WhatFinger


OptiCard" business card & photo scanner, Plustek, Fujitsu, ScanSnap S300 scanner

Small Scanners Ideal For the Road or Home Office



Remember when owning a scanner meant you either had a big, flat behemoth on your desktop, or a tiny handheld device that would only give good results if you could keep your hands absolutely "shake-free" while scanning?

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I sure do. Between one and the other you either lost valuable desk space, or ended up with illegible scans that were virtually worthless. But technology marches on and even the full page scanner can now be so small it'll only take up a corner of your desk (and perhaps fit into your carry-on luggage). I've been playing with a couple of representatives of this diminutive breed, an "OptiCard" business card and photo scanner from Plustek, and Fujitsu's new ScanSnap S300 full page scanner, each of which fits its particular niche quite well. The Plustek OptiCard 820 is about the size of a bratwurst without its bun and is the slickest business card scanner I've used. Not only does it slam your business cards into its own application, it'll fire them right into your Outlook Contacts for you as well, after OCR'ing them first – a wonderful convenience. It'll even put a picture of the business card in your Outlook contacts for you, giving no reason on earth to keep the paper cards around anymore. Recyclers of paper will probably love it! The 600x600 dpi (1200 dpi interpolated) scanner uses a high-speed USB 2.0 interface that not only allows for fast scanning but which also supplies the unit's power. This means you don't need an AC connection for it. The unit features two scanning buttons you can preset to initiate a particular scan automatically. I left it at its default, with the bottom button for scanning business cards and the upper one for pictures or whatever. It works fine that way. The unit can scan media up to the thickness of a credit card, which not only makes it great for pictures and business cards, but for digitally archiving checks, identification, receipts and stuff like that. The unit worked well with business cards right out of the box, but I had the dickens of a time getting it to scan photos and other stuff. Fortunately, a download of the latest drivers (accompanied by some well-aimed cussing) corrected this. The OptiCard 821 comes bundled with software that lets you create searchable PDF files, as well as applications for scanning color photos and, of course, converting business cards into readable contact databases. I didn't have much use for the HotCard BizCard Finder 2.5 software, which lets you organize your business cards in a kind of notebook-like setting, preferring to dump them right into my existing Outlook contacts. Either way works; I just liked eliminating the "middle man". The OptiCard came in handy when I had a bunch of photographs I wanted to scan. I could send them through the scanner individually and they'd each open in a new window in the ImageFolio software which, while no PhotoShop, allows you most of the basic photo manipulation/correction options the average person would need. Plustek's OptiCard 820 sells for about $150.

The Big Pictures….

Fujitsu's $295 ScanSnap S300 is a lot bigger than the Plustek, and it uses an AC power source (though you can also power it via USB), but unlike the OptiCard it'll scan a full standard page of whatever you need converted to digital form. And even though its paper handling capacity is larger, the unit itself isn't as big as you might expect from a full page scanner: it measures only 11.2 inches wide, 3.2 high, and 3.8 deep, so you could undoubtedly take it with you on a business trip or corporate espionage gig. 
 Fujitsu also makes a carrying case available for just such emergencies. Powering up the scanner, once it's plugged in, is as easy as flipping up the top panel, which reveals the 10 page automatic document feeder with its expandable width from business card to regular paper. And get this: the Fujitsu scans double-sided pages; you just tell its app whether you want to do simplex or duplex scanning, and it takes care of the rest. It scans both sides at once, then fires up its built in OCR capability and (if you've so configured it) creates a searchable Acrobat file of the results. Fujitsu says the 600 dpi x 600 dpi (optical) scanner will do up to eight double-sided pages per minute and it has one-button scanning capability you can use to scan to a file, printer Sharepoint, or email program. And you can use the stuff it comes bundled with to organize and search documents and business cards. One of the bundled apps is the Electronic Filing Cabinet for Dummies, which you can use to organize receipts, statements, tax documents, warranty cards, recipes and the like. The ScanSnap also Auto detects paper sizes from business card to legal, auto corrects skewed images (mostly), can a delete blank pages, orient the page and auto-detect black & white or color documents. According to a company demo, you can load various sizes and configurations of documents into the feeder together and it'll handle each one automatically. It all works well and, as with the Plustek, you can scan in a business card and have the software fire it into Outlook, ACT! (and other such apps) for you. Which did I prefer? I may not be Belgian, but this is definitely waffle time. Both scanners perform well and each has its advantages. The Plustek wins for its size, price and easier photo handling (with less chance of bending your precious prints), but the Fujitsu is more flexible and heavy duty. So which will be better for you depends on the niche you're trying to fill.


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Jim Bray, CFP Automotive Editor -- Bio and Archives

Jim publishes TechnoFile Magazine. Jim is an affiliate with the Automobile Journalists Association of Canada and his careers have included journalist, technology retailer, video store pioneer, and syndicated columnist; he does a biweekly column on CBC Radio One’s The Business Network.

Jim can be reached at: bray@technofile.com

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