Scan to PDF for Less Than $700

by Doug Henschen

Among the newest scanners in the increasingly popular workgroup segment is the Strobe XP 450 PDF, a simplex sheetfed model with an extensive software bundle and a low price of $699.

Quick Scan Vendor: Visioneer, Pleasanton, CA www.visioneer.com Model: Strobe XP 450 PDF. Description: Sheetfed simplex scanner supporting color, grayscale and bitonal scanning. Optical resolution: 600 dpi. Rated Speed: 20 ppm bitonal at 200 dpi. Test speeds exceeded ratings. Color speed, as tested, was 18 to 20 ppm at 150 dpi. Strengths: Generous software bundle including TWAIN and ISIS drivers, PaperPort Deluxe 9.0, TextBridge Pro 9 OCR, ArcSoft PhotoImpression and OneTouch scanner integration. Low price. Weaknesses: Simplex (one-sided) scanning only. Output tray doesn't fold or slide out of the way. Price: $699.

A compact, color-capable desktop scanner rated at 20 letter-sized pages per minute (ppm), the XP 450 is aimed at personal use or distributed deployments within large organizations. A medical group or regional bank, for example, could place scanners at each location that generates paperwork. With effective ties to a central system, the organization eases access, ensures retention and speeds processing times.

To support a range of possibilities, Visioneer has packed this scanner's bundle with plenty of software. The disc includes PaperPort Deluxe 9.0 and TextBridge Pro OCR from ScanSoft (www.scansoft.com), Peabody, MA, as well as ArcSoft Photo Impression editing software and TWAIN and ISIS drivers.

PaperPort serves as the XP 450's default scanning application. "PDF" was added to the scanner's name because the 9.0 version of the popular personal document management software scans to Adobe's portable document format as well as to TIFF, JPEG and other formats. PaperPort also enables the scanner's OneTouch feature, which lets you start scanning with the touch of a button and automatically export images or OCR results to any application linked to PaperPort. (Note: PaperPort Deluxe supports PDF Image files, but TextBridge Pro OCR can be integrated in order to create and store PDF Image+Text files). The ISIS driver, which was just recently made available, is geared to integration with leading professional document and data capture applications.

The XP 450 was easy to install thanks to USB 2.0 connectivity, and we were able to test the scanner with both the TWAIN and ISIS drivers without a hiccup. To gauge maximum performance, we started with the ISIS driver and used our standard test application, QuickScan from San Jose, CA-based Pixel Translations, the developer of the ISIS standard. With the fast 60-MB-per-second USB 2.0 connection and a 2.4 GHz PC with 512MB of RAM, we had no trouble beating this scanner's rated speed. The bitonal test came in at 22 ppm at 200 dpi resolution, while the color speed was 20 ppm at 150 dpi.

Scanning was not quite as fast using the TWAIN driver and PaperPort; the bitonal speed was 21 ppm at 200 dpi while the color speed was 18 ppm at 150 dpi. (Oddly, color scanning at 200 dpi slowed drastically to slightly more than 4 ppm with both drivers.)

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