CardScan® Executive PLUS

Readers keep in mind that this review is for the CardScan with Version 8 software. Earlier versions will have reduced functionality but I understand most users enjoy their versions as well. I needed to get Version 8 because I built a customized PC with 8GB RAM running Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit.

I had been looking at this item for a very long time and finally decided to buy it after extensive research (and procrastination). Besides I was concerned with OS compatability. It works great with Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit and will work with any operating system that is less powerful, yes XP, other Vista versions that run 32-bit also. Don't know about Windows 7.

I was overjoyed to scan in several hundred cards (accumulated over 10+ years)over a few days while watching baseball, movies and just watching tv.) The scanning capability is excellent, picture perfect. The colors are true to life. The OCR (letter recognition) is excellent, once in a while it misses a few letters but is amazingly easy to correct, just type over it and keep going. This is mostly due to weird characters that most OCR programs will not recognize anyway. So odd logos, fancy letters, script lettering and weird fonts may have to be typed in manually as they are not easily converted.

The sorting and category functions are outstanding and the CardScan files are easily integrated into Microsoft Outlook. I also use Mozilla Thunderbird but haven't imported cards to it yet as I don't like some of the Thunderbird protocols (i.e. it removes images from emails and places them separately in the email, why?? I want to see the email exactly the way it was sent!!). It may do the same to the card images that I scanned.

You can place your cards in several categories and create as many categories as you want and remove the categories that are useless. Many are pre-loaded. CardScan also finds duplicates and puts them in the same place so that you can decide what to do with them. This is helpful for businesses that have multiple locations.

For business travellers there is an online storage feature that allows your scanned cards to be saved online so that you can access them from the internet anywhere in the world by logging in to your account. (Oh yeah and its free. Greater capacity is available at a nominal cost.)

You can also synchronize with your Windows contacts file or other contact managers. The tips feature makes you aware of extra functions until you know them and can shut it off anytime. The program has a password feature so you can keep out prying eyes.

You can print all your cards or just those that you want. For double-sided cards you can scan both sides by selecting that feature. For vertical cards you can rotate the card image until you see it the way you want.

So in essence, this is a great tool. Buy one, you will be happy you did and will be sorry you waited so long to do so.