HP N6010 Document Sheet Feed Scanner

The HP N6010 is HP's first personal Document Sheet Feed Scanner. It retails for $499, but you can possibly find it for less. It does a number of things well, on both the hardware and software sides, include the core task of scanning and managing documents, as well as doubling as a general purpose office scanner for things like copying, faxing, and email.

As far as scanners go, the N6010's height makes it a little imposing for a personal scanner on a desktop; its footprint is even more of an issue, since the output tray extends about 10 inches further when you have got it open to scan. Given its size, the document sheet feed scanner is probably too large to be kept within easy reach by a desk, but is well suited for being placed on a table.

The bundled software includes everything you will need for document management, and possibly more. The most notable programs are NewSoft Presto! PageManager 7.16 for document management and IRIS Desktop Search for indexing and retrieving files. Also included is ReadIris Pro 11 for OCR and NewSoft Presto! BizCard 5 SE for scanning and managing business cards. Each of these programs is one of the better choices in its category of software. If you want to use other programs, the N6010 comes with both Twain and WIA drivers already installed, so you can call on it from almost any Windows program that has a scan command.

Typically, the most important speed measurement to consider when choosing a Document Sheet Feed Scanner is how long it takes to scan and recognize text. You can then index the file and find it later with a simple search. The N6010 took 7 minutes 2 seconds to scan a 50 page text document to searchable PDF format, that is only a little slower than the ScanSnap S500's 6:21.

Unfortunately, the N6010 does not do as well with business cards. HP says that although the automatic document feeder can usually handle stacks of five to ten cards without a problem, the company only officially supports scanning just one business card at a time. In some magazine testing of the machine, scanning a batch of cards sometimes worked, but information from entire cards was also lost sometimes. It simply did not show up in the scan results. So if you have a strong need for a Document Sheet Feed Scanner that can handle bulk business cards perhaps the HP N6010 is not for you, but for nearly all other purposes, including medial offices, it is an excellent choice for personal document management.