The Kodak I50 is an A4 SCSI-2 document scanner aimed at small businesses. Its main purpose is converting paper documents into electronic ones so that users can store or manipulate the data.

You can scan images, but its strengths lie in the speed and number of pages it can handle per day, which Kodak claims is 1,000.

This means that its optical resolution of 300spi seems modest compared to image scanners, but this is fine for optical character recognition (OCR). Output is boosted to 600spi with software interpolation.

Connection is by SCSI-2 only, with DB25 and 50-pin connectors. The scanner sits sideways on a desk, so the longer sides are actually the front and back.

The 75-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF) input tray attaches to the flatbed lid and the output tray is on the left. At about 90cm across with the output tray fully extended, the scanner needs plenty of room.

The feeder moves pages past the stationary scanning head, in a similar way to a fax machine. But there's no quick scan button, which would save time with regular tasks.

It took about nine seconds to scan a single-page document containing text and a greyscale image, using black and white mode at 200spi. We measured 43.7 seconds for 10 pages.

Using the supplied dated version of TextBridge 2.0 - the i50 would benefit greatly by having the latest version - a combined scan and OCR of the same single page in monochrome at 300spi took 13.9 seconds.

It took 84.3 seconds for 10 pages, a throughput of almost 8ppm, which is much faster than you'd achieve with a standard (but usually cheaper) image-oriented scanner and ADF unit.

A test image scanned on the platen using the highest setting (24-bit colour at 600spi) had good detail, but the red tones were muted. However, this was without colour calibration and the automatic colour adjustment in the Twain driver gave a good result.

Kodak supplies Twain and Isis drivers. Both are easy to use, but the bundled applications are poor.

The TextBridge Classic OCR package does a reasonable job of reading text, but it's a cut-down package and version 2.0 is dated. PaperPort LE provides web publishing, email, fax and distribution functions, but it's slow when viewing or manipulating images. Also, MGI Software's PhotoSuite SE's interface and purpose are at odds with a business scanner.

In the expensive world of OCR, the Kodak i50 is a low-volume unit, but it needs better software to win more customers.

Price: £1,250 (ex. VAT)

Specifications:

Scanning technology: Single CCD
Optical resolution: 300spi
Maximum scan size: A4
Connectivity: SCSI-2

Contact: Kodak 01442 261 122
www.kodak.co.uk