Synchronizes with most business software including Outlook, Palm, Windows Mobile, iPods, and many smartphones
Dimensions 7.1 x 7.4 x 2.5 inches; weight 1.3 pounds
Rating: - Worth it, but have reasonable expectations
Let me give some background to this. I'm an intern this summer and I was asked by my boss to get 300+ business cards on the computer and in his Microsoft Outlook address book. This is where I turned (Amazon has the lowest price on this good from anywhere by far).
The good things....
-It was an easy set up
-The software is very friendly and easy to convert to excel or outlook
-The system makes mistakes but its not very hard to go through and check each business card after everything is scanned. The software keeps track of which cards you "verify" which is a nice check on the occasional mistakes that the machine makes. It also shows you the image of the business card that you scanned when you correct the info.
-It impressively tells the difference between phone numbers, fax numbers, and cell phones, direct lines. Everything.
The cons
-Its not super easy to feed cards into all the time. I'd have a streak where I would place the card in the feeder and it would go through no problem, and then that would stop and i'd have to fiddle with how I was feeding in the card. Not a big deal, and you quickly get used to the process.
All in all it saved me a ton of time and got the job done for me. It can do the same for you.
Rating: - Not bad when it works
It worked fine for a while. Then it quit recognizing cards when they were inserted in the device.
Calls to support are maddening. Just forget about it. After waiting 30 minutes with no answer with an irritating voice remind you how to self-fix your problem, I gave up and threw it in the trash!
Waste of money and time. DO NOT BUY unless you recognize this is a disposable device. Forget about warranty. If don't answer their phone or their email, I guess they never have to provide it.
Rating: - Card sensor is problematic
Reader did not reliably sense insertion of card. Called Cardscan (CS) customer service. Was on infinite hold. Returned to Amazon for replacement. Replacement had same insertion issue and drive motor made lots of noise. Returned replacement. CS sent me email saying to insert at angle; helped a little. Card sensor is an issue. When it senses card, it works (scan/OCR) fine.
Rating: - Cardscan for Home Office users
I selected the Cardscan 60 for my home office needs. I had a large pile of cards that I did not have the patience to enter into Outlook.
I run Vista and had some initial problems loading the software under the AutoRun process. I had to restart the installation and then opened the files on the disk and then manually selected the .exe program to begin installation. This worked.
Once the software was installed the program works very well. The scanner is rated at a little slower than the larger models but frankly I don't think it is money well spent. The scan speed of the 60 is fine for my needs. I processed over 100 cards in 20 minutes including edit checks...
Cardscan synchs very well with Outlook 2003 which I use as my contact DB.
I did notice as other users have reported that the scanner seems to stop feeding cards after 15 or so inserts...not sure why but when I lifted the scanner and tilted it back while holding the card in place, the scanner began to operate and accepted the cards. I emailed Cardscan and they gave a number for me to call which I will do this week.
It seems to read all standard US and European cards styles very well. It cannot read company names if part of logos or wild font styles. It's accuracy is about 80% meaning you will have to go back and check and edit some cards as they are processed.
Definitely worth the cost and saves lots of time and keeps my database current.
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