Kodak ScanMate i940 Scanner - 1960988

Working as an IT Director for a medium company a request was made for a small scanner. After looking around we came upon this.For our needs this scanner has handled everything we could throw at it. Besides the typical 8.5 x 11 letter sized pages, we have also scanned 8.5 x 14 and (most impressively) carbon copies from an invoice printer with no problem. Granted I don't use it on a day to day basis but I haven't heard of anyone complain about paper jams. Not saying it hasn't happened but if it has the users fixed it before informing our department.Quality and speed of scan are dependent upon each other. The higher the quality the slower the scan. Which is not usual, typical of scanners we've seen. Unless you're scanning a very high resolution picture though the quality doesn't need to be high and the scan per page is rather quick. Very little of our scanning involves pictures, almost entirely Excel graphs/charts or invoices. Of course all of this can be configured to your specific needs.We found this very easy to use. To our department this was just as important as the scanning speed/quality. We could configure a profile, assigned a number on the device, for each department's or user's needs. Scanning to email, to a local hard drive, or (with some creative configuration) to a network location. Being able to teach this to new users or entire departments was quite simple. This simplifies their work flow, reduces time (theirs and ours), and minimizes the assistance they require. To be honest of the dozen we've set up not once has a user reached out to us beyond the initial training. And we know they're being used, we see the files created in the network folders. That's enough to make me tap dance.Scanning in PDF and JPEG have been the only ones we have used, can't comment on the other formats but those two have come out perfectly; no corrupt or damaged files.There are a few drawbacks. They can only be connected via USB. An ethernet port would be nice but we make do without. My biggest gripe is that profiles cannot be exported. With each new installation we must configure the device rather than importing a file with all configurations ready. But these drawbacks are relatively minor.

My review of this scanner is this does a great job of scanning both sides of a page at once.Now lets break this down so I can give the strengths and weaknesses of this scanner:Weaknesses:1) Default Scanner Software Settings - The scanner software is setup for 200 dpi by default which makes pages fly through the scanner but produce a not very good quality scan. You can change these settings to 300, 400, or 600 dpi for each scanning setting.2) Using the supplied scanning software at resolutions above 200 dpi made the scanner vibrate (vibration were due tot he stepper motors being told to increment the page through the reader with a long pause between steps) using my computer system and was due likely to poorly caching the image (just a guess), and the pages scan much slower. It's not a deal breaker, it just made more noise than I wanted it to.3) No place for the paper coming out to collect, meaning it spits it out off my desk. You need to figure a way to have the pages drop into some sort of bin/tray if you want to retain your pages in a nice neat stack. It doesn't distract from the quality of the device but as a home user, we are likely to require pages not on the floor.4) Not a large input tray but it should be fine for home use.5) Input paper tray could use taller paper guides to ensure the pages do not skew.Strengths:1) Small, compact, and feels sturdy.2) Turn power on when you open the top.3) Comes with decent scanning software.4) Scans both sides of a page rather quickly with good software (more on this below).5) Comes with every imaginable power adapter (replaceable part on the wall-wort transformer).6) Paper User's Guide is reasonably written.7) Accepts thick paper/cardboard stock (I feed a birthday card though it without issue)8) Kodak Capture Pro Software (Limited Edition)So lets hit up the main thing we should talk about, the software because that is what makes or breaks this little gem. The standard supplied software provides an icon in the icon tray and gives you several options for scanning but the default settings produce crappy results at 200 dpi so you should change this to at least 400 dpi for color, 300 dpi for B&W, plus there are other setting which you can change to adjust the quality of the scans. Once you have done this the scanner works very well, BUT to get the most out of this scanner you should have some better quality scanning software and I just happen to own Adobe Acrobat version 9 (not cheap software but I need it for my job). There are other very nice and some even free software packages out there (you may already have one you like and use). When you install the printer software (provided on a CD) a TWAIN driver will be loaded as well which your other software can take advantage of. When I use Acrobat to scan a stack of documents at a setting of Color Document 300 dpi, the pages fly through the scanner (maybe 1 page every 2 seconds, guess a guess, didn't actually time it) and the scanner ran very smoothly, no vibrations like the supplied software caused.Using Adobe Acrobat Pro to scan: Color Document at 300 and 600 dpi = no vibrations and fast scanning. Greyscale at 300, 600, 1200 dpi was smooth and quick.Now I don't want to put down the basic supplied scanning software, it's not bad at all however you must not use the default settings if you desire a good quality scan result. Also ensure you do not always use the color scan option if you are scanning a typical B&W bill/statement because you can scan using B&W at say 300 dpi and get great and very fast results using the supplied software, it only really falls off when you select the color mode of scanning.Capture Pro Software Suite Limited Edition: This is a great bonus because this software, while not like Acrobat Pro, does do some pretty nice things. Let me hit you with what I couldn't get it to do which was de-skewing the scans. This was not an issue for me but could be for someone else who wants perfectly aligned vertical scans. The great things are it allows you to batch scan your documents, meaning you feed a stack of documents into the scanner and a grid of document images appears. You can select one or multiple images and then save those in many different formats (I like searchable PDF) and you save your selected pages, then remove them and then select other pages you scanned and save those. It actually makes scanning documents faster because you can scan a large amount and then just work on saving them. Also, the vibration is the same as if I were using the Acrobat resolutions so it works nice. I will have to use this some more to see if I would become more productive using this application over Acrobat (my favorite to date but I could change).Paper Skewing: While the paper was in the input paper tray and being pulled into the machine, periodically the pages would skew slightly to the top left. Using Acrobat this is not an issue at all as it will automatically de-skew your scanned pages however the supplied software did not do a good job of that. So the hit (albeit a small hit) is really against the hardware for allowing the page to move in the first place and I feel that if the paper guides were a little taller or maybe if the paper tray tilted back just a little more to improve alignment, this problem would be a little more corrected. But lets be honest here, automatic document feeders always have the risk of grabbing a little more on one side of a page than the other side due to the pages being not perfectly aligned or a little thicker or whatever, and it happens to expensive automatic document feeders as well. This was an observation and I would not let it stop you from purchasing this device.Cleaning Access: The top opens easily and allows you to use a nice clean cotton cloth to clean the scanner areas. I do not know what products to use to clean the rollers but hopefully that will not be required anytime soon.Summary: Although I have not had this scanner much over 24 hours, I love it and it has replaced my Lexmark MFP which I only used for the scanner because the ink was so terribly expensive. I tried to put it though it's paces in the short time I've had it in order to give it a fair review. I wish I could compare it to say a $400 or $800 scanner but I don't have those kinds of resources. What I cannot review at this time is the longevity of this product but I'm not abusive so I hope it lasts at least 10+ years. For a home or even I'd think a small office scanner, I'd highly recommend this one.Please keep in mind that I paid $160 delivered to my door and I am a home user, and I never did test this using only USB power, I used the supplied wall-wort, and I use Windows 7SP1 (all updated as of this review). These are factors you should take into consideration when reading my review.

I owned quite a no of scanners starting from the Fujitsu Fi-4120c scanner, follow by the fi-5120c and after which I purchase a ScanSnap S300 follow by Canon P-215 and last but not least the Kodak Scanmate.I am quite disappointed by the canon P-215 and the Kodak Scanmate I940 for the image scanning quality as per compared to the Fujitsu S300.For both the Canon P-215 and Scanmate I940, when you scan, the color reproductions was not close to the original document color as per the Fujitsu S300.For both the Canon and Scanmate, for a half folded a4 size paper, after scanning the folded line can be seen on the image. If the paper was crumped before the scanning, it will also appear on the image. If there is a single horizontal or vertical line on the page, the line will appear to be not straight or the color is not bold at part of the line. After Scanning the image of a document is really bad as you can tell that there are part where the light from the scanner bounced off from the paper that create a non-consistence image.I have been trying to replace my Fujitsu S300 Scanner as they don't have the facilities to scan ID Cards but however both newer scanner that I have purchase have not preform as well as the Fujitsu S300 as well as the Fujitsu S1300i where my other collegues are using.I hope that fujitsu will come out with one that will allow the scanning of ID for the compact scanner.