Customer Reviews

CardScan Executive Card Scanner (Mac)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

Fortunately, I was eligible for a $179 competitive upgrade direct from the manufacturer for an old CardScan Windows brick I found down in my basement in the box of orphaned peripherals. I had loved CardScan back in my Windows days, but had lost hope that they would come out with a Mac version. In the meantime, I had struggled with the kludgey I.R.I.S. business card scanner for mac and its flakey crapware that really didn't integrate with Mac Address Book all that well and had a horrible OCR recognition error rate and field parsing engine and seemed to run like it was written in Javascript.

Well, I'm happy that the Mac version of CardScan works flawlessly for me with a typical Mac setup (an Intel Mac Book Pro running 10.5.5.) and that setup was a snap. With some trepidation, I synched with my Address Book and no precious contact data was lost or damaged. I then scanned some business cards and it parsed the various fields with almost 100% accuracy, including some tricky company names in graphic logos, and put the data in a suggested "inspector" window. One click to verify (or change any fields with a linked zoom to the card pane view) and the new card data is in the CardScan database and then synched with your mac Address Book.

Couldn't be easier! Very satisfied user! While I'm not a frequent Amazon reviewer or any kind of computer expert, I wanted to post a counter review to the two negative reviews recently posted. While individual products and installations can sometimes be flaky and your mileage may vary, I found this CardScan product to be as good as I remember the Windows version being and better, because everything's better on a Mac (including Address Book being better than the fugly Outlook ecosystem).

I bought this product a year ago after seeing it at the Macworld Expo and and initially liked it. But the initial excitement wore off quickly:

1.) When I synced with my address book, I lost all my address book entries. This is a rather big deal, so please make sure you back up your address book before you sync.

2.) I bought a new Mac recently and installed the cardscan software on that new Mac. To my surprise, it turned out that I was not able to use the software on both my old and my new Mac. I received a message that the license key was already used and that I had to buy a new one (for $207.99!). This is despite the fact that, when I bought the scanner and the software, there was no mention of any restriction of the license to one seat or one computer or one user. The order confirmation did not mention any license restrictions and the license agreement that is embedded in the software does not refer to such restriction. I believe strongly in intellectual property protection, BUT, but it is a very questionable business practice to disable the use of a product that a customer paid for in full until an additional (and, I might add, substantial) amount is paid when that was not part of the purchase or license agreement. Obviously, if taken to court, the company would lose. But if you are not prepared to go to that kind of trouble, you might want to stay away from this product. When I emailed the company inquiring about this business practice, I received no reply to my question.

3.) When it became clear that the company was not going do to anything about the random license restriction, I asked about the necessary steps to remove the software and all related files from my old Mac in order to be able to use the license key with my new Mac. Saying that this was like pulling teeth would be a huge understatement. I had to send 7 or 8 emails to finally get the answers. Mind you, this is something that is normally clearly stated on a software company's website or is even in the embedded help file. And even if not, it hardly ever takes more than one email to a software company to get clear instructions; not even from small software developers who don't have a dedicated customer support team.

If you plan on using this product on one computer only, don't plan on buying a new computer that you want to use the scanner with and don't plan on contacting customer support, you will probably be fine. Otherwise, I would think twice about buying this scanner.

The only game in town (that I know of) for scanning cards on a MAC.
Three negatives:
*Mistake prone: some evident, some you might miss (don't believe everything you see)
*Slow and hangs
*Can totally screw up MAC Address Book and Entourage data when syncing if you're not paying attention
Not quite ready for prime time as a business app on MAC

I just bought the Mac version of Cardscan Executive. I was happy that a Mac version have been released. Unfortunately after a long day of trial and search for information... no way... Each time I launch the application it crashed!
Be very carefull before buying this product. I'm not sure it works on Mac. And technical support on Mac is unreachable... Cardscan support web site is dedicated to Windows users !

WARNING: Does not work with Snow Leopard. I have used CardScan for years and been extremely happy with my PC version; thus, I upgraded to the Mac version for my laptop. Obviously, I have installed Snow Leopard a day too early.

CardScan Executive for Mac Card ScannerI go to so many Music Industry events, and constantly am being given dozens of business cards. I've been terrible at follow-up. My prior system was no system at all. I tried keeping them in a folder of plastic card sheets - but after a time, alphabetizing became impossible, and I couldn't always place who someone was or where I'd met them. I tried entering them in my MAC address book, but it was time consuming, and these multitudes of cards got mixed in with my close friends and associates. So Executive Card Scan for Mac was the best ever solution. I scan a card, it takes a couple seconds, I check to make sure it has picked up all the info. (Most normally printed cards scan perfectly, but hand painted designs such as my own cards don't scan properly). I then correct any info if necessary, and then I have a great space to write in any comments or notations, such as where and when I met someone. I can also email (it connects to Outlook) straight from the site. I can click next to an address and connect to a Google map of how to get there. And I can keep full records on further contact with the individual whose card it is. I can arrange all my contacts in personal or job categories too. All in all, this product was money well spent. Pamela Phillips Oland

Version 1.0 requires that the application is run one time by an administrative user. This writes the serial # file in /Library, and creates the appropriate directories as admin. Once this is done, the application does work.

OCR is relatively slow, and is performed in the foreground, requiring you to watch a little window with a card image in it for half a minute. There is a batch mode for scanning, but again you must watch that window during batch processing. This modality makes the application less than useful as an address book.

The scanner itself is noisy and slow. I would prefer to use my ScanSnap S300M to scan cards, as it is faster and better, but CardScan cannot import images from other sources. Thus, I will have to carry around a second (small) scanner.

There are several small foibles: the country field is always populated, as stated above you cannot import and scan images from other applications, limitations on fields, interpretation, and some problems with misinterpretation of addresses in office parks and other odd places.

I have also not used the Address Book sync yet, as this could be dangerous given the installation bug above.

This application would have been better off in a scanner bundle, combining OCR with e.g. SBook, rather than a $200+ application.

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Previously, I wrote: Version 1.0 software requires an Administrative. Repeatedly asks for Serial Number, crashes while trying to set Preferences. Does not scan cards.

I was concerned by some of the negative reviews, but this thing works just fine. OCR is remarkable. Save yourself a few dollars and just get the CardScan Executive version, it comes with both Windows and Mac software (you need to go to their website to retrieve a Mac serial number using the included Windows serial number).

Product seems to work well when installed. BUT, I had to wait in the support queue to get a license code that worked and turns out Amazon has the "old" software on the shelf and it can't recognize the license codes in the box. Once a tech was on the line (LONG wait) then the problem was fixed in 1 minute with a simple link to the right product version.

I purchased this after reading the mixed reviews here on Amazon.com. The bottom line is that I am still using the device on the Mac platform as I do find the utility to outweigh it's glitchiness.

The product was not easy to install. My initial entry of the registration code (from my sealed box) was met with a response that this product had already been registered. That took a couple of phone calls to get resolved with a new and unused registration code.

My biggest issue with this product occurs when I try to clean up the scanned data. The program fills in the respective fields with values derived from the scan. Naturally, you expect to do some cleanup in fixing typographical errors or moving data around from one field to the next. But routinely, I get about thirty seconds into my edits when the program mysteriously reverts the data back to the incorrect scanned values that I have just been cleaning up! How aggravating. To compensate for this, I now wait at least thirty seconds after each scan so that the program has it's chance to process whatever it's processing. Initially, I thought this error might be related to my own computer processor. But the program does insert the scanned data into the fields almost instantaneously after the scan. It's only about thirty seconds later while I am in the middle of my edits that it re-populates the fields with the original and sometimes incorrect scanned values.

A couple of inquiries to tech support has not yet resolved this issue. In my humble opinion, I think they've got software issues.