CardScan Grabs Business Cards

If the business cards you collect at meetings, conferences, trade shows and other events are piling up in your desk drawers—or you've managed to file them in a Rolodex, but can't find the ones you want when you need to—it's time to consider getting a business card scanner.

I've been trying out Cardscan's Executive (MSRP $259.99), the midprice product in its line of three. While I'm still in the early stages of putting it to work, it's clear that the CardScan is going to become one of my core productivity and organizing tools, up there with my desk phone headset, online data backup service, cell phone and Bluetooth mobile headset, and USB labelmaker. (It's also going to entice, if not outright force, me to start using a contact manager or other PIM.)

For example, finally I'll be able to easily keep track of prospects, sources, vendors, PR folks and others I meet at trade shows—and do my follow-ups, find somebody after the fact, etc.

The CardScans are USB-powered, and all are small enough to be added to a mobile travel kit—which means I'll be bringing the Executive with me to any event where I'm packing a computer and expect (or hope) to have the odd minutes free to scan cards I've gotten, rather than wait until I get home.

A Small Scanner, Just for Business Cards

The CardScan Executive is small—maybe 1x4x6—taking up probably about the same volume as your notebook's AC adapter and power cables—and weighs just over half a pound. The lower-priced CardScan Personal (MSRP $149.99) is slightly smaller but is monochrome, and somewhat slower. CardScan also offers CardScan Team (MSRP $399.99), which includes two licenses, a scanner and more software, and CardScan LeadQualifier (MSRP $549), based on CardScan Team, which can scan a business card and a custom form, making it useful for trade shows and other events. 

Most CardScan sales are for individual-use products, according to Tom Stearns, director of marketing at CardScan, sold through retail channels. But the company has initiatives and products for quantity sales to midsize companies. Among these products are CardScan for Microsoft CRM, which is custom-designed to work with Microsoft CRM; and CardScan Team, "which is designed for a small or midsized company that doesn't have any CRM or contact management application, they use our product to manage contacts," Stearns says.

Few Pieces, Easy to Carry and Use

The CardScan appliances comprise the scanner, the USB data-and-power cable, which plugs into a port on a Windows laptop or desktop, and the software, which you install on whatever computer(s) on which you plan to use the CardScan or resulting data.

You may want to carry a copy of the roughly 80MB software install file on a USB key. (Advice: Write your software key on the space provided on the CardScan's underside; with this, you can always download a copy of the software from the CardScan Web site.) The scanner side of the cable is one of the standard USB terminators, making it easy to replace the cable if you damage or lose it.