March 2003
Winton Woods
Getting Ready for Remote Filing--Visioneer Does it Again!
Last month I had a really bad technology day. Among other disasters, the sheet feeder on my Visioneer One Touch 8650 jammed and I could not get it unstuck. I was in the midst of an important document-scanning project and I had to finish that weekend. My trusty Hewlett Packard LaserJet 3100 would not run with Windows XP and I was in a bind. I rushed to the store and in a moment of haste purchased a Lexmark X125, a combination scanner, color printer, color copier and fax which had received mediocre reviews as a multi-purpose machine but great reviews for its scanning function. It was cheap ($149) and I thought it would get me through the day until I could get my 8650 repaired. I was wrong. The Lexmark reviews turned out to be a tad or more overstated. Their online support was stupid or worse. The print quality was poor, the fax would not send more than one page and the sheet feeder would not take multiple pages. It went back to the store and fast. I recommend that you do not buy the Lexmark X125 multi-function machine.
I was out of options and I emailed the folks at Visioneer with my tale of woe and on Monday morning there was a response offering to replace my trusty 8650 with the new Visioneer 9450 PDF. I was excited to get to review the PDF scanner because the Adobe PDF format is becoming the standard for remote filing in courts around the country. Here was, I hoped, an inexpensive solution for the small law office that provided a way to turn paper directly into PDF files. Since both Word and WordPerfect in their latest incarnations allow the conversion of documents directly to PDF the major stumbling block for the small office is turning paper and other types of files into PDF. I have in the past complained about the high price of the full product Adobe Acrobat 5.0 software which is necessary to create PDF documents which then can be read with the free Acrobat Reader from www.adobe.com The Visioneer solution bundles the Acrobat 5.0 full product with the scanner, optical character reader Text Bridge Pro 9.0 and my all-time favorite image production software, PaperPort 8.0 from ScanSoft and a simple photo editing application. The software bundle has a street value of around $250. This package makes for a pretty complete hardware/software law office scanning operation for under $500 on the Web.
The scanner arrived in a couple of days and I was not disappointed. The Visioneer 9450 PDF scanner is the perfect tool to turn paper into electronic files and put them to work in a variety of ways. The scanning interface is greatly improved over the previous version. It is straightforward and very easy to use. The built-in Automatic Document Feeder (ADF) holds 25 pages and scans up to 8 pages per minute in 200 dpi black and white mode. In my initial test it was easy to load and never jammed. You can convert any document to Adobe PDF using the Adobe Acrobat 5.0 software included with the Visioneer 9450 PDF scanner. Adobe® Portable Document Format (PDF) is the emerging open standard for electronic document distribution worldwide because it is a universal file format that preserves all the fonts, formatting, graphics, and color of any source document, regardless of the application and platform used to create it. Adobe PDF files are compact and can be shared, viewed, navigated, and printed exactly as intended by anyone with the free Adobe Acrobat® Reader® software noted above.
PaperPort 8.0 automatically builds graphical links to a broad variety of applications. It will search your computer to see which of the linkable applications you have and then create an icon at the bottom of the page that allows you to drag and drop your document into the appropriate category. PaperPort runs over your network so it is easy to file your documents and images in the same way you would organize your paper documents. One of the most useful pieces of software is called FormTyper, which automatically converts a scanned form into an electronic form that can be filled out on screen. Once it has been filled out it can be printed or faxed or even attached to an email by simply dragging the filled out form down to the bar across where your various applications are stored.
ScanSoft PaperPort Deluxe 8.0, is the easiest and best way I know of to visually manage scanned photos and images, as well as electronic documents, at low cost. All of the students in my law office and courtroom classes use and learn PaperPort and you should as well. PaperPort includes their Simple Search® indexing tool which indexes scanned and electronic documents in the background. You can search those files by content, title, keyword, or even annotations. Unlike some other software solutions for document management, PaperPort shows where the word you search for appears in the document. One of the coolest small tools is called Form Typer™, which scans forms and allows you to fill them in. Form Typer finds the fields and all you need do is use your tab key and type in the information as required. I have documents that I need to file every year. I fill them out and then file them in PaperPort. Each year I change the date and other information and then print them out, up to date and professional in appearance. PaperPort allows you to prepare exhibits and other annotated files for display in the courtroom. It has remarkable redaction capabilities and other tools that all lawyers will find very useful. It has a remarkably easy system for dealing with photographs that may become exhibits at trial. If the PaperPort system is not enough, the Visioneer 9450 PDF bundle contains, in addition to Adobe Acrobat a very simple photo-editing tool called PhotoImpression, which allows you to edit, retouch, and enhance images simply and quickly. You can apply special effects with point & click ease. It includes templates for cards and calendars and access to a website that will give you even more templates and tools. The Visioneer 9450 PDF scanner and software is priced at $499 but it can be purchased for considerably less over the Internet. If you do not care about Adobe Acrobat 5.0, the old standby 8650 One Touch Scanner can still be bought over the Internet for around $160. It is a bit slower and lacks many features of the newer product but it still remains a very powerful imaging tool for small jobs.
Visioneer 9450 PDF is not is a high-speed system for turning thousands of pages into electronic documents. If you are going to trial with less than 100 exhibits it will certainly do the trick. But if you are in a case with hundreds of thousands of pages of documents you need to invest in a more substantial system or outsource the work. If you are in a case with millions of pages of documents you need to call in a consultant who will advise you about the alternatives of using a service bureau or setting up your own in-house system. Since I have an obvious bias I will not comment further on that point!