Feed paper documents into your Mac quickly and easily.
Henry Norr
Rating: Acceptable/Very Good (3.5 of 5 mice)
BY OFFERING AN ELEGANT, integrated way to get information on paper into your Mac, the PaperPort, Visioneer's compact desktop scanning system, took the Mac market by storm last year. This year's version, the PaperPort Vx, adds a host of features while retaining what was best about the original, including the price. Unfortunately, it also has the same limitations as before, as well as some new incompatibilities.
Classic Styling, Modern Skills
The Vx looks exactly like its predecessor. It's still small enough to fit even on a crowded desk. Basic operations haven't changed either: When you insert a sheet of paper, the device automatically switches on, scans the document, and launches the PaperPort application. You can clean up the image and add annotations, and then file, print, e-mail, or (if you have a fax modem) fax the result. You can also convert the scanned words into editable text by using the included OCR (optical character recognition) software.
Surface similarities mask important improvements. The original PaperPort scanned only in black-and-white at 200 dpi (with optional interpolation to 400 dpi); the new model is able to distinguish up to 256 shades of gray at 100 dpi or scan in black-and-white mode at 200, 300, or 400 dpi, without interpolation. A new chip Visioneer developed for the Vx scanner makes text printed on colored backgrounds more readable and accelerates several functions.
The new Vx software is Power Mac-native. It also supports Macintosh Drag and Drop, so you can file scanned documents simply by dragging icons from the PaperPort application to Finder folders. The built-in OCR software is now Caere's OmniPage LITE, successor to the Calera WordScan package that came with the original PaperPort.
In addition, a feature that previously cost extra -- software enabling you to mail scans directly from the PaperPort application -- comes standard with the Vx. So do two new add-ons: CorexTechnologies' CardScan SE, a business-card OCR program, and PictureWorks Copier, an application that gives you additional options for printing PaperPort documents, including adding headers and footers and using automatic collation.
Visioneer says that the PaperPort's new software requires 2 MB of free RAM but recommends 6 MB. Realistically, to scan graphics or complex pages or to use the OCR programs, you'll need 16 MB.
Scanning a simple one-page fax in the default black-and-white 200-dpi mode, the fastest one, took 17 seconds on a Power Mac 7500 and almost 45 seconds on a 68030-based Duo 250. Using the OCR software adds more time: about 25 seconds per page on the 7500 and more than 2 minutes per page on older machines. The Mac is completely tied up during the process.
You'll need still more time to correct recognition errors, which in our tests occurred frequently. When we scanned a fax from Visioneer, OmniPage LITE misinterpreted 44 of 365 words. The business-card OCR software is even worse -- 48 percent of the fields in a random sample of cards required correction. For those willing to spring for alternate OCR programs, you can replace the bundled OCR software with Xerox Imaging Systems' TextBridge or Caere's OmniPage Pro, both of which can link into the PaperPort application.
Connection Conundrums
Visioneer is developing a $99 adapter that will let you connect the Vx to your Mac via SCSI, but for now, it still connects only through a serial port. If your printer and modem ports are already in use, that's a problem. The cheapest solution is to buy a $20+ manual A/B switch, but you'll have to remember to flip it every time you want to use a different serial-port device. Momentum's Port Juggler promises automatic switching, but for the Vx, you'll have to get Momentum (a company known for ignoring customers) to send you version 3.2 of its software, and even that won't work with PCI-bus Macs. Visioneer says that Creative Solutions' serial-port cards don't work at all with the Vx.
A problem with the serial port on the Performa and LC 5200 reduces scanning speed to a crawl. And in Visioneer's online forums, users have reported several conflicts involving the PaperPort extension, particularly with Connectix' Speed Doubler.
One other annoyance: The manual says that you'll find a freely distributable viewer -- an application enabling other users to read documents scanned with the Vx -- in the box, but you won't. You can, however, pick up the viewer online.
The Bottom Line
The PaperPort Vx offers a convenient, one-stop way to convert paper documents into digital form, edit them, and file or send them -- once you've found a port for the scanner, satisfied the software's appetite for RAM, and learned to live with the disappointing OCR capabilities. Even so, the PaperPort Vx won't work in color and it can't scan books, magazines, or slick, glossy pages. If any of these limitations is a significant issue for you, you might forgo the space-saving PaperPort Vx for a more expensive flatbed scanner.
Price: $369 (estimated street). Company: Visioneer, Palo Alto, CA; 800-787-7007 or 415-812-6400. Reader Service: Circle #403.
A one-stop scanning shop, the compact and inexpensive PaperPort Vx can scan single sheets of paper in black-and-white or grayscale up to 400 dpi.
