White Papers

Wide format scanning speed is an area that is commonly misrepresented by manufacturers and almost always confusing to customers. Many large format vendors use theoretical productivity hypes about the speed and performance of their products, in the hope that their scanners don´t look so bad in performance comparisons with competitors.

Tired of reading statements like "fastest scanner on the market at 6 inches/s" while other scanners scan at over 12 inches/s?

So are we!

That´s why Image Access developed the Productivity Calculator, a tool designed to let you compare wide format scanners with fully configurable scenarios, giving you a productivity comparison based on your real life requirements - not some hypothetical best case statistic like "Batch scanning for one hour".

Don´t fall for the unfounded claims made by scanner manufacturers. Set up your own contest between two scanners and see which one really offers you the highest productivity. Put statements like "... the Professional model is the fastest wide format scanner on the market. Period." to the test.

The Productivity Calculator takes real production factors into consideration when comparing scanners. In order to do this, we had to collect the rated scanning speeds of each of the competing scanners from the manufacturer´s product literature. Some of the results of this task are shown in the bar chart below (Image Access scanners are depicted by blue bars).

But, comparing rated scanning speeds is only one part of the equation. Add to that the time it takes to pick up the source document, feed it into the scanner, wait for the scan and any processing pauses and finally take the document out of the output tray or replace it for the next scan. The Productivity Calculator allows the user to compare source document sizes from one scanner to another - even if you want to compare two different sizes. The graphic below shows an example of a productivity rating done with the calculator.

Not only do scanner vendors make outright false statements about their speed and productivity, they also like to play some tricks to mislead the prospective users.

Here are some of the tricks we found:

• Draft mode, Turbo mode and other modes are used to specify speed. Scanning at 400 dpi Turbo mode actually means you are scanning at 200*400 dpi and therefore can achieve the 200 dpi rated speed. Because the word "Turbo" is used, it leads the customer to believe that this is something good, advanced and very fast but in reality, it does not represent true 400 dpi.
  
  
• Scanning speed is rated at 2ips on a 36" wide scanner but the fine print reads: "Speed decreases if documents are wider than 24"
  
  
• Scanning speed is only rated at 200 dpi or 300 dpi, no speed is specified at 600 dpi. In many cases the real speed at 600 dpi is more than four times slower than at 300 and the manufacturers are afraid to even mention those small numbers.
  
  
• Scanners might run at rated speeds for a couple of inches and then stop. After some time to clear the internal memory they drive back a little and start again. This results in a much slower speed to complete the scan.
  

Don´t depend on advertising hypes to make a decision on a wide format scanner. Don´t automatically go for the "big name" or the big claim. Use an intelligent tool like the Productivity Calculator to compare the various models on the market.

Click here to try out the Productivity Calculator and get an honest view of the right scanner for your production scenario.

If you are using Microsoft Office or Microsoft Excel 2003 or an earlier version, click here.