Re: [OT] How fast are scanners nowadays?
On Thu, Feb 20, 2003 at 06:44:03AM +0100, Alex Polite wrote:
> Sorry for this grossly OT post. I'd like to scan a whole lot of
> documents and run them through OCR. Last time I checked scanning a
> page of text took something like two minutes. This is way to slow for
> my purposes. I'd need something that works with the speed of a
> photocopier. An alternative would be to have something that can
> process a whole stack of papers automatically.
>
> Anyone that has had any experiences with this?
You can get scanners with sheet feeders. Some are actual dedicated
high-speed/high-capacity scanners, those are very expensive. More
economical are the ones that are ordinary flatbed scanners, but the top
lid is replaced by a sheet feeder attachment that works pretty much the
same way as the top-mounted sheet feeders on copy machines. Scanning
doesn't take 2 minutes per page anymore, but add in OCR and it probably
takes at least that long.
Off the top of my head I can't give you model numbers or anything, but
if you go to some big reseller site like cdw.com you should be able to
find some of these. It used to be that a lot of HP scanners just swapped
the top lid like I said, you could later add the sheet feeder or buy it
preinstalled just like the duplex adapter on most printers.
--
Michael Heironimus
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