How to Buy a High-End Scanner
Falling prices and a growing demand for digitized graphics spurred growth in the scanner market and made flatbed scanners a more mainstream peripheral choice.  Scanning is essential for creating Web pages, for graphics-intensive business presentations and for OCR conversion of paper-based text.  The consumer market includes entry-level, midrange and high-end scanners.  Each offers a different combination of resolution, bit depth and price. 

Although flatbed scanners take up more desktop space than page-feed scanners, flatbeds offer more flexibility.  For instance, with flatbeds you can scan 3D objects or pages bound into books and magazines.  However for larger workloads in the business office environment they are impractical and the need for speed and automatic document feeding will mean mid to high-end black & white scanners.  You can expect a one to two-year warranty on most scanners with various "onsite" and "depot" support options that usually require additional money, thereafter.      

Pages-Per-Day Calculation 

Consider how many pages per day you need to scan.  Your choice in scanner will hinge around this calculation.   Take the total pages per day and multiply by the days of your work week, times how many days you work per year.  Add a bit of a percentage for growth and then select a scanner based upon that workload.    

Size of Paper Considerations 

While almost all flatbed scanners can accommodate 14" x 17" images, most of the standing automatic feeder type scanners cannot.  They tend to be designed mainly for black & white letter documents.  You may need to look at the specs closely, if your work load requires larger formats.   

Back-file Conversion 

Consider using a service bureau (like ours, here at TELEcomputers) to scan large amounts of existing "back files."  This could save you a ton of money, not just on the maintenance and upkeep of your new scanner but also on your original scanner purchase.  You may need a high end scanner to process the 500,000+ pages that reside in your space-wasting old file cabinets but only a moderate priced model to handle your day to day scans.  So rather than owning a brand new "worn-out" high-end scanner you may want to investigate using a service bureau to do the scanning for you.  This way you can select a scanner based on your needs to handle your daily workload going forward and not have to change your office into a document imaging warehouse for three to six months while you play back-file catch-up.  Did we happen to mention that we provide service bureau scanning?    

OCR and Other Needs 

Consider you needs for Optical Character Recognition (converting scanned files into editable text).  If you need this functionality  within your document imaging system it will mean you need higher resolution to scan your documents.  This may mean a completely different model scanner than the one based on your pages-per-day calculations above.  Higher resolutions and higher speeds mean higher costs.  Keep in mind that this is not an exact science and that many of the best (and most expensive) software packages that offer OCR still require hours of labor intensive reviewing to find the usual 2% to 10% of mistakes.  Even with a quality document editor program with a spell check or underlining feature (like with MS Word) you will still need human eyes and hours of labor for corrections.    

Optical Resolution 

Consider not only the resolution of your scanner, but also the resolution of your output destination (printer, Web page or monitor). An inexpensive entry-level scanner offers 300x600 dots per inch (horizontal resolution by vertical resolution), a midrange unit provides 600x1200dpi, and a professional-level scanner is rated for 1200x2400dpi. If you plan to print the image with a color printer, you'll need a higher resolution than you would just for viewing the image on your monitor. 

Bit Depth 

A low-end scanner provides 24-bit color, a midrange unit supports 30 bits and the most sophisticated equipment gives you 36 bits. A 24-bit scanner allocates 8 bits of data for each pixel in each color channel (red, green and blue).  Higher bit color depths result in better shadows and finer detail. 

Interface 

A scanner may have either a parallel or a SCSI interface. Parallel is generally slower, but offers easy hookup to any computer.  SCSI scanners require a SCSI interface card (which might not come with the scanner). 

Software 

A scanner bundle should include an OCR package and an image-editing program. Entry-level scanners may come with an easy-to-use image editor, while high-end page-feed scanners will almost always require the purchase of a third party software package.  Find out whether the included programs are full working versions or limited versions that you have to upgrade.  

Price 

Scanners can cost as little as $199 for the small home-office (SOHO) variety or as much as $25,000 for the high-end 85 ipm (image per minute) Panasonic SS855 with an automatic 1000 page document feeder.   

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