Iris Business Card Reader

As anyone with a huge pile of business cards will testify, manually adding your contacts to a database can be tedious. The Business Card Reader II from Iris is designed to reduce the drudgery from this common chore by means of a document scanner and OCR (optical character recognition) software.

While the scanner won't win any awards for aesthetic appeal, it weighs just 200g and has an uncomplicated design. A motorised feeder pulls cards or photos across an internal lens, which is capable of capturing media up to 6 x 6in.

The Business Card Reader II software is easy to operate. A single dialogue box provides options for capturing data and lets you choose an appropriate paper size and image type (black and white, greyscale or colour) at resolutions between 200 and 600dpi. While there is the option to process cards automatically without having to click the Scan button, the device has no loading tray. You are therefore required to manually load each new card.

You don't get the visual results offered by dedicated flatbed scanners, but the card reader's output was generally very good. As a result, the accompanying software coped well with text recognition. Contact names and addresses were, for the most part, identified accurately and placed in appropriate database fields.

It failed to correctly identify some text at small point sizes and struggled with basic logos. Where the software excels, though, is in its ability to export contacts to a variety of mail clients such as Microsoft Outlook or to synchronise data with a Pocket PC or Palm device.

We were initially sceptical about the Business Card Reader II, as there are many alternatives. However, despite its flaws and a rather high price tag, it does a commendable job of managing your contacts electronically.

Contact: Iris 0800 138 1639
www.irislink.com

Specifications:

• Resolution: 600dpi
• 200g
• 150 x 68 x 29mm
• USB connection