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From Document Manager Magazine Vol 20 No 05 - September/October

Ingeniously designed to combine the best elements of a desktop scanner and a mobile device, the ScanMate i940 can handle almost anything you might care to throw at it, without breaking a sweat.

Looking outwardly very much like its stablemate the i920 workgroup scanner (essentially the same device but without USB power), the ScanMate i940 is a surprisingly powerful and flexible machine for its size and apparent 'lightweight' image. Indeed it comes with Kodak's usual 3 year guarantee for peace of mind. It folds up to a comfortably portable 11 inches or so in length with the ADF/lid closed, and weighs just over a kilo.

The i940 is therefore small enough to be easily deployed as a mobile device for on-the-road staff, and the USB power option reduces hassle. Scan speeds are slightly reduced when scanning using the USB connection for power, as is to be expected: on mains power the i940 manages a very respectable 20 pages per minute (40 images per minute duplex) at 200 dpi (black and white/grayscale), reducing to around 8 pages per minute (16 ipm duplex) when running from the USB connection to a laptop or PC. Mobile capability isn't just about power cables, of course, and the i940 delivers elsewhere too: images can be easily scanned direct to cloud services such as EverNote as well as SharePoint.

As you'd expect from Kodak, no corners have been cut on image quality. PerfectPage and iThreshholding are present to ensure the absolute optimum image quality first time every time. Automatic de-skew and cropping, rotation, colour dropout, image merge, edge fill, and auto brightness/contrast adjustment mean that non-technical users will hardly very have to worry about having to make adjustments to the scan settings. The i940 can also automatically remove blank pages using content checking intelligence which needs to be configured by the user. This prevents the scanner from reading pages with relatively small amounts of potentially important content as 'blank' and ignoring them.

The i940 is also robust enough to handle mixed document batches easily from its 20 page ADF, including flimsy or damaged documents as well as business cards and embossed cards such as bank cards. The scanner comes with Newsoft's Presto business card management software which easily automates the process of adding new contacts into a database - perfect for travelling salesmen and the like.

Ease of use is not just limited to the image enhancement capabilities behind the scenes on the i940; the Kodak's Smart Touch software makes the scan process itself a simple matter. Smart Touch automates multiple-step scanning operations by capturing, processing, and sending information according to the users' specifications.

For example, if a business configured its expenses claim form scanning process as Option 2, an employee could simply select "2" on the scanner display. The expenses form would be scanned, processed, and sent to its proper destination automatically - whether that destination is as a searchable PDF on a network folder, or even a cloud service. The user can select from up to 9 pre-configured or self-customisable options. The Smart Touch interface also allows the user to edit images on screen should they require - although as already stated, with Kodak PerfectPage as good as it is, few users should need to do this very often.

More info: www.kodak.com/go/i940

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