Review submitted by Richard Grainger, ClanCarnage

Today, I’m going to be looking at something a litle different from the usual crowd of media players and home storage - a Business Card Scanner, which purports to be "a device that brings traditional paper based business cards to the digital world". You'll know you need this, I guess, if you have a lot of cards that you collect on a daily basis.

Specifications:

• 2MP Camera, on folding arm with LED light, 148x83.5x18.2mm in size

• Optical Character Recognition rate of 96% or above with up to 600 dpi colour resolution

• XML support, advanced export functions

• Supports 221 countries and territories, 8 languages

• Quick search, synchronizes with Outlook, PDA’s and smart phones

What you get in the box:

• Business card scanner

• USB Male-A to MiniUSB cable

• Setup/application CD

• Travel pouch, English user manual

Design:

The Business Card Scanner itself is a lightweight little device made of metal, in a sleek black finish.

On the top of the unit there is an inlay that clearly shows where the business cards need to sit and allows them to fit snugly against the walls.

There are also two buttons which illuminate blue once the Scanner is connected via USB - one for taking an image and the other for activating the camera light, which is designed for maximise image quality in low-light situations - it won't matter if your office isn't brightly-lit.

The two mega-pixel camera is attached to a foldable arm that rests safely against the Scanner whilst it’s not in use; in order to prepare the scanner you simply pull the arm up into place.

On the side of the Scanner there is a small mini-USB socket, and four rubber feet are located on the bottom to keep it steady.

Setup:

The Scanner needs to be connected via the USB port on your computer. Once plugged-in, I found that Windows 7 automatically loaded the required drivers by itself, meaning the only manual installation I needed to do was for the included CardScanner software.

CardScanner Software:

The included CardScanner software is a database that handles the scanning and storage of information pulled from the business cards.

The overall interface is extremely intuitive and user friendly – the card acquisition is initiated by selecting the acquire image in the toolbar which shows the cameras point of view on a screen.

You can manually take the photo, or allow the software to take it once the camera has completed the necessary focussing; it also has an option to take two pictures for business cards that are double-sided.

Once the image of the business card is taken, the software takes you to an editing mode and automatically enters information that it pulls from the card into fields. You can input additional information as required at this point.

The CardScanner software also has a handy import and export feature allowing you to import/export to and from Outlook, Outlook Express, Excel or vCard, CSV and XML formats.

This means you can easily swap information between your email clients or create a backup to ensure you don’t lose any information.

There are also some categories preloaded into the software which will make sifting through your contacts a lot easier once you start to build up a large amount.

I run through the unboxing and full capture process in my YouTube video below:

Wrap up:

Overall I’m quite impressed with the Scanner - given the price is amongst the cheapest available locally. It has a clean design and the carrying pouch fits both the device and the USB cable, allowing you to store it in your laptop bag and briefcase in a safe and compact manner.

The included CardScanner software is simple to use and allows you to scan business cards and enter them into the database swiftly, thanks to the auto-detecting OCR that pulls information off the card.

The manual quotes a recognition rate is 96%, and in the variety of cards that I have tested, I have found the auto recognition to be pretty spot on. If you encounter a case where it doesn’t detect, or inputs an incorrect value for a field, you can change this easily enough in the edit screen. Thumbs up!

You know you want one if you've read this far - See more specifications and buy the Business Card Scanner here