While it may seem a bit of an overkill to get a special scanner for business cards, anyone who has ever gone to a trade show, or attended a business conference, knows how many cards you can come back with -- and how long it is to enter them all in your address list. Normal scanners can, of course, perform the same task with a decent OCR program, but they are not as fast, and you have to then manually transfer the information.
Opinions differ widely on the actual usefulness of business card scanners. Because the design, lettering, and graphics on business cards can vary so widely, a lot of the information that is scanned will need correcting. Some people say that they are a real time saver, and that any corrections that need to be made are still a lot less work than typing in each card manually. Perhaps, though, that depends on how fast you type -- I always found that picking through the information on each card and checking it for errors was a lot slower than simply typing it myself. But if you're a hunt-and-pick keyboard artist, this may be a real help.
Business Card Scanners
- Corex CardScan
- NewSoft Presto! BizCard Reader 5
- Targus Mini USB Business Card Scanner
