For a price that's more typical of a portable scanner, you can buy the Xerox DocuMate 3220, a desktop document scanner complete with a 50-sheet automatic document feeder as well as a flatbed. This entry-level document scanner—geared to individuals as well as home or micro offices and small workgroups—isn't the fastest scanner around, and you'll have to adjust one setting to get usable OCR performance, but it offers a lot for not much money. We don't see many lower-priced scanners with both flatbed and ADF, and this is a welcome addition.
The 3220 has a 17.9 by 13.2 inch footprint (WD), thanks to its letter-sized flatbed, so it's large enough so you might not want to share a desk with it. It has an ultrasonic double-feed detection sensor to catch paper misfeeds. To the right of the 50-sheet duplex ADF is the single-character LED that's used to display the number of the current Visioneer OneTouch scan profile)—you can choose between preset and customizable, numbered scan profiles, that you can switch between with up and down arrows. Scanning
You can initiate scans directly from the scanner, by choosing a OneTouch profile and pressing either the Simplex or Duplex button, or from the OneTouch interface on your computer. You can also scan from either PaperPort or OmniPage. The 3220 includes Twain and WIA drivers, so you can also scan from nearly any program that has a scan command.
Like most document scanners, the 3200 can scan at up to 600 dpi; it can scan in black and white, grayscale, or color. The default OneTouch scanning profiles and destinations include Scan (image PDF); PDF (searchable PDF); Print (BMP); E-mail (PDF); Fax (BMP); OCR (RTF); Archive (searchable PDF, 300 dpi); Custom (PDF); and Paint (BMP). It can scan to PDF, searchable PDF, JPEG, TIFF, and BMP formats; it can also scan to RTF and other document formats through PaperPort or OmniPage Pro.
Software
Software includes the Visioneer OneTouch scan utility with Kofax VRS scan enhancement, Nuance PaperPort for document management, and Nuance OmniPage Pro for OCR. Although it can scan business cards, it doesn't include business-card software.
Speed
The DocuMate 3220 is rated at 23 pages per minute (ppm) for simplex scanning and 23 ppm/46 images per minute (ipm) for duplex (two-sided) scanning (in black and white at 200 ppi), where each side of a page counts as one image. (For color scanning at 150 ppi, it's rated at just 12 ppm simplex/24 ipm duplex.) In speed testing using the OneTouch default settings for black-and-white image PDF, the 3220 was just short of its rated speeds, tallying 21 ppm for simplex and 42 ipm for duplex. This was a touch faster than the Editors' Choice Canon imageFormula DR-2020U, rated at 20 ppm and 40 ipm for simplex and duplex scanning, which we clocked at 18.3 ppm simplex and 36.1 ipm duplex. The Plustek SmartOffice PS286 Plus, rated at 25 ppm / 50 ipm, tested at 23 ppm for simplex and 37 ipm for duplex scanning.
When I switched to scanning to searchable PDF, widely used for document management, it took 3 minutes 22 seconds for the 3220 to scan and save our 25 page/50 image document to that format. It's a fairly typical speed for a scanner in its price range. The Plustek PS286 was a bit faster at 2:56, while the more expensive Canon DR-2020U lost little time in the OCR phase, scanning the same document to searchable PDF in 1 minute 23 seconds.
OCR
In scanning to OCR using the default OneTouch OCR setting for this scanner (black and white, 200 ppi, RTF format), its performance was highly problematic, with errors at all type sizes up to 12 points in our test fonts, even in commonly used fonts such as Times New Roman and Arial. However, simply by switching the mode to grayscale (still at 200 ppi), performance improved dramatically, and it was able to read those key fonts without errors at sizes down to 6 points.
The Xerox DocuMate 3220 is an entry-level scanner for personal, micro-office, or small workgroup use at a good price for what it offers. Its speed is in line with its price, and it offers a flatbed to boot. It should be a good fit for sole proprietors as well as micro offices and small workgroups. If they have problems with OCR quality, one simple tweak in settings should get it running right.
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