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The Plustek SmartOffice PS3060U ($449) is a compact, modestly priced document scanner suitable for use by an individual or for shared use in a micro office. It can scan to any of nine preset, customizable scan destinations. The PS3060U surpassed its rated speed for both simplex and duplex scanning to image PDF format, and showed good optical-character-recognition (OCR) performance in our tests.
Design and Features
At just 5.8 by 10.4 by 5 inches (HWD), finding a space for the PS3060U shouldn’t be difficult. You can even take this 3.7-pound scanner on the road, as it comes with a soft carrying bag. It is designed to scan up to 4,000 sheets a day. The scanner’s cover folds back to become the automatic document feeder (ADF), which holds 50 sheets. The paper path is straight-through; sheets fed into the ADF emerge into the output tray, which snaps onto the base at the scanner’s front.
Software bundled with the scanner includes NewSoft Presto! PageManager 9, Abbyy FineReader Sprint 9, Plustek DocAction (which lets you program the scan buttons), and the Twain driver. On a separate disc is Mac software, including Plustek MacAction (the OS X version of DocAction), and a Mac version of PageManager.
Scanning Profiles
You can scan from the front panel using any of nine numbered, preset scanning profiles, which are configurable through the DocAction utility. The default profiles include ones for scanning and saving to file in several formats, including image PDF at 200 pixels per inch (ppi) and 300ppi, searchable PDF, and JPEG. Other profiles include scanning to several destinations: to a JPEG that opens in MS Paint; to an email that opens in your default email client; directly to your printer; to an FTP server; and to Abbyy FineReader for text recognition, after which the document is opened in Microsoft Word.
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You can select a profile on the scanner using up and down arrow buttons to the right of the Scan button; the profile number is shown on a single-character LED display. Once you choose a profile, you press the Scan button to initiate the scan. You can also initiate scans directly from nearly any program that has a scan command using the included Twain driver. You can also scan from PageManagerwhich lets you open scanned or saved documents in a variety of programsor from FineReader.
The PS3060U has a good range of image-processing features. Auto Threshold automatically converts the current image into a binary black-and-white image. Auto Rotate automatically rotates documents depending on their content. Auto Crop and Deskew automatically straightens and crops images, getting rid of white space around them. Auto Mode automatically detects document color and scans document in color, gray-scale, or black-and-white mode, while Multi-Image Output scans and saves documents in two or three modes at the same time. Color Dropout removes red, green, or blue when scanning forms, and Blank Page Removal automatically removes blank pages.
Scan Speed
The PS3060U has a rated speed of 30 pages per minute (ppm) for simplex scanning and 30 ppm/60 images per minute (ipm, where each side of a page counts as an image) for duplex scanning. It slightly exceeded its rated speed in scanning to image PDF format by scanning our 25-page test document in simplex mode at 34ppm and in duplex at 65.2ipm. It’s faster than the Plustek SmartOffice PS286 Plus , rated at 25ppm and 50ipm for simplex and duplex scanning, respectively, which I timed at 23.2ppm in simplex and 37ppm in duplex.
See How We Test Scanners
In scanning the same 25-page/50-image document to searchable PDF, the preferred format for document archiving for many offices, the Plustek PS3060U averaged a lackluster 2 minutes 42 seconds, while the PS286 Plus averaged 2:56. Several lower-price scanners with lower speed ratings were much faster. For instance, the Fujitsu ScanSnap iX500 ($764.98 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) , rated at 25ppm, scanned the same test document to searchable PDF in 1:05 seconds, just 4 seconds slower than it took to scan to image PDF, and the Editors’ Choice Canon imageFormula DR-C225 ($420.00 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) , rated at 25ppm, finished in 1:09.
OCR Testing
In OCR testing using Abbyy FineReader 9, the PS3060U did well, reading our Arial test font down to 6 points, and Times New Roman down to 10 points, without error. It also did very well with two of our more obscure fonts. As the PS3060U lacks a business-card-reading program, we were unable to test its ability to read and sort business-card text.
Conclusion
The Plustek SmartOffice PS3060U is a solid, compact desktop scanner that can be quickly stashed away in its cloth bag when not in use, and toted with you if you need it on a trip. It doesn’t have the speed in scanning to searchable PDF or the range in bundled software of the Editors’ Choice Canon imageFormula DR-C225, but it’s one of the few low-priced scanners that comes with any software to speak of for the Mac. Although it can’t match the DR-C225’s stellar OCR performance, the PS3060U still does well in text recognition.
3.5
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The Plustek SmartOffice PS3060U can scan to multiple preset destinations, and is compact enough to take with you when you’re on the road.
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Source link : https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/plustek-smartoffice-ps3060u