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Projectors occupied a niche sector of the technology market for years before they became cheap enough for Peter the presenter and Frank the football fan to get their hands on them. Back then, death by PowerPoint, at least on the big screen, was restricted to the boardroom, and Arsenal against Manchester United could only be found plastered all over the wall in pubs and rich men’s home cinema rooms.

The flexibility of digital projectors and their continually falling prices, however, has finally brought machines like the Toshiba T91 to the mass market, and it’s not just suits and home entertainment enthusiasts that are getting in on the act.

Even schools are beginning to see the benefits these days. Just as in a board room or auditorium situation, it’s far easier to get a room of kids to hold their attention on a large screen than it is on a ten-year-old telly on its last legs flickering away in the corner.

And it is in this sort of environment that a projector like the T91 might just find itself a niche. By marrying new and old technology it offers a temptingly practical alternative to expensive interactive whiteboards and low tech OHPs (overhead projectors), which, believe it or not, are still widely used today. Because, apart from being a capable projector in its own right (more later), this machine also has a document camera attached to it.

Essentially, this 640 x 480 resolution camera enables you to carry on using traditional handwritten or printed matter that you have no digital copy of, at the same time as more modern methods. And while most people working in business will have long transferred to the world of computers an age ago, for many working in education it could prove a real labour saver. All of those old worksheets and transparencies won’t have to be binned or painstakingly translated into electronic format – they can simply be used side by side with a laptop or PC.

The camera unit is mounted on the side of the T91 on an articulated arm via a screwed-in docking cradle. That means you can use the projector as a kind of glorified, high-tech OHP, or you can remove the camera and use it from up to 30 feet away, depending on how long your cable is. The camera is connected via a heavy-duty D-SUB cable. A stubby one and a longer 3m cable are supplied.

One small irritation is that the mechanism of the camera arm is a little on the jerky side and is tricky to position precisely up and down. It feels a little flimsy too; only time will tell how it will cope with prolonged use and abuse.

Strangely, the document camera has no light source of its own either, which means that you cannot use the camera in a darkened room, though there is a gain control if light conditions are a little on the gloomy side. On the plus side, the projector is bright enough at 2000 ANSI lumens to overcome difficult conditions even in the most well lit of offices or classrooms and it will beat old-fashioned OHP projectors hands down in terms of brightness and clarity.

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