PageScan Color: Sheet-fed scanner comes of age
PageScan Color: Sheet-fed scanner comes of age
By Zatni Arbi
JAKARTA (JP): The competition among small footprint scanners is obviously heating up. You must remember PaperPort from Visioneers, the first generation of this type of computer paraphernalia. Then HP came along and released HP ScanJet 4s, which was its own version of PaperPort. And just recently, Logitech came out with its PageScan.
For Logitech to manufacture a page scanner is no surprise to us at all. The company has long specialized in two different types of input devices, i.e., scanners and mice. All Logitech scanners in the past belonged to the handheld type. Experience has shown that, in order to be able to work successfully with a handheld scanner, one has to have a level of dexterity that almost parallels that of a surgeon. When the new, sheet-fed model of page scanner came along, computer users were excited. Finally there was a scanner with the ability to scan a whole page without taking up as much space on their desk as a flatbed scanner does, and requiring less time and effort than a handheld scanner does to produce good scans.
Common to today's generation of sheet-fed scanners is the absence of the Power On or Start button. All we have to do is connect the cables, run the program, and insert the paper to be scanned into the paper intake slot. The moment it senses the edge of the paper, the mechanism inside it jumps to life and swallows the paper. It's so simple to use.
Ever since Logitech introduced it, PageScan Color has won rave reviews from computer magazines. So, when Memori Primatama informed me that they had already brought this product in, I immediately asked them to let me try it out and review it.
Hardware
Logitech PageScan Color looks a little bit bulkier than its competitors, which is unsurprising since this scanner is the only color-capable among those available today. Despite its size, it sits comfortably on top of the case of my medium tower PC.
The unit draws power from an adaptor that also connects it to the parallel port. A separate power supply provides DC power to this adaptor. The printer cable is attached to the adaptor, too.
The supplied cables are long enough to allow us to organize our desk, although the numerous cables may get unwieldy at times. The power supply adaptor, which works from a 230 volt outlet, is rather oversized for today's standard. If you intend to carry this scanner along with your notebook, you will wish that Logitech had given you a more compact power supply.
The scanner itself consists of a base and a top unit. You may think that you cannot use a sheet-fed scanner to scan a page from a book, but with PageScan Plus you're in luck. If you need to scan a page of a book or a bound report, you can simply detach the top unit from the base and place it over the page. When you click on the Start button on the screen, the motorized scanner will start moving by itself. You only have to guide it. In other words, you can use it as a motorized handheld scanner.
The highest scanning resolution levels are 200 for 24 bit color, and 400 for text or grayscale images. During the installation, the program will ask you to insert the Calibration Card to get the best color scanning result.
The software
Good hardware is only half the story. A piece of good hardware is not so useful if it doesn't come with equally good software that enables us to tap its fullest potential. Logitech made an excellent decision by bundling PageScan Color with the special version of PaperMaster electronic filing system from Documagix, Inc. We'll have a close look at it later.
The control center for the scanner has one button for each of the five tasks we can accomplish with it. We click on the Text button if we want to scan text, the Image button if we want to scan images, or the File button if we want to scan and file hardcopy documents electronically. We click on the Fax button if we want to fax a hardcopy with our fax/modem, or we click on the Copy button if we just want to use the scanner and the printer as a photocopier.
Each time we click on one of these buttons, a dialog box will appear. We can choose our options, such as whether we want to scanning normal text, small and poor quality text, or text with a tinted background. We can tell the software whether we are going to scan the entire page or only certain sections of it. We can even tell the software the name of the file to automatically save the scanned text, or to let us give the name and decide the file format after the scanning process. The options are very thoughtfully provided, yet we can bypass them for subsequent jobs.
We click on OK, and a different dialog box will appear, indicating that the scanner is ready to take our printed document. All we have to do now is insert it into the scanner. The scanning process for text and images are quick, but if we choose the 400 DPI color it takes much longer.
The OCR is not as powerful as OmniPage Pro, of course. For instance, we cannot edit a recognized text before it is saved. When I tried reading a page with text printed in Helvetica, the OCR read the open quotation mark " as TM. But the rest of the text had no error.
PaperMaster SE
PaperMaster SE helps organize our scanned documents in a very intuitive way. The program's interface resembles a set of filing cabinets. We open each drawer by double-clicking on it. Inside every drawer, we can create hanging folders.
The sample folders that come in the "Open Me First!" drawer give a very good example of how our files can and should be organized. We can create as many folders as we wish inside a drawer, and we can create as many drawers as we like, too. We can set the properties of the folders and drawers, such as their color and name, using the menu that we invoke by clicking on the right mouse button.
Inside each folder, we can place an electronic copy of our documents. So, for instance, in our "Finance" drawer, we can place scanned copies of our expense reports, tax records, bank statements, etc.
If we have to scan documents in a hurry and worry about filing later, we can scan them into the Inbox tray. Then we can click and drag individual document copy into the appropriate folder and drawer when we have the opportunity.
If you have to scan a page sideways, don't worry. PaperMaster can rotate the page 90 degrees to the left or to the right to make sure that you can read the text on the screen. Images can be enhanced, too.
Individual documents can be viewed on screen in a very practical manner. When we click on the document name found in the list on the folder, the viewing window will be loaded. We can choose from the thumbnail representations of the pages the one that we would like to view. The viewing area is large enough, and we can zoom in to see details or to read poor quality text. We can even annotate the pages. A yellow button on the page indicates a note. Of course, we can print out the displayed page any time we need to.
Final word
Needless to say, for most business purposes, Logitech PageScan Color fits the bill nicely. You can scan a page and fax it immediately to a colleague using your fax/modem. The best thing about this scanner is its bundled PaperMaster document filing system. It really helps you organize your documents by scanning them and then keeping them in digital form. I would even suggest that you buy the full-version of PageMaster for your office and even home use. You can use PageScan's OCR to "read" hardcopy and import it into Winword documents.
As a replacement for a photocopier, PageScan Color may not be the best choice. Because of the shared parallel port, the software starts printing only after we've completed the scanning of the originals. It requires a lot of hard disk space to save the image temporarily.
With its 200 DPI color resolution, Logitech PageScan is not going to replace a desktop publisher's more expensive flatbed scanner. However, for business use, it certainly is a far better choice than a handheld scanner. In fact, it's the most reasonable choice.