I've been trying two portable products that let you take your office with you wherever you go -- Canon's latest portable photo printer and Neat Receipts' portable scanner. The first is designed to create paper documents and the second to eliminate them.
Canon Pixma iP100 portable photo printer
Canon's latest iP100 portable printer looks a lot like its earlier models from the outside, but it's all new inside. It has a five-color inkjet print engine using two cartridges, upping the resolution to 9600 x 2400 dpi. As a result, the print quality, both color and black and white, is comparable to desktop models. Photographic prints are spectacular; it can print borderless photos from 4 x 6 inches to 8 x 10. The iP100 prints black-and-white documents in about 5-8 seconds and 4 x 6 color prints in less than a minute.
The printer is about the size of a thick book with rounded corners and two doors that fold up to create a sleek package when traveling. At 13" x 7" x 2 1/2" it can fit in a briefcase or in the corner of a suitcase. It weighs 4.4 pounds, not including the power supply that's similar in size and weight to a PC supply.
The iP100 is ideal for those wanting a printer while traveling or one with a small footprint for tight quarters. I've taken it along on several trips to print out photos, e-mails, documents and boarding passes. It's perfect for business use where contracts can be printed out on the spot. Because of its slower output and smaller paper tray it's not the best solution for high volume printing. The printer works with both PCs and Macs and connects using a USB port. You can print directly from cameras with a PictBridge printer interface.
The iP100 costs $250, almost twice the cost of a desktop model with similar performance. While not inexpensive it's simply the best portable printer available today.
An optional battery is available for $100 and an auto adapter for $90. The two ink cartridges each cost about $15 and last for a few hundred prints.
At this time each year I vow to become more organized, but somehow it never happens. One of the many challenges is keeping track of receipts for reimbursement and tax purposes. The problem is that the receipts come in a variety of formats, including paper and electronic, often as PDFs and e-mails. The Neat Receipts product is designed to convert and organize paper receipts into a digital format. It's been available for the PC for a couple of years and recently became available for the Mac. While both versions work similarly, the PC version has additional features such as the ability to scan business cards. The product consists of a long thin scanner, 11" x 1.6" x 1.3" and software.
The scanner plugs into a USB port, which also provides power, so no adapter is needed. To use, simply place the receipt face down in the front slot and initiate the scan from the software or use the button on the scanner. The receipt is drawn through the slot and the software goes to work trying to interpret the receipt and fill out a form using the data, including the company, date and amount. The scanning takes about 10-30 seconds, depending on the receipt size and the processing takes another 30 seconds or so. The receipts can be up to 8.5 inches wide.
The scanned images go into folders created by the software and can be organized by home, business, client or any other category. Alternatively you can scan the receipts as a PDF without analyzing their contents. The software is relatively easy to use, although they call a file a library, an unnecessary complication.
I just returned from a business trip and tried all the receipts I accumulated. The hotel receipt was clearly scanned; most of the fields on the form were correctly filled out, except for the total of the bill, showing $19 instead of $590. The software makes it easy to correct. Just highlight any line on the scanned image and drag it into the appropriate field in the form.
I scanned a yellow receipt of a purchase that had very light writing. While it captured the printed data it missed the writing. A parking receipt worked perfectly, and some taxi receipts were hit and miss.
After trying about a dozen receipts I found about two-thirds required some help to complete the form. So while creating these forms can be helpful for searching later, I found scanning to a PDF without a form to be sufficient for my needs. I simply store the receipts in my existing folders labeled by client and later attach them to my electronic QuickBook invoices.
Overall, the product worked well as a small, portable, lightweight scanner that's easy to carry anywhere. Just don't expect it to interpret all the information on the receipts without intervention. Neat Receipt costs about $130. (neatco.com)
Alas, the real story here is that previous Canon portables (the BJC-50/55) were lighter and had a scanning option. These printers also had a 'feature' that was less helpful: there was a page counter that, once you had printed a certain number of pages, returned a 'waste ink reservoir full' error and disabled the printer! The fix: replace the printer chassis for $300 plus labor (the price of the printer was $350, which included the battery). I own 3 such disfunctional units. Still looking for a viable replacement!
Posted by: Joe White | December 31, 2008 at 10:23 AM