Plustek OptiCard 820 portable high-speed scanner

Plustek has just released a compact, high-speed color scanner – the OptiCard 820, which is specifically designed to handle pictures and business cards. The new scanner goes beyond scanning as it can also store and organize the images into a contacts database.

The scanner’s control panel consists mainly of two buttons, the Scan and the BCR (Business Card Reader). A single-pass grey scan takes only 7 seconds at 300ppi, and 8 seconds at 300ppi for a color scan. The unit can be operated at 4 different scanning modes – the 48-bit color input, the 24/48-bit color output, the 16-bit greyscale input, and the 8/16-bit greyscale output. The maximum scanning area is at 105×148mm while the minimum is at 33×43mm.

Supporting its data and business card management capabilities is its I.R.I.S. Cardiris 3.5 program. The software makes access to images easy by organizing them into contact databases. It also recognizes multiple address databases and formats and features export and synchronization, automatic orientation, deskewing, and OCR capabilities.

It recognizes cards from 50 countries, want to modify a certain photo? Software bundled with the device is Image Folio, an application which enables users to edit images taken from scanners and other such electronic devices.