Scanner of the Month

Fujitsu M3097DE/DG fills a void

Workgroups that have needed quality, mid-range (40-60 ppm) scanners for production-style document scanning have had few choices in the past. Bell & Howell, Fujitsu and Panasonic have among the few models available for less than $10,000.

Fujitsu's (San Jose, CA 408-432-6333) latest midrange scanner, the M3097DE/DG duplex monochrome scanner, is a good value for its $6,995 price. The DG is a SCSI version, while the DE has a video connection.

The M3097DE/DG scans 39 pages a minute simplex, 70 images a minute duplex with a duty cycle of 3,000 documents per day. This suits the needs of a lot of departments and workgroups that scan batches of documents throughout the day. The M3097 scans the front and back of a page simultaneously using dual CCDs.

The M3097 DE/DG is based on Fujitsu's M3097 simplex machine. The company added a second CCD array to the machine. They bundled the scanner with new Fujitsu image processing and cleanup software called ScanRight Image Processing.

We like scanners with relatively straight paper paths. The less you redirect the paper inside the scanner, the less opportunity you have for paper jams. The M3097 fits this description, and it is designed to accept documents of all sizes up to 11" x 17".

You can lift this unit's 100-sheet automated document feeder and use the scanner as a flatbed. That's useful for scanning torn documents, stapled documents, books and poor-quality documents that need to be rescanned.

The M3097's optical resolution is 400 dpi, and the SCSI version provides 256 levels of grayscale. The ScanRight software enhances the image quality. The software offers a lot of settings. It's not immediately clear what some of them, such as "Increased Emphasis," do. The software does come with a manual that shows samples of documents and optimum settings for them. Five presets provide settings appropriate for all-purpose documents, memos, light originals, forms and documents with photos on them.

We tested a few of the features. Increased Emphasis, it turns out, made everything on a document darker. That was good for light print and handwriting on a light background. "Increased Threshold" darkened the characters without affecting the background -- a useful feature for reverse print in shaded boxes.

"Auto Separation" is designed to enhance images of documents with both pictures and text. It did better with text than with pictures. Setting the scanner to grayscale mode produced the best combined picture/text quality. Other software features include background removal and noise removal.

The video version of the scanner, the M3097 DE, provides additional image quality and processing features with the help of an optional image processing board from Kofax, Xionics or Dunord.

The scanner recognizes notched batch separation sheets for batch scanning. It has a simple doublefeed detection system. It works by measuring the length of each document. If one is too long, presumably because it's two pages stuck together, it flags it.

To handle drop out on HCFA and other color forms, you can swap between green and red lamps.

The M3097DE/DG comes with a 32-bit TWAIN driver and 16-bit and 32-bit ISIS drivers. A $995 Preventative Maintenance program includes check-up visits from service people to keep the scanner in good shape. Fujitsu's philosophy is that with the right care, you shouldn't have a failure for a long time.

While this product is evolutionary rather than revolutionary, the M3097 DE/DG offers a very practical size, speed and price for bank branches, law offices and other organizations that need speed and quality even though they don't handle huge volumes of documents.