Buying the best scanner

[Conficio]

Hi everyone,
I'm looking into buying a good scanner for electronic document management. I thought Graphic Designers scan a lot and can give me some tips and share some of their experience.

I'm mostly interested in speed, feeder attachment and software usability for scanning multi-page documents (may be even double sided).

I know graphic designers look mostly for image quality, but may be you still have some pointers for me.

Kind regards

K<o>

[eightfifteen]

I would visit Cnet.com for buying advice. They do a pretty thorough job of reviewing hardware. Good luck!

P.S. If you want to buy me a scanner too, I'd appreciate it!

[StuW]

I have been using the same scanners for over ten years. I purchased two HP's. One 6100 and another 5100C. Both have served me well and never had a problem. You have the ability to set the scan rate and can get extremely fine reproductions of photos and documents. For documents I use OmniPro software and am able to convert copies into Word Documents without much hassle.

These are not like the new scanners that have multi-uses, like scanner/printer/copier. They are top loading and have no feed tray.

I don't know if this is much help. But at any rate, I would check C-Net and EBay for good prices before I spent a lot of money.

[ppayne]

We've used the Epson Perfection scanners, which are very nice and come with Firewire interfaces for the fastest possible scans. We do a LOT of scans at J-List so we need the speed. They work nicely with Macs and OS X as well as PCs.

[johnpauljones]

I am a seasoned IT Manger that had an operation that scanned 200,000 pages per week. I just attended the AIIM (Imaging) trade show last week and got to see all the scanning equipment and software that is currently available for different types of solutions.

To determine what scanner and software to buy you need to decide how many pages you are going to scan per day, color or black and white, paper size, and thickness. There are different solutions depending on the quanity of scanning and how fast you want to accomplish this task.

I myself own an HP Scanjet6300C and it is ok for those occasional scans. If you have a lot of paper you will need a scanner with an ADF (automatic document feeder) attachment.

In a production mode I have use Kodak, Bell & Howell, Ricoh, and Fujitsu. I liked the Fujitsu the best because it was easy to maintain. The ADF feature uses rollers to pull the paper through and over a period of time they need replaced; Fujitsu equipment made this replacement process simple.

Some suggestions for you:
Software....look at the old standbys from Scansoft. Their OmniPage Pro 14 version allows you to create pdfs and ms office word, excel, & PPT documents.
Also look at Input Accel Express from Captiva. These are low end affordable software programs.

Equipment....look at the model 4120 series from Fujitsu if you want to scan both sides of the page at one time. This is their entry level scanner. I saw it scan a stack of credit cards at the show so you know it can take some abuse. If you have a reasonable amount of scanning,but the fujitsu is to much $$$ then look at the HP scanners around the $500 to $700 range with an ADF feeder would be great.

Just some more things to help you out. The interface to the scanner makes a big difference in speed; a scsi card interface is still the fastest. This is also the most difficult to configure because the software drivers always seem to have problems in the installation process. Also make sure that you have enough memory on your pc; this will help with scanning speed. The scanners in the office retail stores are for the once in the blue moon scans and they are slow.

[Conficio]

Thanks Kelly,
I'll check out the Fujitsu line. You are right on the money. My client needs to scan larger amounts of b&w documents and store them as graphic. I don't think they need to convert them to text, but PDF documents would be nice.

Great tip with the interface. I'll look into that too.

Thanks, what would one do w/o the friends at WebProWorld
K<o>