blah said:
Hello people. I am looking for a scanner. It will be required to scan mostly
text forms to *.PDF files. After this I will fill out these text forms
virtually with acrobat. The scanner will need to cue documents ranging in
pages from 5 to 40. TCP/IP interface not essential however would be good.
Multifunction not required as I have already have numerous printers. looking
to spend around 600 USD. Can anyone help with a recommendation???
You could probably get a really cheap scanner with an ADF on it.
The question would be, what page-per-minute scanning performance
are you after ? I saw one which scanned at one page per *second*
rate - for $3600. 8 page per minute for less than $300. The
scanning speed will affect the price. Try typing "scanner adf"
into a search engine, and see what pops up.
http://castle.pricewatch.com/s/search.asp?s=scanner+adf
It looks like $650 buys about 22 ppm, in those Pricewatch results.
Note that the scanning speed is quoted at 200 dpi, and changing
the resolution will affect the results. They may also have cheated,
by scanning in greyscale or black and white, rather than color.
In terms of mechanics, machines that handle paper, operate in
a dirty environment. In the copier end of things, in my working
life, I've seen a number of valiant attempts to make paper
feeders that won't jam or screw up. And none of them lasted very
long. One copier used vacuum assisted paper movement (which I
thought would be virtually bulletproof), and even that machine
was reduced to dog-status after one year of use. So on your
ADF, you should expect to have to clean rollers, replace rollers
and the like, and you should consider picking up expendables
for the scanner, a couple weeks after you take delivery (drive
belts, rollers, cleaning kits). The couple weeks, gives you time
to decide whether to keep the machine or send it back. You should
buy or price replacement components now, so there won't be any
surprises later ("I cannot get parts".) And if possible, download
a copy of the user manual, to see how complicated the paper
path is. You may be seeing a lot of that paper path... Or
maybe your secretary will - and she will tell you all about it.
Paul
