Customer Reviews

Iris USOA447 IRIScan Express 2 Portable Scanner

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(16)

 

 

Nota bene: I am a Mac user, and this review is only about the products interaction with Mac OS 10.5.

The IRIScan express 2 beats the DSmobile 600 hands down in terms of Mac compatibility, but that was still not enough to encourage me to keep the product. Despite the great OCR functionality of Readiris Pro 11 and the promise of convenience of Cardiris (which I did not get a chance to use), the software interface and workflow has a "we just managed to get this out the door" feeling to it. The interface is not at all Mac-like, and the scanner does not, on the Mac, provide a TWAIN or Image Capture driver. That lack forces you to use the provided clunky applications to make any scan.

Despite Readiris's outstanding OCR performance, the PDF output is less than optimal. The Windows software included with the DSmobile 600 (the only portable, sheet-fed competitor that claims Mac functionality [and doesn't deliver]) produces perfect facsimiles of scanned pages and adds OCR text to the PDF that allows you to search and index it without losing the character of the original document, just like Amazon's "Search Inside This Book" feature for those of you who haven't experienced PDFs like this. Readiris Pro does not have this feature. Its PDFs are what you would get if you took the text document output and printed to PDF: disappointing and not at all useful for archival purposes, my motivation for purchase.

Also, the scanner is EXTREMELY slow, and all-caps are deserved in this case. The scanner takes more than 60 seconds per page. This is impossible to use if you are looking at a stack of documents you need to digitally archive. Enough said. If you are looking to do paperless office on the Mac platform, you need to use either a sheet-fed all-in-one machine from Canon or HP or, even better, get the Fuji ScanSnap, which at $600+ is insanely priced but works like a charm... so I've heard.

FYI this is the first Amazon product I review. I review this product given I cannot remember ever having to deal with such a useless product. If I could give it zero stars I would have. I looked at this product (the IRIScan express) and the Pentax DSmobile 600 Scanner. I first purchased the IRIScan Express given it appears to have a more robust software bundle while having similar hardware to the DSmobile scanner. What a big mistake! I own a Windows XP computer and the software installation was extremely difficult (and I am a fairly technical guy). After 3 attempts, I finally got the software to properly install. My next issue was the quality and speed of the scanner. The highest quality setting does not produce a very high quality image and it is sloooooooooow. Also, there is no option to scan multiple pages into PDF or any other type of multipage format (PDF does not appear to be supported). This was a big issue for me as I scan multipage documents. Finally, connecting the scanner after disconnecting it was also a challenge (I had to reboot my computer to get the scanner recognized). Eventually I got frustrated from dealing with all these issues and returned the product. I got the Pentax scanner and it simply works!!!!! The Pentax works like a charm - quality is great and the scanner is EXTREMELY easy to setup and use. Do not waste your time and money on this IRIScan express piece of junk! The reason the Pentax has so many positive reviews is because it works!!

Greatly disappointed. The software provided did not function with Vista. Would not scan. After several reinstallations, removal caused a system crash. Support is extremely weak. No guidance on website, superficial fixes to problems, very little documentation. After several days waiting for response to my email asking for help, I received direction to contact them by phone 9-5, M-F EST, as if some of us don't have to work for a living. Never received an answer to my second email. Product has been returned.

In my continuing road-warrior saga (business, not post-apacolyptic) I often search for that crucial item which makes new things possible and saves me time. While I can really dig a scanner that fits into my carry-on bag, the software integration has to be tight. The drivers have to install, the applications have to work as advertised on the box. And when I pay top dollar, I expect full versions of software ... not trial-ware or SE editions. You see where I am going here?

This thing has the potential to be kick-a$$ but it only achieves frustration. I have used this with both a MacBook Pro, a Toshiba Satellite with XP, and a Dell with VISTA; none of them are happy with the software installation. Once I solved the issues there, I began to notice the real limitations of the individual applications. The Mac versions and the Windows versions are not equivalent, and do not work the same way or perform equally. The business card scanning software is the best of the included applications, and its implementation with Mac and also with MS Office is poor... no direct imports, as the box seemed to say. Very laborious. In the end, I am a faster typist than the machine can scan in cards... so what is the point then? The sheet fed scanning is not up to the standard of my ancient (1997) CANON portable scanner, which makes no sense at all. Even my old HP SCANJET 4670, bought only for the coolness of the upright look-thru case (remember the ads?) performs as well as the IRIS, and comes with software which worked pretty well...

I know this company can make it work, and I desperately wanted this to be good. I will wait for their real product... when it comes along, and ignore the write-ups in Mac-Life next time.

After reading the nasty review below I was hesistant, but then I saw all the references to another product and just figured it was a competitor. I have the iris biz card scanner and it works like they said it would, so I have had good luck with their products. I saw this portable scanner being demo'd at macworld and decided to buy at Amazon because they had the best price. It works like I expected. Its small, easy to travel with, doesnt seem slow to me when scanning and is very accurate which is most important to me. Has a bunch of software included but I prob won't use some of them, just scanning documents and business cards while traveling are my needs and it does it great. I would recommend.

Remember in the 1960s when you'd buy a product made in Asia that would come with English-language instructions? Well the instructions for this are even worse. It's actually a fantastic product, but I don't understand some of its features and can't gather the info I need either from the company's web site or what is included in the box. Also, WARNING: Don't lose the calibration sheet that comes with this (as I did) because just when you need the scanner to work best, it will ask for that sheet and won't work again until you insert it.

I purchased this scanner with two goals in mind: first, to have a portable scanner I could take with me on business, and second, to simply convert paper documents into pdf files.

Unfortunately, I was never able to successfully meet the second goal.

If you are a person who is only trying to convert paper documents to a pdf file, and you don't have many hours of free time, then DO NOT purchase this item. If, however, you are a home-user with lots of free time to learn and understand the myriad options available, and you don't mind troubleshooting performance problems, troubleshooting software installation, etc... then this is definitely the toy you've been looking for to fritter away a couple of weekends.

I experienced numerous problems installing the software, and since there is no manual (it's on the CD and requires software installation) it was almost impossible to troubleshoot. Finally, I was able to install the software, which installed "button manager" tools in my desktop tray that I never used or needed. Next, I tried to scan a document. After literally 2 hours and 15 minutes of frustration, I was able to figure out how to scan a document (NO, I don't want to convert it to editable text, NO I don't want to enhance it, NO I don't want to automatically crop it, NO... can I just scan it, and save it as a PDF please? PLEASE??? No such thing. After hours of trying to figure out if it scans to PDF, I was never able to do it. I gave up and scanned everything in jpeg images, which created huge files. Then, the next time I tried to use the scanner, errors popped up, and I had to unplug the USB cable, plug it back in, and then fiddle around with the options to troubleshoot it. After some trial and error, I once again got it to work (had to turn off the automatic cropping feature that I don't want or need). After a month of using the scanner, it started scanning only portions of the document, leaving the remainder of the document either blank or blacked-out. I was never able to troubleshoot or fix this, since it does it only intermittently.

So I gave up, purchased a $39 flat bed scanner, installed the software in 8 minutes, and scanned to PDF files in another 5 minutes.

Now, to be fair, I'm sure this little scanner will eventually do what you want it to, but I lack the patience and the hours of free time in my job to mess around with learning the myriad different options and settings. Once again, if you want to perform a simple task, buy a simpler product.

This is what i get back from tech support when trying to contact. Don't waste your money. buy a visioneer, it's slow too but works and sfwr is much much better

"Error Occured

Dear user, we are sorry but an error just occured in this application and we are unable to display this page. A detailled email has been sent to the webmaster to warn him about this problem. If you need to refer this problem, the ticket number is: 20090927/164828

Meanwhile, you can click on the back button bellow to return to the previous page. Please accept our appologies for this inconvenience."

I've used this scanner for 3 years for scanning business receipts and reducing paper clutter in my office. Everything gets a scan and then it's filed into the trash bin. That said the scanner has a number of weak points.

Image quality: It's really not up to the task of scanning photos quality-wise, so if you were thinking you could use this for all your scanning needs, you'll be disappointed. I already have a flatbed scanner and if you scan photos you will want one too. It's not a speedy scanner either, but the speed is managable. It can be hard to get smaller items to feed in straight. Also you have to shove the receipt in very quickly or you'll miss the automatic rollers grabbing the paper and have to start over. Repeat this process for every receipt and it starts to wear on you.

Drivers/software: This is the worst part by far. The all the software and drives appear to have been written by 1st year computer science college kids on their summer break. The whole situation is a mess. There are NO 64-bit drivers! That should tell you something about this product - that they haven't bothered to invest the money to develop new drivers at this late stage. Most of their software is unavailable for download so don't lose the CDROM in the packaging. The patches for the software/drivers are inaccessible and cryptic - really have to search hard to even find some exist (try to find a comprehensive list of fixes on their website now - I dare you!). This is the primary reason for giving this product a low score.

There's no easy way to clean scanner. This is quite a design flaw as it's inevitable that the optics will get fouled at some point. But amazingly there's no easy way to clean it without some tricky disassembly of delicate parts. I can't comment on the ease of cleaning of other models (chances are none are great in this area) but it's hard to imagine them being any worse.

I think there are almost certainly other portable scanner products that are superior. I'm not sure why there aren't more sub $100 offerings in this category. You can get better flatbed scanners for half the price and the components are the same. I assume it's a niche market issue.

I installed this product easily the first time and while it tooks some work, it was working fine and importing into Evernote, my main use. I even purchased the upgrade the full blown Iriscan software. Then the problems began. I had crashes, support completely unresponsive, if you can even find a number.

The main deal is: This company only makes 2 consumer product. Really just 1, as it's just a different bundle. They make mostly industrial products. So their support is **awful**. Not just the usual hard-to-reach and incompetent but rude. I am professional programmer, I'm not a tech newbie. I knew their drivers were broken. But when I called them when the link on their website to driver updates was broken I was told "Well I guess there aren't any updates then, are there?".

Truly this is an unremarkable product from a terrible company. Choose almost any other similar product and you will receive better satisfaction. Yours might even work. I just got a ugly paperweight and an ear full of 'tude.