Targus USB Mini Business Card Scanner

Written by Dave

Friday, 29 February 2008

I had the chance to use the Targus USB Mini Business Card Scanner (PA570) to scan a bunch of business cards. It's a useful idea for those with lots of business cards, and designed to speed up the process of putting it into your computer, pda, or smart phone. It scans the business card, and tries to extract the data from the card and saves the data along with the proper field.

The Business Card reader I used isn't the latest one from Targus, but it retailed for $180. The card reader comes with a USB cable, and installation CD with the driver and also Presto's BizCard 4.0 Software.

The device is a little black unit with a slot for you to slide the business cards through. You actually just place the card there, press Scan in the program and it will pull it through while scanning it. The problem I have here is that the edges or walls of the slot are not straight. It is slightly curved so when you slide your business card through, it will be slightly angled. The Presto BizCard software can still read the text in the card, but since it saves a black and white copy of the card, it won't be straight. The second problem I had with this is that it doesn't tell you which way to slide your card in - face up or face down. Well with this device you put the business card face down. There's an icon or image showing a paper with the corner folded over, but it doesn't show lines in that folded corner like many other devices do. But once you figure this out, then you should always remember.

Aside from that, the business card scanner is completely powered by the USB which is a good thing. No separate power supply needed.

Well that's all the device actually does - so onto the software: Presto BizCard 4.0. The device that I was able to review and test is probably 2 years old, so the software is outdated. My version of the scanner isn't the same as what's on Targus' site.

The software keeps a copy of the business card, scans the data for text, and uses its text recognition to try to grab the Company Name, Name, Title, Phone, Fax, Email, etc. From there you can sort your business cards, and keep them in that program, or you can export the data and import the file into Outlook and then inturn into your Blackberry, Smart Phone, or PDA.

My big problem with the software is that after scanning the entire card - sometimes the final image has a bit of the side cut off. With the cards I used, parts of their name or emails were there, and someone named Dhalwinder, was now named Alwinder after text recognition.

If the software actually keeps a whole copy of the card, the recognitiong was very accurate and put the data in the correct fields. But for others, it would get things mixed up or just have totally wrong things. I guess that's what happens with such a diverse cards. It would be impossible to be able to read and recognize every single business card out there.

After scanning, you have the option of correcting the data yourself, and saving it so its not that big of a deal if there is an error here and there. But, when it happens to many fields for 90% of the cards, it makes scanning the business card almost pointless.

I do agree though, if this card reader and software were accurate it would be very good to have. But, since people make some pretty dumb, illegible and dark cards or multi-colored business cards to look "cool", the software out there just isn't sophisticated enough to decipher 100% of the cards out there. Sadly, technology isn't there yet. Most cards have different ways of denoting stuff. Some people put Telephone, some put T:, some put tel.

With the Targus Mini USB Busines Card Reader and Presto BizCard 4.0 software does not work most of the time. You'll find yourself filling in or changing most of the data yourself. Might as well just scan it yourself. I also wish the scanner wasn't black and white, and would keep color copies. I do not recommend this product until the text recognition can imporove.