CSSN Portable Business Card Scanner and Reader - Scan2Contacts

I was looking for something that would just scan cards directly into an outlook contact without going through clumsy intermediate contact management tools. This does it perfectly. Plugged it in, ran the install, calibrated and was scanning cards into outlook in about 5 minutes. couldn't be easier.

I had to return the first scanner I received because it did not work. This company does not provide any telephone contact information; you have to go to their website and send an e-mail. However, once you contact them, they are very helpful and very responsive. The second scanner I received does a good job of reading business cards. I do find it is necessary to check the information for accuracy before saving. The only time there seems to be a problem is when the business card is graphic intensive.

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It set up and worked relatively easily with Vista and XP. It does very well with simple cards. No editing required. If the card has lot's of logo graphics or odd fonts, it has some trouble. It will also occasionally mix up an 'i' with an 'l', but that is understandable. Recalibration reduces the problem. It also did not recognize hand written corrections on cards.

The big plus however, is that it has a very slick interface with Outlook Contacts. When it scans a card, it loads what it read into the New Contact window and awaits your edits. It also drops a .jpg of the card right into the notes section for easy comparison. That makes corrections easy and allows you to toss the cards.

I was not expecting a magic reader and it isn't, but it definitely helped me clean up Contacts and the hundreds of accumulated cards.

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I had great hopes for this product, since some of our execs return from trips with a lot of business cards. Unfortunately, it doesn't work well enough for me to recommend it.

First, the plusses: It's fairly intuitive to set up and run. It's also pretty small and lightweight. It scans directly into an Outlook Contact record, so you don't have to scan it and then transfer it from somewhere else. It's also very good at interpreting which phone numbers belong in which fields (i.e., phone, fax, cell), and it's pretty good at scanning them accurately. You have the option of scanning a JPEG image of the card directly into the contact record, which I thought was one of this product's best features, and it will put a backup copy of the JPEG into whatever folder you specify.

Here's the stuff that doesn't work so well: The Optical Character Recognition software would probably work great for plain text, but this is a business card scanner. Everyone's card is unique, including the color, the company name/logo and the text, and this OCR software just can't cut it. Out of 50 cards I scanned, I had to correct about 75% of them. Some of these were simply changing an "l" to a "t" in the e-mail address, but sometimes it would just drop off or change whole pieces of text, for example, "Manufacturing" became "I Vianufacturing" and "Pete L. Chase" became "Pete L.". Also, if the business card had two addresses, such as a street address and a PO Box, it often missed one completely or put it in the wrong location. I did calibrate the scanner before and during use, per the instructions.

In addition, you should know that if you have Microsoft Business Contacts Manager, you cannot use the JPEG feature, which is not mentioned anywhere in the sales information. Because of how inaccurate the scanning is, you NEED this feature so you can refer to the JPEG in case the contact record is wrong. I had Business Contacts Manager installed, but I wasn't using it, so I uninstalled it before I started using the scanner. Unfortunately for some reason, Outlook considered the JPEG to be an "unsafe attachment", so it blocked me from viewing it in the contact record. I e-mailed Scan2Contacts, and after doing some troubleshooting with me, they could not fix the problem.

In the end, if I have to fix three-quarters of the entries (which means I have to proofread 100% of them), and I can't access the JPEG to see what's correct, why should I spend the money?

I do think there is one way this scanner could function: if you scan the business card but don't save the resulting Contacts entry, you will still have the JPEG in a folder on your computer. The scanner automatically files it alphabetically by first name, so you could create a "digital rolodex" of JPEG cards, although none of the information would be searchable. The only thing you'd have to watch is if it scans the name incorrectly, you'd have to fix the file name, or you'd have a hard time finding it. "Scanning and fixing" may be a little faster than entering information manually, and if you want a file of business card jpegs, maybe this product would be worth it to you.

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I received this scanner as a birthday gift and I love it. Our collection of business cards cluttering up our wallets, drawers, etc. are now gone! This was incredibly easy to use once it was installed. Since I'm not very savvy about installing new software, I called tech support for help and they did an excellent job helping me get it done. I highly recommend this scanner.

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