Customer Reviews

IRISCard Mini Card Scanner (Silver)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I felt the previous review was a little too harsh and does not do this product justice for it's most effective use: namely, business card scanning. I'm a mac computer consultant and I recently set this up for a client who gets a large volume of business cards. While it doesn't get all information from every single card, it's still a huge time saver relative to manually inputing this information. I'm impressed enough that I'm looking to get this for myself right away.

Nice card scanner for the price paid. Works very good with Mac, but the recognition software and export feature could be better. Recomended.

This would be a great product, except...
First, I like the compact size. It is small enough and sturdy enough to fit in a briefcase. Handy for the type of person constantly collecting business cards. It does use USB A on both sides of the USB cable, so you are stuck having to carry yet another cable with you all the time.
It requires a special (flimsy) calibration card upon every new session, so make sure you keep that card in your pack of cards.

Here's what prompts me to write my review - The reader worked well when I took it out of the box. I was stunned at how it was able to correctly determine what text belonged in what field, and how easy it was to import the information to any contact database.

I got halfway through my stack of cards to enter. If only I had finished in one sitting. Something has happened to the feed mechanism. The motor still makes noise when I insert a card, but the card will not feed. nearly $100 for a one time use card reader seems extremely expensive.
I'm half a week through trying to get support from the manufacturer, and if nothing happens by the end of the day, I'll be returning this product to the retail vendor I purchased it from.

Had great potential, but is non-functional less than 24 hours after first use.

I've been looking for a small compact card scanner to use in our dental office to scan insurance cards and the like. This scanner appeared to have the right combination of features and price for me to go ahead and order it. I'm very sorry I did, because it definitely does not meet my expectations.

First the good things: The scanner is definitely small, but doesn't feel flimsy. It's heavy enough to stay in place on the desk. It doesn't feel obviously cheap or anything. It also gets its power from USB, so no separate power adapter.

Now, the rest: The scanner attaches to the computer with a non-standard USB cable that has the Type A connector at both ends. This means I can't share a cable with any other peripheral and just plug the scanner into whatever cable is lying on my desk. If they didn't have room on the scanner to put a full size B connector, they could have used the mini-B connector that's been a standard for over five years now.

The packaging is really chintzy. There's some folded cardboard inside that's intended to support the disc case of the software, but it looks like it was done by hand, and the case slips right through anyway. There's a couple of sheets in the box that are obviously hand xeroxed. It's one's first impression of the product and it doesn't quite scream "quality".

We were scanning insurance cards, which are generally the same size as credit cards. They're well within the advertised dimensions of the scanner, but when adjusting the scanner settings, you can't set a custom scan size to exactly match the size of the card. The custom scan size is only adjustable in half inch increments, so you either get a scan that's too big with extra data, or cut off. Additionally, custom sizes can only go up to 2 inches high, which isn't quite high enough to get the whole card (although the default business card size in the software does get the whole height for some reason, even though business card are shorter than credit cards).

The scanner has a nifty automatic feature that starts scanning when you insert a card. This would save a second or two because you wouldn't have to manually click a scan button on the computer to start. However, in our experience, the automatic mode would start feeding the card, but not actually start capturing until a quarter inch or so went through. With something as small and as densely packed as a business card or insurance card, you can't afford to lose a chunk off the side. We always lost the end of some crucial phone number or ID number when using the automatic mode.

The scanner generally handles the thickness of an insurance card fine, but doing something a little thicker like a driver's license or a real credit card always choked it.

When scanning in TWAIN mode (like we were doing), it always saves the scan in the same orientation in which the card goes through the scanner. Since the cards only go through the scanner sideways, it means our scans always came out sideways and we'd have to manually rotate the picture on the computer (or rotate our head to match).

Note: I only used the scanner in TWAIN mode, with our dental software as the front end. I never even used the business card organizing software. The scanning process is the same even if you're using it with their software, but maybe there's something redeeming about the business card organizing aspect of it that makes it worth putting up with the other problems.

In short, if you're looking for a TWAIN scanner, keep looking. There's got to be something better out there. If you're looking just to organize business cards, this might work for it, but with all its other problems, why not just get something tried and true like the CardScan?