Five Low-Cost, Entry-Level Products Tempt Newcomers to Imaging

by Doug Henschen

One sign that document imaging has matured is the introduction of a spate of new entry-level products in recent months. Having won over many big-league corporations and government agencies with mission-critical applications, some vendors are now turning at least some of their attention to potential customers who might have been turned off in the past by the cost and complexity of document imaging. These new entry-level products offer simple, low-cost ways to get started in the technology, and some are even upgradable and scalable for departmental and enterprisewide use.

San Jose, CA-based Fujitsu is making a grab for mainstream business users with the ScanSnap! This sheetfed duplex model provides business card to legal-size scanning from a compact unit that can fit on any desktop. Speeds are a respectable 15 pages per minute (ppm)/30 images per minute in color or black and white (letter-sized documents at 150 dpi) and there's a 50-sheet feeder. But the real story behind the ScanSnap! is one of simplicity.

Quick Scan Vendor: Fujitsu, San Jose, CA www.fcpa.com Product: ScanSnap! Description: Desktop sheetfed scanner with an emphasis on simplicity. Users select simplex or duplex scanning and the software takes care of the rest. Speed: 15 pages per minute/30 images per minute in black and white or color (8.5" x 11" at 150 dpi). Strengths: Low price. Auto page-size detection, color detection and blank page deletion. Bundled and integrated with Adobe Acrobat. Weaknesses: 300 dpi resolution. No options for developer integration and customization. Price: $495.

ScanSnap! is aimed at personal use in the front office rather than distributed capture — think ad hoc documents used in collaboration rather than batches of forms sent to a centralized imaging system. Complicated, techy features are kept to a minimum. The device is connected via USB, and the driver is embedded and installed along with a dedicated scanning application.

The front panel of the ScanSnap! has two buttons: simplex and duplex. Once the user makes this choice, the application automatically turns itself on, detects the correct page size, decides whether it's a color or black-and-white scan, and deletes blank pages. Next, images are automatically exported to the bundled copy of Adobe Acrobat 5.0, which creates PDF images that can be viewed as thumbnails in Windows file systems and opened in the ubiquitous, browser-integrated Adobe Reader. You can also create text-searchable images that can't be lost in the black hole of forgotten file names.

Yet another bundled app thrown in with the ScanSnap! is CardMinder, a business card scanning and capture application that automatically recognizes contact information and synchronizes it with personal information managers such as Outlook, Act and Goldmine.

The icing on the cake in the ScanSnap! story is the list price of just $495, including the software. Will the combination of ease of use, price, performance and personal applications bring "scanner on every desktop" corporate sales, or will it emerge as an executive accessory, much like the LCD monitors that show up in corner offices? It's too soon to tell whether ScanSnap! will be a mainstream home run, but in our view, the concept of simple software with auto detection features will likely take on a life of its own.

[ BACK | NEXT ]