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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Devourer of business cards, January 19, 2008
Reviewed by: Zachary Zaletel, Alaskan Apple User Group Member
(Note - this review is for the IRIS Card Pro4 scanner/software bundle, which isn't currently listed on Amazon, though the software included is listed here. The review is for the Mac OSX version of the software)
One of the rituals that predates my entry into the workforce by many years is the exchange of the business card. Born well before the days of ubiquitous computers, iPhones, blackberries and email made carrying an entire address book in your pocket easy if not convenient, the business card has endured and continues to serve its purpose well. Of course, now that we do have the ability to digitally store all the details included in a business card for quick retreival or emailing, it can be a chore at times to sit down and log some quality data entry time. With this problem in mind, IRIS has a software and hardware solution to make life a little easier, IRIS Card Pro4.
The IRIS Card Pro4 system is comprised of a diminutive scanner and accompanying Cardiris software. The scanner is roughly the size of three to four stacked chocolate bars, with a card feeding slot and two buttons on top. It connects to your computer via an included USB cable to a powered USB port - no additional power cord is necessary. Once plugged in, all you have to do is install the software and you are ready to go; the software installs quickly and relatively painlessly.
Once you open the Cardiris software, all you have to do is set a card at the scanner and the machine takes care of things from there. Within a few seconds, a scan of the card shows up on screen with a variety of informational fields below for names, address, phone numbers, email and the like in some state of completion. The Optical Character Recognition, or OCR, is one of IRIS' specialties, and they make good use of it here, ripping the appropriate text from the scanned image into the fields (More on this later). You can now scan that pile of cards in your wallet/rolodex/binder and easily digitize them.
Once you've scanned all the cards, it's time to do some exporting. No, I'm not talking commodities or shifty business down by the docks, rather moving all of the scanned information to your program(s) of choice. You can simply highlight the cards you'd like and drag them to Mail, Address Book, Entourage, Now Contact X, vCard, HTML or other programs, though some configuration is required for others. Dragging and dropping nicely creates new entries into the address book - the scanned card image is placed in the photo box and all the appropriate fields are filled in. Same for Entourage and Mail. Interestingly, iPod is listed as an export option for Windows yet not for Mac OS - though I suppose an iPod would pull from the Address Book so there is no need for a specific export for OSX. The help files included are well stocked and were able to answer any questions I encountered.
About the OCR and text extraction. It works very well - most of the time. Of six business cards I had floating in my wallet at the time I sat down to test, I encountered a few translational errors in the software. I scanned my own business card a couple of times and achieved various results - the first scan, my name was Loch Zoletel, another time, scanning at a higher dpi, I was once again Zach Zaletel. At the normal 400dpi again later, everything scanned as normal. On average, there was maybe one correction necessary per card scanned - which must be manually typed. The software also has some trouble with stylized logos. An acquaintance who works for a PR firm who has a logo with vertical and slanting bars before the letters in the name, to which the OCR engine produced |P|R|F|i|r|m (names have been changed to protect the innocent). The software also has some trouble with highly stylized logos. One other quibble - the relatively standard shift-tab key combination to move backwards one field is not implemented in Cardiris. Even still, generally I would guess a fair amount of time and effort are saved. The software (which is available separately) can also handle multiple cards scanned simultaneously on a flatbed scanner or similar device. Also, if the program fails to properly place one of the elements on the card, you can draw a box around it on the image onscreen and drag to the appropriate field.
You can also use the scanner for pictures, receipts, handwritten notes and other smaller pieces of paper or what have you. The reproductions aren't museum quality, but they work well in a pinch.
The IRIS Card Pro4 package makes for an efficient way to take a stack of business cards, receipts, photos or other items (hand written recipes?) and move them from physical format to your computer. The scanner is small and gobbles through a card in a few seconds. The software is quite simple to use, and it interfaces well with other OSX software. The OCR works as well as any I've tried - it's not 100% perfect, but it is more than able. The only question left in my mind is the price. At $199 retail, I have a hard time imagining its value to an individual, unless they're constantly at conventions and other large-scale events with business cards coming in left and right; it makes more sense as a business purchase to take care of a small office, though if they have a scanner, perhaps just the Cardiris software itself would suffice. Price aside, the Iris Card Pro4 scanner/software package is a well made and easy to use product I would not hesitate to recommend.
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1.0 out of 5 stars
It didn't work on my iMac - Disappointed, September 12, 2009
I recently purchased a Fujitsu S1500M that worked great "out of the shoot". I purchased it for it's small footprint. Fast, great scans, but it doesn't work with Snow Leopard. (They are slowly working on a fix), The Cardiris Pro 4 software that came with the scanner Fails all the time (just quits. I tried to get help from Tech Support to no avail. I was totally disappointed. I did do a work around and that was to install it on XP in Parallels-I rarely use Parallels since I installed it on my Mac. It worked fine and fast with XP with Parallels on the Leopard.
This is just an observation but since switching to Apple Macs last year I have seen bad support and un-timely updates from software vendors providing both PC andMac versions. Don't get me wrong, most are great but there are a handful of third party large and small I have seen that just don't meet Mac user standards of "It just works." Cardiris is one of these third party providers.
Thanks to all the large and small third party software providers for the Mac OS platform. Good and Inexpensive Scanning and OCR software is lacking on the Mac platform. Once Fujitsu gets there s/w upgraded the S1500M and Yep 2.0 is all I need to continue with a "Paperless" office.
Sorry Cardiris, you need to step up to the plate!
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1.0 out of 5 stars
do not buy this, July 7, 2009
i use a mac and have a ton of business cards to get through.. someone suggested i buy a card reader and i got this one. HUGE mistake. it says it can read 10 cards... but you are LUCKY if you can get it to do four. it is difficult to use and basically a huge waste of time and money. if you want to buy this... save yourself the money...you may as well hand type all of your business cards into your address book because it will be faster and easier than using this product.
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