I bought this to scan pages from books. I'm college student and thought this scan would make it easier to pull definitions and such from books instead of hand writing them. It works okay with books until you get close to the spin. Then you lose data and the OCR just guesses at what the scanner doesn't pickup. You for overall book scanning, it's iffy. I'm also a college professor. This does allow me to scan other lose type pages, magazines and other materials that you can flatten out. The scan on these once you get use to the scanning process is good. It comes with the necessary software and USB cable. The software allows you to turn you scanned data into pictures, PDF or MS Word documents. The software does the translation from picture to text. This scanner is rechargeable. So, no need to have it constantly connect to system for power. The only necessary item you will need is a MicroSDHC memory card. The capacity depends on how much data you plan to scan and how much time there would be between data downloads. It says up to 32GB memory card. I think the average user could get away with a 4GB - 8GB. They aren't that expensive. I'm using a 16GB card at $14. If you plan of carrying this around with you, you may need a case to protect it. The one they have paired with this on the product page is a nice case that will protect the scanner and provides a space for the USB cable and memory card container. However, it is a very tight fit.If you are looking for a scanner that will scan lines of text in hard bound type books, a pen scanner would be better.