By Sean Doherty
Law.com
After moving my office from California to New York in 1996, and back again in 2007, I have learned the value of living with less paper by converting it to digital format. There is less paper to store, maintain and move; and it is easier to find information in digital format. If you find either of those values important, you will need a scanner to realize them.
The first, and most important step in living with less paper is to choose a good scanner to convert paper into a digital format. Look for a scanner that fits into the office without a forklift; that is easy to load; that does not suffer from unnecessary, intermittent paper jams; and that offers quality, duplex scanning with output to a variety of formats, including PDF and TIFF. And of course, it would be nice if it was bundled with feature-rich software that integrates the scanner with other desktop applications.
With the above requirements in mind, I reviewed Hewlett Packard's successor to the Scanjet 7710, the new Scanjet 7000 -- and I was not disappointed by its performance. As a home-office, work-group scanner, the Scanjet 7000 fit right next to my desk, integrated with my desktop applications (Microsoft Office, Adobe Acrobat), provided excellent scanning quality, and handled a variety of paper of varying quality and size without a paper jam. Here's how it worked in my home office.
IN THE OFFICE
The Scanjet 7000 easily fit next to my desk, with its small form factor of 10 x 10 x 13 inches. And, with a weight of only 16 pounds, I could move it on or off of my desk as needed to accommodate other work loads.
The Scanjet supported duplex scanning, up to 600 x 600 dots per inch, and came equipped with a 50-sheet document feeder. It connected to my computer (supporting Windows XP SP3, Microsoft Office 2007 and Adobe Acrobat 9) with a USB 2.0 connection.
The scanner comes with ISIS and TWAIN drivers to work with desktop applications. When I installed those, HP gave me the option to "Enable Instant Lamp On" for a faster scan mode, or use an energy saving mode. By default, I always take the energy saving modes for peripheral devices since they are used intermittently.
After the scanner was set up on my computer, I proceeded to install the software that came bundled with it: HP Smart Document Scan Software version 2.6; Kofax Virtual ReScan version 4.2 to enhance scan imaging; ScanSoft PaperPort version 11 for optical character resolution and to manage document and image files; Readiris Pro 11, additional OCR software; and Presto! BizCard version 5 to scan business cards.
Since I use dtSearch, I was not too crazy about the desktop search tool that was installed with the Readiris Pro software. But if you don't have a desktop search tool, the I.R.I.S. Desktop Search application makes it easy to search for content in defined categories for e-mail, files, music and images.
The HP Smart Document Scan Software gave me multiple scanning profiles to choose from. For example, after feeding the scanner a double-sided document and selecting "duplex" from the user interface, one click on the "Fast black and white scan to a PDF file" profile created a black and white, 200 dpi, image-only PDF file that was saved to the "My Documents" directory using the same file name as the profile name, with a number appended to the end of the file name. When I scanned a second file and saved the output, the number at the end of the file name was iterated.
Figure 0. HP Smart Document Scan Software user interface with default profiles.
The HP Document Scan Software also included a default profile for color pages. One click on that, with a color document loaded, yielded a 200-dpi, 24-bit color, image-only PDF file with the "Scanner JPEG Compression" option set for faster scanning. The result, like the black-and-white scan, was fast, with good image quality.
With its dual optical scanning interface, I was able to scan over 40 physical, duplex, black-and-white pages (80 total pages) in just less than one minute at 75 dpi. I did not get that speed at higher dpi settings or when scanning pages with text and color images. For example, I was able to scan text and color pages at 200 dpi at a rate of 40 ppm per minute. Scanning speed is going to vary depending on the content of the page and the dpi resolution set in the scan profile.
I loaded a 35-page, legal size document, with multi-color images and text into the sheet feeder. I clicked the searchable-gray-scale-PDF option and it created a searchable, gray-scale PDF file at the default 300 dpi setting - all in one click. Note that I could easily change the dpi setting, with options that ranged from 75-600 dpi. But on my first try, the software did not auto-detect the legal-size paper. In the scanning profile, I had to manually adjust the paper size to legal. Once done, I rescanned the document in legal size and the PDF output was searchable in Adobe Acrobat.
Figure 1: The settings for the searchable-gray-scale-PDF scan profile can be easily modified and saved.
Next, I rescanned the same legal-size document with Kofax VRS enabled to enhance legibility. The scanning process took longer, but the new output using Kofax was clearer than the original scan. But if your input documents are not old and faded, you may not need to enable the Kofax software.
Once you edit and save a scanning profile, the new profile setting will be effective the next time you use it. If you want to return to HP's default profile setting, a description of the setting is available from the user interface. But it would be nice if HP had a one-click button for each profile to restore it to its default setting. Then if I got wild with configuration settings, I could easily bring the settings back to normal.
HP included other profiles in its Smart Document Scan Software to scan and create searchable grayscale PDF files, send output files to e-mail or PaperPort, or send the output to an OCR application, like Readiris. But I did not have to settle on the default profiles for scanning. The software made it easy for me to create my own profiles where I selected the paper layout, choose the scan settings, and added processing enhancements such as auto-straighten documents, auto-crop images, delete blank pages, and print each page with a digital stamp. Finally, I directed the output to my file server.
Figure 2: Creating a new scan profile is intuitive and allows you to reproduce good results.
The HP Scanjet Document Software also came with a default profile to scan business cards. Using that, I scanned my business card to an 8-bit gray, 300-dpi TIFF file by feeding it into the scanner using the short edge, first. Feeding business cards by their long edge first resulted in the only paper jam during my testing. The short edge of cards, at 2 inches, gets trapped between the feed rollers - the paper stock and size made it difficult to progress the card through the scanner with contact from only one roller.
Figure 3: After my business card was scanned, HP Smart Document Scan Software allowed me to adjust the image contrast and brightness while comparing the original file to the prospective new file with changed parameters.
I did not spend too much time with HP's business card profile, but turned my attention to Presto! Bizcards. Using that, I comfortably loaded 45 business cards into the sheet feeder, short edge first, and scanned them all in approximately one minute. The scanner reads each card in less than one second, but the software takes time to input the scan and OCR the text into editable fields for name, company, etc. When I was done, I exported the cards to my Outlook contacts -- very slick.
WHERE THE DOCUMENT 'MEETS THE ROAD'
Once the scanning is complete, a document "meets the road." The document is digitized and ready to input into a document processing work flow. At this point, the HP software bundled with the scanner added value to the hardware and enabled it to operate as a gateway to my document management work flow.
The HP Document Scan Software displayed the scanned images in an easy-to-use UI where I viewed the output, page by page. If I saw that a page was missing or that it did not scan properly, I could rescan it and insert it into the appropriate place in the document. I could also scan additional pages or images and insert them into the final output file, which I sent to PaperPort.
Figure 4: Once a document is scanned, prior to making it final, HP software enables you to add, remove and manipulate the pages on demand.
In PaperPort, I used the OCR feature and sent documents to Microsoft Office applications (Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, and Word) as well as to PaperPort's Web publisher. I also transferred them directly to my file server using FTP.
Although the Scanjet has no direct connection to the network, I could still walk up to it and scan or copy documents using the interface on the scanner itself. A two-line LED display showed the various profiles available. I selected any one of them using a simple navigation key and chose single or duplex scan or copy from dedicated buttons on the device. When I selected "scan" in either black and white or color, the Scanjet software opens up on the desktop. If I chose "copy," the Scanjet utility interface opens up on the desktop and a copy of the scan is sent directly to my default printer. So no, do not throw away your printer after you invest in a scanner. Just make a note that you will use the printer less and save on toner.
CONCLUSION
The Scanjet 7000's small form factor, with high quality, duplex scanning and an advanced sheet-feeder design, was welcome in my office. That, added with the bundle of software from Image Recognition Integrated System, Kofax, NewSoft, and Nuance Communications, made the Scanjet 7000 a good value despite its $999.00 price tag. But I certainly wouldn't mind paying less with only the ISIS and TWAIN drivers and the HP Document Scan Software.
This article is republished on Law.com.
Product Reviewed:
Hewlett-Packard Scanjet 7000
Duty cycle: 2,000 pages per day
Cost $999
Home Office Equipment Used:
Lenovo Thinkpad T43
Microsoft Windows XP SP3
Microsoft Office 2007
Adobe Acrobat version 9
HP Laserjet 1320
HP is known for there systems and printers. I have been using HP's printer since years and have never got any kind of complains and I hope that this HP Scanjet is going to be one of the best too
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Posted by: Multifunction Printers | October 01, 2009 at 01:25 AM