I.R.I.S. Business Card Reader II and I.R.I.S. Pen

I.R.I.S. has come into the scanning market with two different products that they hope will help your business.

The first device is the I.R.I.S. Business Card Reader II, which as the name implies, scans your business cards. It took a few minutes to install, but after that it's pretty simple. You load the software, press a button and scan away. The recognition was perfect for 'standard' cards, but anything elaborate isn't as good. One card, which was multicolored and quite fancy, was completely lost.

After scanning, it allows you to keep the image and, thereby, shred the card. No need to have a drawer full of cards. From the scanned image it's pretty easy to import straight into your palm or outlook. The good news is that even if the scanner doesn't recognize your card, you still have the image saved and organized and you can simply type in the data.

The other piece of equipment is the I.R.I.S. Pen. As the name also implies, it's a pen with an eye. After plugging it in you can instantly use it to scan and recognize any line of text you'd like. That said, it worked well, but I couldn't find a need for it. I mean, by the time I scanned the line, copied and pasted it, I could have typed it myself. Basically, you take this pen, and run it along the few lines of text that you'd like to scan. It rolls pretty easily and holds like a thick pen, so it did what you wanted completely, I just wasn't sure of the usefulness. Then again, I type 100 words a minute so I'd sooner type the line. If you're not a typist, then this is brilliant, just run it across and be done with it.

Between the two, I loved the Business Card Reader II, but both worked great and did the job.