Equally suited for teachers, students, quality control inspectors, specialized professionals, and microscopy enthusiasts, the HamiltonBuhl Scout Digital Microscope eschews convention by completely removing the ubiquitous eyepiece and instead gives you a direct high-speed USB 2.0 computer interface so you can view specimens directly on your monitors. Viewing your specimens in this fashion makes it easier for multiple people to see the same thing at the same time while giving you the ability to capture 640×480 video and 1600×1200 still images and save them right to your computer for later use and reference. When viewing on 17″ 1600×1200 resolution monitors you can achieve magnifications of 100x, 200x, 300x, 400x, 500x, 600x—if your monitors are larger or smaller, your magnifications will be scaled up or down accordingly. Changing magnifications is as easy as simply rotating the objective wheel, and a single focusing knob ensures your views remain tack sharp.

At low power you can inspect circuit boards, rocks, and gems, and as you dial up the magnification you can reveal the hidden microscopic worlds of cell structures and simple single-cell organisms. The Scout comes with three blank slides and six covers, along with a pair of tweezers and a dropper, so you can prepare your own specimens—and to get you started right away, you also get one prepared slide in the box.