANNER:The scanner software works surprisingly well, although it's not always intuitive where you need to be and what options you should select to accomplish something. Just play with it - you won't hurt anything if you do something wrong.While you can scan most anything, I'm assuming you'd buy this to scan bound items (books and pamphlets that you don't want to disassemble}. Select one or two page at a time mode in the software. Place your item on the mat, line the center laser line up roughly with the center of your book, hold the edges down if necessary and step on the pedal.The software will then process the image(s), trying to properly split into two pages (if necessary), removing fingers or finger cots and saving to cache (this is important - if you exit without saving to disk your images are lost. Software will warn you though). At this point, turn the page and repeat for the next page(s). Total time per page 1-1/2 to 3 seconds (most of that in processing the page(s) and waiting on you to turn the page). The time will get better as you get more "in the groove" and develop a rhythm.After you've finished scanning your book, select Save in the software and choose TIFF, JPG, Word (OCR), PDF or Searchable PDF (OCR). The OCR software is built-in. Other than my having streamlined the instructions, that's really all there is. There are provisions for rescanning pages and replacing pages. Books are typically saved as one of the PDF's (no MOBI, no ePUB unfortunately).FINAL THOUGHTS:The scanner is very well-made, very stylish (just like the picture) and performs very well. It is not perfect and will occasionally skew a page. The software automatically (I don't see how to turn it off) "flattens" curved pages such as bound books. This is it's best feature to me and what enables you to scan bound books and pamphlets. The software is usable but would be so much better if a graphics designer and user-interface designer revamped it. As it is, it will get the job done; it just takes some getting used to.Overall, I'm very pleased with the scanner and am looking forward to using it to archive my book library as well as scan all those awkward pieces of paper. My negative impressions have to do with the mounting method for the sidelights, the not-intuitive software interface and the lack of MOBI or ePub capability. Especially since you're most probably trying to scan physical books to ebooks. While pricey, I don't see anything on the market that gives you so much for the money. I recommend it if you're on a budget with lots of books to archive (e.g. departmental or local library).Oh, did I mention that it makes a great desk lamp? If only it didn't time out and go dark ...I wanted a scanner to help me digitize and preserve the various logbooks and other documents associated with an aircraft I own. The plane is about 25 years old, and there are almost 40 handwritten and hard-bound books detailing all the maintenance and upgrades it's had over its lifetime, as well as receipts, inspection reports and all sorts of other information that today fills an entire four-drawer file cabinet.I looked at a number of scanners and decided to go with the CZUR for these reasons:1. It works with my Mac.2. It's fast and designed for working with hard-bound books.3. The optics and resolution seemed able to work with the handwritten documents I have.For the most part, I'm happy with the results I've been able to achieve with the CZUR.First and foremost, the scans that come out are top quality. Even though the initial document may have been curved near the spine, the scan digitally "flattens" the page, making it look as though you cut the binding and flattened the page. This same technology also works on folded or curled individual pages, making them appear much flatter than they are. This is a super feature - other scanners I tried either required the pages to be unbound (that is, the binding cut), or they'd render the writing on a curved line and often out of focus. The CZUR is by far the best solution I've seen in this regard.The scanner is good quality and seems to be very well made. It's larger than I expected, but not so huge that you need an enormous space to operate in. Still, it oozes quality and seems to be quite rugged overall.Getting setup was also easy. Although the device comes with the software on DVD, it's also available in a downloadable format on the vendor's website (this was important to me because I have no DVD drive on the Mac where I wanted to use the scanner). It was a simple install once downloaded, and in just a few moments, I was up and running.The scanner connects to the computer with a single USB cable. I put it on a USB-3 port, although I don't believe the device is actually a USB-3 device. The scanner also requires power (a conventional wall-wart) and an optional scan button to activate the scanner, either a foot pedal or a separate external button on a small plate. When scanning books, you tend to need both hands to hold the book open, and the optional foot pedal lets you activate the scanner without taking your hands off your work. The external button works the same way, but the idea is you can mount it such that it can be activated by your knee, elbow or whatever else you like. If you don't use either, there are also scanner controls on the device itself.The scanner also has well-positioned lights that generally illuminate what you're scanning pretty evenly. On larger pages, I did notice there was some light drop-off in the lower left and right corners, but not enough to be objectionable. Still, if you're scanning artwork or something more critical, you might want to invest in a photographer's copy stand with a second pair of lights. CZUR also provides a black mat to scan on so that the software can pinpoint the edges of whatever you scan more accurately. I found that without the mat, I'd get a lot of the background area in the scan in addition to the page I wanted.Once you're setup, I find you can do a full high-res scan of an open document (that is, two pages) in just a second or two. Colors are accurate and exposure seems good, and the laser flash on the page gives you a good clue when to turn to the next page without watching your computer's monitor. The vendor claims to be able to scan a 300 page book in ten minutes, and I'd say this is probably accurate. Definitely a boon to someone like me with hundreds and hundreds of pages to scan.Turning to the software that comes with the CZUR, this is where I found the product to be the weakest. There are a lot of features and capabilities in the product, but they aren't always easy to use. For example, as you scan, you might occasionally see a page that misscans, so you do it a second time...works fine, but it can be tedious to exclude these pages when you go back and combine the images into a PDF. We also noticed a bug in that when scanning smaller booklets using "two-page at a time" mode, the resulting image was displayed in the viewer at a 45 degree angle.There are a lot of advanced features in the software, such as the ability to combine pages into a single searchable PDF. This feature uses OCR to create a search index and it seems to work quite well overall. Of course, you can also take the images from the scanner into software like Adobe Acrobat (or whatever else you like) to manipulate in whatever way you like.To be clear, there's nothing in the software that prevented me from getting the job done - it's just not the easiest to use, and some of the tasks can be frustrating. If the manufacturer reads this review, my advice to them would be to invest in a top-notch UX designer, and you'd have an amazing product.The bottom line is that this is a wonderful document scanner at the price, even with the software shortcomings I pointed out. For anyone with a lot of material to scan, I'd have no trouble recommending the CZUR, even above products that cost several times more.