Portable Duplex Document Scanner with ADF provides a small, but full-featured duplex document scanner for efficient workspaces.
Once upon a time, we lived in a paper world. Everything and I mean, everything had paper copies. While there are still a lot of business out there that operate using paper — like doctor’s offices or lawyers — much of our world is now done electronically. Not only does this help the environment, but it also helps us all with saving space and reducing clutter. Several years ago, I was working for a video production business and that is where I first became acquainted with scanners. At the time, the scanner was a huge flatbed scanner that took up an entire desktop. It was massive and an office had to be planned around that piece of equipment. Fortunately, scanner technology has evolved along with the rest of the world and so it’s pieces and parts have gotten smaller. That said, I just recently discovered an amazing device in the Epson DS-320 Portable Duplex Document Scanner. It’s small — it’s portable — and it captures paperwork and other materials beautifully.
The Epson DS-320 scanner is touted as having the fastest scan speed in its class. It’s specs state that it can handle scanning jobs up to 25ppm and will tolerate paper thickness between 51.8 – 230 g/m2. It has a 20-page automatic document feeder and is a full-featured duplex scanner. The hardware is somewhat flexible in that it can be powered by either USB or with its AC power adapter. This is great because it can cut down on extra cables when you travel. The DS-320 scans color documents with ease (48-bit input/24-bit output) and features a maximum scanning resolution of up to 1200 dpi (to achieve faster scans, use 300 dpi). The scanner has support for both Mac and Windows operating systems and comes with some of its own software. For its size, the Epson DS-320 really packs a powerful punch.
While many people just use their phones to scan pictures and documents these days, I still have a very valid reason to use a real scanner. When I go to conferences, I end up with dozens of business cards. Having to take a single photo of a business card and then manually input that information into a database is a painful process. The DS-320 scanner is ideal for business people who need to be able to scan documents, receipts, or business cards on the go. While it isn’t the smallest scanner in the market — it still weighs 2.4 pounds — the quality of the scans are perfection. To me, it’s the ideal option for scanning on the go.
Set-up of the scanner is very, very easy. You simply plug it in and download the necessary drivers/software from Epson. As I mentioned above, there is some software that comes with the driver package. This software package includes:
- Epson Scan
- Document Capture Software
- ABBYY FineReader OCR
- NewSoft Presto! BizCard
- EMC ISIS (software requires Internet connection for download and installation)
- Driver Support: TWAIN, ISIS
Since one of my primary uses of this scanner is for business card scanning, I was very interested in the BizCard software. So, I started it up and grabbed a stack of business cards. I was amazed at how well the DP-320 and the software worked in tandem. I scanned a single card as a test and found that not only did the scanner get the material captured within just a few seconds, but the software was about 90% accurate about the information it collated into sorting fields. To me, this was very impressive. So, I put about 5 cards on the scanner and pushed ‘scan’ in BizCard. Again, I was impressed because I only had to press ‘scan’ once and the scanner pulled through all of the cards for input into the software. The only issue I ran into was with thicker business cards. If you have standard business cards, the DS-320 won’t have any issues with it, but the ‘specialty’ cards that are thicker than the standard will likely jam.
This is a remarkable scanner that provides a valuable service especially for the traveling business person. The Epson DS-320 Portable Duplex Document Scanner with ADF is portable, but also powerful. I think it’s well-worth the investment.
For more information, visit epson.com/DS-320.
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