How to Buy a Good Scanner

Document and image scanners used to be hardware only for publishing professionals, graphic artists or very large offices that dealt with huge amounts of paper. Not so any more. Computer scanners now come in a variety of types, shapes and prices, and are used by everyone from corporate executives to professional photographers to housewives looking to get more organized.

Most small businesses, and many households have now realized that a good scanner is a necessary piece of equipment. But it is important to be well prepared when choosing from the many options available.

The first and most obvious step is to accurately determine what you need to use the scanner for. Will you be scanning a lot of photos? Will you be scanning documents of a non-standard size (like newspapers)? Will your scanning consist almost exclusively of transferring paper documents to digital format?

Answering these and similar questions is an important first step to buying the right scanner, as there are special models made for each different kind of function. There are scanners that can do it all, but they cost much more. Then there are scanners that do one function very well, and others adequately. You want one of those, so that you can accomplish your primary task, and be able readily handle an unforeseen scanning need.

One of the first stats people will throw out when you mention looking for a scanner is resolution. Forget about it. Nearly every new consumer scanner on the market comes with more than adequate resolution for anything but advanced photo and imaging work, in which case you would need a more expensive specialized scanner anyway. But if you need a number to work with, just make sure the scanner has higher than 300 dpi (dots per inch) resolution.

The features you do want to look closely at are:

An automatic document feeder so you don't have to hand-feed pages;
USB interface so the scanner can plug into any standard computer;
Decent color depth (24-bit will do, but 48-bit is better);
Duplex functionality for those times you need to scan double-sided documents;
Intuitive software so the captured data can be effectively and efficiently stored.

It is recommended to not go with a standard simple flatbed scanner, as it will be a pain to scan multiple documents one at a time when the need arises. While flatbeds are ridiculously inexpensive, spending a couple hundred dollars more for one that includes a document feeder and duplex functionality is well worth it.