Scanner designed especially for Mac captures and manages your valuable contact information
Scans up to 20 business cards a minute in color; consolidates contact info from electronic sources, including web sites and email signatures
Designed to work with Mac OS 10.5.3+ (Leopard); includes software for Windows users
Can sync automatically with Mac's Address Book
Includes risk-free 30-day trial
Rating: - No Cigar!
The only game in town (that I know of) for scanning cards on a MAC.
Three negatives:
*Mistake prone: some evident, some you might miss (don't believe everything you see)
*Slow and hangs
*Can totally screw up MAC Address Book and Entourage data when syncing if you're not paying attention
Not quite ready for prime time as a business app on MAC
Rating: - Works for me, flawlessly!
Fortunately, I was eligible for a $179 competitive upgrade direct from the manufacturer for an old CardScan Windows brick I found down in my basement in the box of orphaned peripherals. I had loved CardScan back in my Windows days, but had lost hope that they would come out with a Mac version. In the meantime, I had struggled with the kludgey I.R.I.S. business card scanner for mac and its flakey crapware that really didn't integrate with Mac Address Book all that well and had a horrible OCR recognition error rate and field parsing engine and seemed to run like it was written in Javascript.
Well, I'm happy that the Mac version of CardScan works flawlessly for me with a typical Mac setup (an Intel Mac Book Pro running 10.5.5.) and that setup was a snap. With some trepidation, I synched with my Address Book and no precious contact data was lost or damaged. I then scanned some business cards and it parsed the various fields with almost 100% accuracy, including some tricky company names in graphic logos, and put the data in a suggested "inspector" window. One click to verify (or change any fields with a linked zoom to the card pane view) and the new card data is in the CardScan database and then synched with your mac Address Book.
Couldn't be easier! Very satisfied user! While I'm not a frequent Amazon reviewer or any kind of computer expert, I wanted to post a counter review to the two negative reviews recently posted. While individual products and installations can sometimes be flaky and your mileage may vary, I found this CardScan product to be as good as I remember the Windows version being and better, because everything's better on a Mac (including Address Book being better than the fugly Outlook ecosystem).
Rating: - Application crashed! very disappointed!
I just bought the Mac version of Cardscan Executive. I was happy that a Mac version have been released. Unfortunately after a long day of trial and search for information... no way... Each time I launch the application it crashed!
Be very carefull before buying this product. I'm not sure it works on Mac. And technical support on Mac is unreachable... Cardscan support web site is dedicated to Windows users !
Rating: - Version 1.0 works, if installed by administrator
Version 1.0 requires that the application is run one time by an administrative user. This writes the serial # file in /Library, and creates the appropriate directories as admin. Once this is done, the application does work.
OCR is relatively slow, and is performed in the foreground, requiring you to watch a little window with a card image in it for half a minute. There is a batch mode for scanning, but again you must watch that window during batch processing. This modality makes the application less than useful as an address book.
The scanner itself is noisy and slow. I would prefer to use my ScanSnap S300M to scan cards, as it is faster and better, but CardScan cannot import images from other sources. Thus, I will have to carry around a second (small) scanner.
There are several small foibles: the country field is always populated, as stated above you cannot import and scan images from other applications, limitations on fields, interpretation, and some problems with misinterpretation of addresses in office parks and other odd places.
I have also not used the Address Book sync yet, as this could be dangerous given the installation bug above.
This application would have been better off in a scanner bundle, combining OCR with e.g. SBook, rather than a $200+ application.
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Previously, I wrote: Version 1.0 software requires an Administrative. Repeatedly asks for Serial Number, crashes while trying to set Preferences. Does not scan cards.
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