I started out wanting to get what I figured was over 300 contacts into my Palm Tungsten E. Impatient as I am, I went out to Staples and picked up the Targus Mini Business Card Scanner. I found that the scanner unit worked fine, but the kicker – the software – was lacking, at best. The software was very poor on recognition, very slow, and while it did transfer to Palm Desktop well, the OCR was very low – perhaps 65% accuracy.
Frustrated, I started to think there must be something better out there, so I downloaded a copy of Cardscan’s v6.x software for demo, from their website. The accuracy was astounding when compared side-by-side with the Targus software (Newsoft Inc.’s Presto! Bizcard 5 – just as well, as the use of “Biz” is a scourge in itself). I immediately ordered the Cardscan Executive (note that the link shows the new version), and it arrived soon enough. What a great combination of hardware and software.
The colour scanner is fast, efficient, and rarely has a problem – usually with thicker cards. The cards feed in landscape mode, making scanning quick, and you can scan multiple cards at a time (I normally do up to 20) before it starts the recognition processing. While this can take a while due to the complexity, it is certainly quick enough – I normally do the scanning when on a conference call or when I am also processing something mindless.
To put it to the test, I recently brought it to a conference where our company received over 200 cards to process. It made very short work of them. For the next one, I would like to try Cardscan’s Lead Qualifier, which is designed for use at trade shows like the one I was at.
I would be very wary of anything that bundles with the Newsoft Inc. software. However, the Cardscan products are wonderful pieces of software and hardware technology, and are highly recommended.
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