IRISCan Express 2 (Mac/PC CD)

Nota bene: I am a Mac user, and this review is only about the products interaction with Mac OS 10.5.
The IRIScan express 2 beats the DSmobile 600 hands down in terms of Mac compatibility, but that was still not enough to encourage me to keep the product. Despite the great OCR functionality of Readiris Pro 11 and the promise of convenience of Cardiris (which I did not get a chance to use), the software interface and workflow has a "we just managed to get this out the door" feeling to it. The interface is not at all Mac-like, and the scanner does not, on the Mac, provide a TWAIN or Image Capture driver. That lack forces you to use the provided clunky applications to make any scan.

Despite Readiris's outstanding OCR performance, the PDF output is less than optimal. The Windows software included with the DSmobile 600 (the only portable, sheet-fed competitor that claims Mac functionality [and doesn't deliver]) produces perfect facsimiles of scanned pages and adds OCR text to the PDF that allows you to search and index it without losing the character of the original document, just like Amazon's "Search Inside This Book" feature for those of you who haven't experienced PDFs like this. Readiris Pro does not have this feature. Its PDFs are what you would get if you took the text document output and printed to PDF: disappointing and not at all useful for archival purposes, my motivation for purchase.

Also, the scanner is EXTREMELY slow, and all-caps are deserved in this case. The scanner takes more than 60 seconds per page. This is impossible to use if you are looking at a stack of documents you need to digitally archive. Enough said. If you are looking to do paperless office on the Mac platform, you need to use either a sheet-fed all-in-one machine from Canon or HP or, even better, get the Fuji ScanSnap, which at $600+ is insanely priced but works like a charm... so I've heard.

FYI this is the first Amazon product I review. I review this product given I cannot remember ever having to deal with such a useless product. If I could give it zero stars I would have. I looked at this product (the IRIScan express) and the Pentax DSmobile 600 Scanner. I first purchased the IRIScan Express given it appears to have a more robust software bundle while having similar hardware to the DSmobile scanner. What a big mistake! I own a Windows XP computer and the software installation was extremely difficult (and I am a fairly technical guy). After 3 attempts, I finally got the software to properly install. My next issue was the quality and speed of the scanner. The highest quality setting does not produce a very high quality image and it is sloooooooooow. Also, there is no option to scan multiple pages into PDF or any other type of multipage format (PDF does not appear to be supported). This was a big issue for me as I scan multipage documents. Finally, connecting the scanner after disconnecting it was also a challenge (I had to reboot my computer to get the scanner recognized). Eventually I got frustrated from dealing with all these issues and returned the product. I got the Pentax scanner and it simply works!!!!! The Pentax works like a charm - quality is great and the scanner is EXTREMELY easy to setup and use. Do not waste your time and money on this IRIScan express piece of junk! The reason the Pentax has so many positive reviews is because it works!!

Greatly disappointed. The software provided did not function with Vista. Would not scan. After several reinstallations, removal caused a system crash. Support is extremely weak. No guidance on website, superficial fixes to problems, very little documentation. After several days waiting for response to my email asking for help, I received direction to contact them by phone 9-5, M-F EST, as if some of us don't have to work for a living. Never received an answer to my second email. Product has been returned.