Does anyone have any experience or opinions on business card scanners? Seems like the CardScan brand is the best but they're way out of my price range.

I'd like to spend around $100. Have about 300 business cards that need to be scanned and managed, so the scanner needs to come with kind of management software-- uploaded into Outlook or something at a minimum.

My dream scanner would be the CardScan executive scanner http://www.amazon.com/CardScan-Executive-Compact-Business-Scanner/dp/B0002WYJN0

but I like the drag & drop functionality of this one http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000H1DCI4/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_2?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=B0002WYJN0&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=024GFXCXYNQRZNYHR99K

I have no experience with business card scanners so any input is appreciated.

11/18/2009 1:15:37 AM

Just curious. Why do people scan business cards instead of just databasing the information?

Found the answer...

Quote :

"There is no reason to get caught up in manually inputting information unless you absolutely have to. For most businessmen the price of a card scanner is well worth the money."

Sounds lame.

[Edited on November 18, 2009 at 2:30 AM. Reason : Lame.]

11/18/2009 2:26:45 AM

I'm pretty sure you could pay someone on TWW less than $100 to input the info from 300 business cards

11/18/2009 2:40:21 AM

11/18/2009 9:21:52 AM

You would think your office would have something like this. I can't imagine one individual would have such a dominating need for one (unless you were home office only) that you couldn't share. Just m2c.


You'd probably have better luck asking colleagues or posting a topic on LinkedIn.

11/18/2009 9:27:19 AM

My dad has a business card/ receipt scanner that organizes them and can be exported into an excel or csv file to be imported into whatever address book you use.

I use it a lot for my job, and I really like it. There's one at costco for around $100 I'm pretty sure. Can't remember the brand though.

11/18/2009 9:30:15 AM

It's a neat idea in theory, but the ones that I have used have not been very accurate.

In other words, at least 50% of the cards scanned need to be manually edited anyway, so they don't really save you all that much time.

11/18/2009 9:41:36 AM

well the scanner is more for my boyfriend than me. he goes to a lot of trade shows and in general is a very very good networker. he has hundreds of business cards and he actually does network with these people. always calling or emailing someone every week to talk about shop or just catch up. the problem is that sometimes when he wants to reach these people, he has to dig through a bunch of shit to find their card. he's not the most organized person so sometimes he loses the cards or just gets frustrated and stops looking.

something like this would help him out a great deal. he's constantly getting new cards and also using linked in, if it could all be packaged and accessed through his outlook, he'd be able to search by company, name and position to get in touch with the people he wants to contact.

i will look into costco, thanks for the tip. and djeternal, your comment is kind of what i've been reading online. the lower end scanners aren't very accurate and the good ones are hundreds of dollars.

Quote :

"You would think your office would have something like this. I can't imagine one individual would have such a dominating need for one (unless you were home office only) that you couldn't share. Just m2c."

i'm not sure if either of our offices has one of these, but if they did i don't think they'd want an employee scanning in hundreds of business cards for their personal use. also, the business cards keep coming in so its more than a one shot upload.

[Edited on November 18, 2009 at 11:34 AM. Reason : kldfjksdjf]

11/18/2009 11:32:59 AM