Business Focus: Desktop scanners
Dave Mitchell advises how to choose a desktop scanner, and reviews four likely options.
If your business is overflowing with paper records, that’s not a good look. Office rental costs are rising all the time, so it’s crazy for businesses to pay hefty monthly fees for space that’s being wasted on paper storage. Hunting around for physical papers can also be a waste of employee time. It’s time to get digitising.
But what if you need to keep the originals of invoices, statements, legal papers and so forth? Even here, a scanner can help. You can use easily searchable digital copies for everyday business, and keep the originals in safe storage offsite, in case you ever need to produce them. There are plenty of specialist companies that provide dedicated document storage facilities at reasonable prices.
The scanner won’t break the bank either: there’s a wide selection of fast document scanners available, at prices to suit even the smallest of businesses. This month, we try out professional desktop solutions from four big names – Brother, Fujitsu, Plustek and Xerox – to help you make the right buying decision.
Why not an MFP?
The appeal of a multi-function printer is obvious: you get print, scan and copy functions all conveniently combined in a single device, often at a competitive price. However, this approach can involve a lot of compromises. If you anticipate a high daily scanning volume, an MFP may create a bottleneck, with multiple users queuing up to print, scan, copy and fax from the same device.
Then there’s the question of performance. Multi-function devices normally have relatively slow scan speeds, and while dedicated scanners frequently offer duplex (double- sided) scanning as standard, that’s much rarer in the world of MFPs. If you want to scan a double-sided document, you might have to wait for the first side to scan, then physically flip it over yourself.
On top of that, it’s unlikely that an MFP will come with decent document management software – a must if you want your employees to be able to easily access digital documents. And, finally, most businesses already have their printing needs covered, so there’s simply no need to spend money on additional printing capacity that’s not needed. For all those reasons, a separate scanner is often the smart investment.
ADF or flatbed – or both
If you’re on a mission to clear a paperwork backlog, you’ll want a scanner with an automatic document feeder (ADF), so it can churn through a stack of papers without your having to manually place each one in turn onto the glass.
ADF capacities vary by model, but the scanners on review this month offer capacities of 50 pages and upwards. The latest designs also come with sophisticated jam detection sensors that stop the paper rollers before any damage occurs. We test these with a wide range of paper types and have always found them to be very reliable, but there are occasions