Card shark (Targus Mini USB Business Card Scanner)

Member Name: liquidio

Product:	Targus Mini USB Business Card Scanner
Date:	22/05/09 (51 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Best way to store your cards, good value system

Disadvantages: Gets thrown by unusual cards, a bit tedious if you have a card backlog

I work in a job where I meet hundreds of people a year, and often need to be able to contact any of them at short notice. As a result, I have 6 full cases of business cards on my desk (With maybe a hundred cards in each). Sorting these out was a nightmare. Putting them all on a series of rolodexes would have filled up almost half my desk space and I have never been a fan of folders with business card inserts in them. But searching through that pile of cards for a single contact was becoming untenable.

So I decided to purchase a business card scanner, and this one seemed like reasonable value (although none were particularly cheap - it did give me second thoughts).

Installation and setup were not a problem for me (the USB system is a blessing for this), although I'm comfortable with computers. The unit itself is quite compact, although I'm not sure it's something I'd carry on my travels it sits nicely at the back of the desk. I wasn't a fan of the glossy black front but it's not offensive. Scanning speed was reasonable, although I would have paid more money for a system that would allow me to dump all my cards in a hopper so I didn't have to sit and feed them manually!

The data recognition software was fairly straightforward to use, but I'm afraid to report it didn't work all that well. It was great at coping with fairly plain business cards, but anything that introduced too much complexity (unusual orientations, foreign alphabets, overly-stylised writing) did throw the machine off. So don't think it's a case of scan and go if you want the full benefit of the system - for that you have to check the integrity of the data and manually enter anything missing.

But... once you have set up, the system is pretty useful. Being able to search a name or a number and retrieve the whole card (including any notes you have written on it if that's what you do) is much much easier than sorting through a pile of cards. And much faster.

So they key is to view this as an investment of time as well as money, but once you get it up and running you should feel a lot more organised and the product itself is pretty satisfying to interact with as long as you don't expect miracles from the text recognition

Summary: A good value card scanner, easy to use, but don't expect an effortless revolution

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