Currently at prices that market them distinctly towards businesses with heavy scanning needs, high speed document scanner models are a significant step in power from regular home use document scanners. They can sometimes be difficult to identify specifically as high speed document scanners because the phrase ‘high speed’ is often not included anywhere in the product name itself. If you’re shopping for one of these products, the only real way to identify them from the slower models is to carefully read through the product descriptions. Look for a mention of the high speed feature in and of itself. The best telltale sign of a fast document scanner is if its description bothers to mention the actual rate of scanning. This takes the guesswork out of it and indicates that the manufacturer is willing to market the speed as a major drive of the scanner. You should look for a rate measured in images or pages per minute, with eighty to ninety a minute being a good goal to strive for.
As with slower scanners, a high speed scanner’s primary function is to interpret the papers fed into it into files appropriate for computer-based manipulation and transportation. Since a scanner with high speed is typically too expensive for casual use (prices run from hundreds to thousands of dollars), they justify their prices by other extra features that are also useful for fast-paced businesses. For example, one feature generally bundled with high speed is duplex. Duplex document scanners are capable of scanning both sides of a document simultaneously. Along with the general high speed scanning abilities, this can drastically cut down the amount of time it takes to scan in a large amount of documents or images. Similarly, adf scanners are also both duplex and high speed. ADF stands for automatic document feeder, and simply means that you can set a stack of documents in the scanner and it will scan through the whole pile itself. All these features don’t come cheaply, but the benefits and synergy they have working together should be obvious. Other relevant features that you may want to look for include various pre-programmed settings to allow for quicker scanning starts on specific kinds of documents or images, the capacity to adjust for differing paper thicknesses, and of course actual scanning quality. 24-bit color and 256 grayscale is considered a minimal standard for units this powerful.
As mentioned above, the prices commanded by these kinds of scanners are not negligible. There are ways to save, but if you want a good scanner for the workplace you need to be prepared to shell out a reasonable amount of money regardless. Try to watch for businesses that are either going out of business or are downsizing. If you can catch them at the right time, you may be able to buy their scanners off them for much less than retail prices. Also watch other storefronts that sell used products, and consider purchasing a slightly outdated model if it still offers everything your office needs. By doing so you’ll get all the important functions and save money you would have lost otherwise for something brand new.
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