The Corex CardScan 500 is the best Card Scanner I have had the opportunity to use. I have used Card Scanners going back to 1995, the first was Pacific Crest’s CardGrabber Scanner.

 Installation of the software was straightforward with no hitches. The CD Rom has an auto sensing installation that leaves nothing to the imagination.

Once the software was installed, it found the scanner with its Setup Wizard on the first try. I have not had a hardware installation go ant smoother. The scanner can be setup as either USB or as a Pass-thru Parallel connection to your computer.

The CardScan’s Optical Character Recognition, “AccuCard” Technology, works very well. All that is needed is place the business card on the scanner tray, push it forward and it initiates the scanning. The software was able to recognize names, titles, phone numbers, e-mail addresses and URLs. It placed them into the programs Address Books in the correct fields. The only time I had to do any adjusting was when the card did not have a distinction between the fields. ie: name and company.  You have the opportunity to either work on the card or continue to batch the cards and go back later to place them into the address book.

Once your business cards are in a CardScan database you can search for contacts by typing only a few characters of anything you can remember about that contact using the quick search.

Connectivity with AutoSync

CardScan automatically synchronizes with your contact manager. CardScan's AutoSync feature works with the popular programs: ACT, GoldMine, Groupwise, Lotus Notes, Lotus Organizer, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Schedule, Sidekick and many others.

CardScan synchronizes at the touch of a button with Palm handhelds and Windows CE devices. The synchronization between CardScan and your Palm handheld is done using the CardScan for the Palm Computing Platform Plus. New features include synchronization for Psion palmtops, Franklin Planner software, and digital mobile phones (using FoneSync software).

System Requirements for Windows

Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows NT 4.0 or higher

486 Processor or higher 16MB of RAM

35MB free hard disk space for a minimum installation and 50MB for a full installation

CD-ROM drive

Modem for auto dialing and faxing

One PC parallel port or USB port for scanner connection (USB requires Windows 98 or higher)