“Is it time to replace your document scanner?”
The old adage goes, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” So is it best to wait until your document scanner breaks before you replace it? There are advantages to replacing it sooner.
Features – New Document Scanners have features.
For instance, Punch Hole Removal. It may not sound like a groundbreaking feature but consider how one customer saves plenty of time and lost productivity by upgrading. A doctors office that scans health records, where all pages had punch holes, every page was captured since blank pages with punch holes were being determined by the software to be worthy of saving. The end user then had to go back and manually delete the ‘blank’ pages. Ugh.
Additionally, Auto Color Detection has proven to be a big time saver as well. Mixed Black & White and Color originals are scanned together and pages that are color are saved as color while black & white pages are saved as black & white. This helps to keep files sizes manageable while not making the user separate pages that need to be scanned as color.
Other features can be big productivity boosters also depending on your scanning needs.
Speed – New Document Scanners are faster.
Some folks may feel that as long as the scanner feeds the paper and the user can keep up, having a faster scanner would be a luxury. But the speed of paper through the scanner is only one measure of how fast the document scanner works. The other part involves image processing. Newer scanners can process imaging functions faster than older models and decrease spells where the device will hesitate or feed pages at a slower rate. A more responsive scanner will give the user the benefit of adding more pages into the scanner at an increased rate and making their workflow/productivity that much better.
End of life – Eventually things reach their limits.
Perhaps you recall Windows XP. And then how Microsoft ‘pulled the plug’ on support. May not have seemed like a big deal but it was. Without ongoing security updates, users and businesses would be at significant risk if they continued using the software. While a scanner doesn’t present that type of scary exposure when it reaches the end of its support life, it can make for technical headaches. Eventually, manufacturers stop developing the interface software needed to run scanners with later operating systems and computing environments. This can make continued use of equipment a big challenge if not even impossible. Planning ahead for these inevitable situations can ensure no interruption to scanning production and easy transition to your IT department’s scheduled system upgrades.
If you feel that you should replace your scanning equipment check out our hardware page or send us an email at sales@medimicro.com.
