Canon’s ImageFormula R10 is a compact, portable document scanner that’s ideal for mobile workers and home-based staff seeking a fuss-free scanner which doesn’t require acres of desk space. It has a footprint of just 285 x 95mm, and at 900g it’s light enough to carry around with you – although it would have been nice if Canon had included a protective pouch.

There are no accessories to worry about, either. The R10 doesn’t need a battery or an external power supply – it gets all the juice it needs over the supplied 1.7m USB 2 cable. Nor, for that matter, are there any drivers or applications to install: when you plug the R10 into a host computer running Windows or macOS, a USB-connected drive appears containing the embedded CaptureOnTouch Lite scanning app, which you simply double-click to start scanning.

Though small, the scanner is impressively capable. It delivers mono and colour scan services at claimed speeds of 12ppm and 9ppm respectively, which isn’t bad at all. The main feeder can handle paper weights up to 128gsm, with a dedicated front slot for scanning embossed cards up to 1.4mm thick, and since it’s a duplex mechanism it can scan both sides of a page in one pass. The design even includes a 20-page automatic document feeder (ADF) – something we wouldn’t have expected from a scanner this small. Just note that the one thing that’s lacking is an output tray, so you’ll need to leave some space in front to catch your documents after they’ve passed through the scanner.

Canon’s software is easy to get on with. Like most scanning suites, it uses document profiles to store combinations of settings, including colour or mono scanning, resolution, single- or double-sided capture, blank page skipping and image rotation. You can fine-tune the output by adjusting brightness, contrast and background smoothing, and save your presets for future use. These are stored on the scanner itself, so they’re always available, no matter what device the scanner’s connected to.

Scans can be saved in all the most useful output formats, including JPEG, TIFF and searchable PDF; however, the software is only able to scan to local locations. If you want to scan to the cloud, you’ll need to select a local sync folder as the destination and wait. There’s no way to store documents on the scanner itself, either, though from a data-protection standpoint this is arguably a good thing.

In our tests we found performance wasn’t quite up to Canon’s claims: duplex scans of 20 bank statements at 200dpi came out at 10ppm in greyscale and 7ppm in colour, dropping to 9.5ppm and 4.4ppm at 300dpi. Paper handling was a mixed bag too; during our bank statement tests, the scanner occasionally grabbed multiple sheets and stopped with paper jam errors.

These aren’t deal-breakers for a device such as this, though. Speeds are perfectly usable for a lightweight scanning role, and there’s no need to use the higher quality settings for everyday documents; we found scans at 200dpi were perfectly clean and sharp, with 6pt text correctly converted into searchable PDFs. And needless to say, the R10 had no problem with single-page scans, nor with our till receipts and courier waybills.

Card scanning went smoothly, too. Once you insert a card into the slot, the scanner draws it in, scans both sides and spits it back out the front. We tested this with a range of materials and found laminated driving licences, plastic loyalty cards and credit cards posed no problems.

In all, the ImageFormula R10 is an impressive machine. Its small size, minimal weight and clever embedded software means you can easily take it to wherever it’s needed and digitise your documents without having to install a thing.

Canon Image Formula R10 specifications

Workers on the go with no time to waste will like the WorkForce DS-360W: Epson claims it's the fastest portable scanner in its class, with a top scan speed of 25ppm. Impressively, that's not just for mono scans, but for full colour, at resolutions up to 300dpi. Duplex scanning is supported too, at standard paper thicknesses up to 128gsm, as well as business cards and postcards up to 230gsm. Flicking a small lever across at the front pulls the upper scan sensor back slightly, allowing you to feed in laminated or embossed plastic cards.

Although portable, this scanner is no lightweight, weighing in at 1.3kgs. It's well-connected, though, offering both micro-USB 3 and wireless connectivity, and you can use either the provided external power supply or the USB port to charge the internal Li-Ion battery. Unusually, it also manages to cram in an automatic document feeder (ADF) with flip-up paper supports. There's room for up to 25 pages of lightweight 64gsm paper or 20 pages of 80gsm paper.

A row of buttons and LEDs across the front panel show error status and let you turn the thing on and off, and start or abort scans. Down below you'll find battery charge and wireless status indicators, plus a button for activating a wireless connection. Finally, a control switch at the side is used to select a USB link, enable the scanner's wireless access point (with support for up to four devices) or connect to an existing AP via WPS.

We set up a USB connection on a Windows 10 desktop and had the scanner up and running inside 10 minutes. Epson's Scan 2 desktop software provides a TWAIN driver and a simple interface for making quick scans to local folders. For USB connections, the Windows Document Capture Pro software links up with the scanner's start button and provides automatic scans to a file, email, FTP server, network share or printer, plus cloud destinations including SharePoint, Google Drive and Evernote.

We had no problems connecting the scanner to our Netgear wireless AP using WPS. With a network connection we could also use the EpsonNet Config utility to remotely view and modify the scanner's settings. When we switched the scanner into AP mode, our iPad immediately spotted its SSID, and we were able to join it by simply entering the password printed on the scanner's base. Epson's free DocumentScan iOS app then provided us with options to directly scan and store documents on our iPad as PDFs or JPEGs.

The only disappointment in our testing was that the ADF proved to be very picky about paper quality. When we tried to scan our standard well-thumbed sheaf of 20 bank statements, every attempt jammed. Dropping the sheaf to ten pages proved only marginally more successful; we ended up using the automatic feeding mode in the Scan 2 app and manually inserting each page one at a time.

The good news is, the scanner is much more accommodating with pristine 80gsm paper. Here it did slightly better than the claimed speeds, achieving 26ppm for colour and grayscale scans at both 200dpi and 300dpi. Switching up to 600dpi slashed speeds to 5.4ppm, but it's unlikely this will ever be a problem: 300dpi scans provide more than enough detail for creating high-quality document archives.

We were also impressed by the OCR capabilities of both Scan 2 and Document Capture Pro, which correctly recognised every word on our statements, even at text sizes down to six points. Epson doesn't make any promises about battery life, but we were able to wirelessly scan in 300 pages before the battery LED started flashing.

Epson's DS-360W delivers a very high scan speed, and teams it up with a good software bundle. Support for USB and wireless connections makes it even more versatile - but the ADF's fussy paper handling stops us short of giving Epson a Recommended award.

This review originally appeared in PC Pro issue 272

Verdict

Epson’s DS-360W delivers a very high scan speed, and teams it up with a good software bundle. Support for USB and wireless connections makes it even more versatile – but the ADF’s fussy paper handling stops us short of giving Epson a Recommended award.

600dpi A4 colour scanner

25ppm @ 200/300dpi colour/mono

Simplex/duplex

20-page ADF

500 pages per day

802.11a/b/g/n wireless

Micro-USB 3

Li-Ion battery

External PSU

Epson Document Capture Pro, Epson Scan 2 and Newsoft Presto!BizCard software

TWAIN and WIA drivers

1.3kg

288 x 89 x 67mm (WDH)

1yr RTB warranty

Aimed at professionals on the move, HP's OfficeJet 250 Mobile AIO cleverly combines colour print, copy and scan functions in an portable package. It offers both USB 2 and wireless support, with a lithium-ion battery that HP reckons will print 225 ISO pages on a single charge, and sells for less than 200.

At 3kg, it isn't something you'll want to carry with you everywhere you go, but it folds up into a neat package measuring 380 x 198 x 91mm (WDH) that can be transported in a large bag or briefcase. When it's time to print, the top cover opens up into a 50-page input feeder, with a 2.65in colour LCD touchscreen popping up at the front. The scanner and its ten-page ADF are concealed beneath a flip-out cover further forward.

The OfficeJet 250 uses standard HP 62 or 62XL black and tri-colour ink cartridges, which snap in to holders under the front cover. Running costs are reasonable for this class, with the high-yield versions delivering mono and colour pages for 3p and 4.8p.

Installation is easy. Along with USB and wireless, the OfficeJet supports Wi-Fi Direct. After we'd set up a wireless connection on the printer's control panel, HP's Easy Start utility automatically downloaded the latest drivers, and following a few simple questions about the printer, it handled the basic setup. On our Windows 10 laptops, that included loading HP's AIO Printer Remote app for printing photos and documents. We also loaded HP's Scan and Capture app for scanning in photos and documents, and the HP TWAIN driver as well.

For mobile devices, there's support for Bluetooth Smart and Apple AirPrint, which worked perfectly on our iPad. Availing ourselves of HP's ePrint iOS app gave access to a super set of features, including options to browse and print files directly from the cloud and web services such as Box, Dropbox, Facebook, Evernote, OneDrive, iCloud and Instagram.

Management is simple, too, thanks to the 250 Mobile's embedded web server, which provides information about status and consumables. You can keep an eye on battery capacity here, and scan documents directly to a web browser or email address.

Then there's the HP Connected portal service that assigns it an email address so you can send documents to it from anywhere. If you're in a meeting with a client and they want to print something, they can simply send it as an email attachment without having to load any drivers.

Top printing speeds aren't quite as fast as HP suggests. It promises "up to" 20ppm in draft mode when plugged into the mains, and 18ppm running on battery power. In fact, our 20-page test Word document was delivered at 15ppm on AC power, while our colour DTP document fell to 11ppm.

We saw no such problems in the standard printing mode, though: both tests were completed at the claimed 10ppm and 7ppm. In battery mode, we found speeds dropped marginally by around 10%.

Output quality is impressive. Text is nice and sharp in Normal and Best quality modes, with only a slight dusting on smaller fonts. Both mono and colour photos revealed plenty of detail in darker areas, while graphical reports showed excellent detail, with no hint of banding or edge bleeding.

The touchscreen provides plenty of scan options, too. You can make copies of documents, scan them directly to registered systems as images or emails, or send them to a removable storage device plugged into the secondary USB port at the side of the printer. Double-sided scanning isn't supported, but speeds are as quoted, and we found output quality at both 200dpi and 300dpi to be very good.

The OfficeJet 250 is an innovative and highly portable all-in-one. With its integrated battery and wireless support it's great for those who work on the road, and is a worthy IT Pro award-winner.

This review originally appeared in PC Pro issue 267

Verdict

The OfficeJet 250 is an innovative and highly portable all-in-one. With its integrated battery and wireless support it’s great for those who work on the road, and is a worthy IT Pro award-winner.

Convertible laptops/tablets have come to the fore since the arrival of Windows 8. Lenovo set the bar high with the ingenuiously designed Yoga Pro 2. Can the HP EliteBook Revolve 810 compete?

The Revolve is one of the most expensive hybrids we've tested. Packing 8GB of DDR3 RAM, a third-generation Intel Core i7 2.6GHz CPU and 256GB SSD, our review unit started at a wallet busting 1,642. Is it worth the price?

Revolve

Pitched as a hybrid the 11.6in display on the Revolve swivels on its base and allows users to convert the device into a tablet.

The construction of the Revolve is top draw. It sports an all magnesium alloy chassis and a strong hinge, which will withstand the rigours of enterprise usage and it looks good too.

At 11.6ins the display is smaller than most laptops, and is closer to a netbook. Weighing in at 1.4kg, the Revolve is heavier than the larger 13in MacBook Air (1.3kg) but still portable. However, it is heavy when compared to tablets such as the iPad Air (469g).

The Chiclet-style keyboard feels responsive. Despite the small size, it doesn't feel cramped when in use. Although this reviewers hands are a little on the small size, those with bigger hands may feel their wrists dropping off the side of the machine. The keyboard is as durable as the chassis as it is also spill resistant too.

The mousepad is compact but it reponds to movements and finger presses. It's complemented by the inclusion of the touch screen, which means you don't have to rely on it 100 per cent of the time.

Display and connectivity

The LED-backlit HD UWVA screen is rugeddised with Gorilla Glass, but HP has opted for a bog standard resolution of 1366 x 768. It's not in the same league as the Retina Displays found in MacBooks or the 3200 x 1800 resolution on the Yoga Pro 2.

HP has kitted the Revolve out with a number of ports. It includes 2 x USB 3.0 connections, Gigabit Ethernet and DisplayPort 1.2 ports as well as a docking connector. The Revolve is dockable too via its side-docking connector and there's a slot for a microSD card.

Wi-Fi takes the form of 802.11a/b/g/n and there's Bluetooth connectivity. Underneath the battery is space for a micro-SIM, so you can have connectivity on the move. There are a ton of sensors built in, which are normally not found on hybrids - these include a gyroscope, accelerometer, compass, and NFC.

Security conscious

Where HP majors on for this device is the security measures. Alongside the security features in Windows 8 (and 8.1) there is also HP's BIOS Protection, TPM 1.2 and HP Client Security thrown in for free. When we upgraded the machine to Windows 8.1 we had to uninstall the HP Client Security software before proceeding. We can only hope re-installing it is an easy thing for the IT department to do.

There is also the option to install LANDesk Management Suite on the device allowing IT departments to manage whole fleets of devices.

HP also bundles in the following software: HP ePrint, Cyberlink Media Suite, Evernote, Skitch, a 60-day trial of Microsoft Office 2010.

Performance & battery life

The Revolve boots in 10 seconds and it's zippy in everyday use. Despite running on the 2012 Ivy Bridge architecture, the Revolve outperfomed the Yoga Pro 2, which runs on the latest Haswell part. This can be explained by the inclusion of the high-end Core i7 processor and double the RAM. But the reliance on the integrated Intel HD Graphics 4400 and lack of discrete graphics means the Revolve is not for those who want to render heavy duty 3D applications.

The use of the powerful Core i7 processor has a negative impact on battery life. The Revolve comes with a six-cell 44WHr polymer cell. In our tests, simple day-to-day working (emails, office productivity, web-surfing) yielded nearly six hours of battery life. In our video tests, battery life became even shorter. Continuous looping of an HD movie got us four hours and thirty minutes of battery life.

Upgradeability

The Revolve isn't the most upgradeable device in HP's fleet, but there is scope to improve specifications after purchase. The battery is straightforward to replace, and but RAM requires a screwdriver to access. HP has soldered in 4GB onto the board and left 1 x SODIMM slot user accessible. This can accept 4GB or 8GB modules, bringing the maximum capacity to 12GB.

However, to maximise dual-channel performance, HP recommends the size of the memory in both SODIMMs should be the same - so you might not see any real performance boost after 8GB.

Overall

HP hopes its EliteBook Revolve 810 will stand out from the crowd, but with prices from 1,642 (including VAT), it doesn't offer value for money. We think many businesses would rather pay less money for a brand new Yoga Pro 2 or MacBook Pro, which will have longer battery life and better display.

Verdict

The HP Revolve is a reasonable attempt at a hybrid with the stand out feature being the performance. However, it is let down key areas including the display and battery life, something which cannot be ignored at this price.

OS: Windows 8 Processor: 2.1GHz Core i7-3687U RAM: 8GB DDR3 (configurable up to 12GB) Storage: 256GB mSATA SDD Screen: 11.6in, (1366 x 768) Connectivity: 802.11ac Wi‑Fi IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n compatible, Bluetooth 4.0 Ports: 2 x USB 3, Ethernet, DisplayPort 1.2, micro SD card reader, Docking port, micro SIM Dimensions: 212 x 2185 x 22.5mm (WxDxH) Weight: 1.5kg Warranty: 2yr minimum via EU Consumer laws

Businesses may be embracing paperless procedures as a way to cut down on the cost of consumables and waste disposal, but it'll still be some time before the average desktop is free from dead tree detritus.

There are more effective ways to deal with paperwork than letting it pile up though, and scanning it for safe-keeping before sending the original for recycling is one of the most effective which is where the Canon ImageFormula P-215 comes in.

The Canon ImageFormula P-215 is a compact sheet-fed scanner designed for mobile use, although it's a touch on the heavy side at 1kg.

Its size makes it suitable for desktops, too not everyone wants to walk across the office to make use of a network-attached multi-function device or colour photocopier's scanning option, after all.

When not in use, the ImageFormula P-215 is a neat rectangular box that takes up little desk space, but it does require a few seconds' set-up before it's ready to scan. The two-part hinged cover lifts up and folds flat at the back of the scanner to form the paper input tray, two arms fold out from its top end to create paper supports and two panels lift up from the front of the paper tray to act as guides for different paper sizes.

The paper input tray can hold up to 20 sheets and the paper-path is relatively flat, but there's no output tray and scanned sheets are deposited onto the tabletop or straight into the recycling bin The ImageFormula P-215 does have a dedicated business card scanner though, and individual cards are fed into, then ejected from, a slot on its front edge.

Although it doesn't support USB 3 as such, the scanner can exploit the extra power provided by this new standard (900mA) to operate in high-speed' mode, else it requires a second USB connection to its power socket to enable the same with USB 2 ports.

Whatever the connection used, the ImageFormula P-125 needs no actual software set-up the CaptureOnTouch Lite app for Windows and Mac OS is stored on the scanner itself and can be run without the need for installation. It's a pity Canon didn't put the TWAIN driver in the scanner's onboard storage too, but this is instead supplied on CD, along with the full version of CaptureOnTouch.

With sheets (or a business card) loaded in the ImageFormula P-125, scans can be initiated by pressing the large button on the scanner itself, or its on-screen duplicate in the CaptureOnTouch Lite application.

The only grumble here is that it takes a good 10 seconds for the scan to begin, but there's no feedback that anything is actually happening in the meantime the button really needs to beep or flash to indicate that a scan has been initiated.

The ImageFormula P-215 is a duplex scanner that scans both side of a sheet in one go, eliminating the need for a complex duplex mechanism and a two-pass scanning process. The usual array of scanning options can be manually configured in the easy to use CaptureOnTouch Lite application, but the fully automatic setting worked well for most documents.

The only time we had to interfere with the application was when it mistakenly considered dirty marks on the otherwise blank reverse of a page as something it shouldn't automatically discard, resulting in a double-sided scan rather than a single-sided one.

Since there's no performance penalty for duplex scanning and scanned pages can be deleted within the CaptureOnTouch application before a document is saved though, this is isn't much of an issue.

Unique filenames can also be automatically generated to make saving sequentially scanned documents as individual files as speedy as possible, and scans can be automatically attached to an email, sent to an application, or uploaded as a Google Documents or Microsoft SharePoint file, too.

The ImageFormula P-215 is very quiet in use and while it isn't particularly quick when compared to a dedicated desktop scanner like its ImageFormula DR-C125 sibling, scanning speed is more than adequate for the small stacks of paper it's likely to encounter in daily use.

In our tests, a 10-page duplex scan took one minute 53 seconds in our tests (5.3 pages per minute), but switching to high-speed mode only shaved 20 seconds off this time (6.2 pages per minute), which suggests that the scanner can manage with a single, laptop battery-saving, USB 2 connection just fine.

Verdict

The Canon ImageFormula P-215 is a compact and capable scanner that’s well-suited to mobile use, but it still packs enough features for occasional desktop use, too.

Document feeder 20 sheets (64g/m^2)

Sensor CMOS CIS 1 Line Sensor

Optical Resolution 600dpi

Scan modes Black & white, error diffusion, advanced text enhancement II, 8-bit greyscale, 24-bit colour, auto colour-detection

Light Source RGB LED

Reading Side Front / Back / Duplex

Interface Hi Speed USB 2.0 (USB 3.0 bus power also supported)

Dimensions 285 x 95 x 40mm (closed), 285 x 257 x 202mm (open)

Weight Approx. 1kg

Power Consumption 2.5W (USB 2.0), 4.5W (USB 3.0)

This month, the great and the good of the mobile industry met in Barcelona for the annual Mobile World Congress (MWC) trade fair.

There, vendors showed off their latest mobile applications and devices, including smartphones and tablets. At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas earlier this year, manufacturers announced more than 80 new tablets running the Android operating system alone. A plethora of tablet and smartphone announcements at MWC has added to the ranks.

For businesses and for IT departments in particular this proliferation of devices presents both an opportunity and a challenge. Chief executives generally agree that staff who have mobile devices are more productive, and there is plenty of research to back up that claim.

IT management tools vendor LogMeIn recently surveyed small and mid-sized businesses and found that 63 per cent of (non IT) managers believed that giving staff remote access to work IT did boost productivity.

It is also fair to assume that staff who can choose their devices will be more content than those forced to carry a company issued smartphone or tablet.

But managing a growing number, and range, of mobile devices causes problems for IT departments who often lack the expertise, and budgets, to ensure that portable IT equipment is accounted for and is secure.

The trend for employees to use their own devices at work is doing little to help matters. Often, as Cisco's security chief said recently, the most senior managers and executives are the worst culprits, demanding that IT connect their latest toys to the company's networks.

Your pad, or mine?

Short of setting up full-body scanners in the lobby and selecting any executive returning from Barcelona for an additional pat down, there is little that IT directors can do to stop the consumerisation trend. The devices are simply too attractive, and too useful.

A research report carried out by analyst firm Ovum and security body EEMA, found that seven out of 10 organisations allowed staff to use their smartphones for work. But almost half of organisations 48 per cent - said they also allowed employees to use personal devices at work.

Separate research, carried out by mobile connectivity vendor iPass, found a more worrying statistic: almost one in four employees had used a personal smart phone for work, even when company policy forbade it.

The ability of companies to control the use of personal mobile devices for business remains limited.

"The contract for the use of a personal device should require that the owner of the device cedes some level of control to their employer, so that business use can at least be ring fenced," says Peter Wood, of the information security advisory organisation ISACA.

"But it is a very difficult area."

Companies have two main options for dealing with non-business devices.

The first is to bolster perimeter security, so that unknown devices cannot connect to it. This can cause practical problems, such as slowing down the rollout of new company devices, or making it harder for visitors and contractors to go online.

What's more, it is fairly easy to circumvent, for example by installing an unauthorised wireless access point, unless the business also has strong network management tools. But good device access controls are part of good security, so it may well be worth the investment.

The second tool is to raise awareness of security risks, and to set clear policies around the use of personal technology by staff. IT should set the technical requirements for the policy, but will also need to consult HR and the legal department or in smaller companies, an employment law solicitor to make sure that the policy is both legal and enforceable.

"Employees' consent could be seen as a quid pro quo for being allowed to use their own devices. But it goes without saying that the terms and conditions would need to be very clear," says Ed Moody, applications manager at IT consultant and integrator BT Engage IT.

Holding the line

Sometimes, however, it might seem simpler and perhaps even cheaper in the long run for companies to issue their own devices. IT departments can integrate company owned devices into their infrastructure, install, or remove, software, and impose other limits, such as blocking access to particular websites or types of content.

Working with network operators can also make it easier to control mobile bills, by imposing limits on talk time, data transfers, or roaming. The tools for businesses to control usage are more sophisticated than those available for consumers, and remove the need for employees to reclaim business use of airtime via their expense reports.

Although the number of mobile device management tools available is growing, the market remains fragmented. With the possible exception of RIM's BlackBerry system, which allows very granular control over its smartphones through the BlackBerry Enterprise Server, managing even a few dozen mobile devices can pose a challenge.

At the UK arm of Volkswagen Financial Services, for example, field representatives who audit trade finance to car dealers are issued with BlackBerry smartphones.

The company looked at other smartphones but opted for BlackBerry because it complied with the German parent company's policies, according to Jean Smith, Volkswagen Financial Service' risk and corporate services director.

Modifications to the standard BlackBerry include disabling the ability to download apps, turning off BlackBerry Messenger, and forcing the device to wipe itself after five failed attempts to enter the password.

"There are quite a few restrictions," Smith admits.

Elsewhere, the uptake of mobile device management tools has been more limited. Apple supports remote wiping and locking of iPhones via iTunes and Mobile Me, and recently made the service free.

Microsoft's System Centre Mobile Device Manager was a popular option for companies running Windows Mobile, but the technology does not support Windows Phone 7, forcing businesses to manage these devices through Exchange ActiveSync, or using third-party tools.

The market for management tools for Android also remains immature.

This is forcing companies to take a DIY approach to device management, according to Rob Bamforth, analyst at research firm Quocirca.

Businesses are mixing security tools, third-party mobile management tools, and services from network operators. However, operator-based tools are becoming more sophisticated and could give organisations a simpler way to manage their smartphones assuming they are all from one carrier.

Laptops are now pretty well secured but smartphones are lagging, especially with security," cautions Bamforth. "The problem is mainly one of platform diversity, and it shows no signs of diminishing," he said. "That some tablet platforms are scaled up from smartphones, and not down from laptops as was once assumed, means they are more likely to be managed and deployed in a similar fashion to phones."

But, he adds, it is policies and devices, rather than tools, that will ensure mobile workers stay secure.

Canon's ImageFormula DR-6030C drops into the company's huge range of professional scanners, replacing the DR-5010C. Like the outgoing model, whose paper handling mechanism it shares, the DR-6030C is a small-volume production sheet scanner. It's designed for anything up to 10,000 scans a day and can get through 60 A4 pages per minute, scanning either the top or bottom side, or both in a single pass.

While it's compact, being smaller than most consumer-level, desktop mono laser printers, the DR-6030C can accommodate A3 originals. That gives its paper transport the width to also handle A4 paper in landscape orientation, upping its maximum A4 scan rate to 80ppm. That's not its only trick; flipping down a rear panel opens a straight paper path, which Canon says is good for media up to a heavyweight 546gsm.

Although squat, the DR-6030C is remarkably heavy thanks to robust plastics, which are all screwed down onto a metal base. Setting it up involves removing countless bits of orange packing tape, but it's otherwise quick and easy. Everything feels incredibly well put together, with the exception of the so-called document eject guide, a slot-in plastic spike designed to beef up the output tray. We found it was far too easy to knock the tray upwards, unhooking the spike which then needs to be refitted.

With an input capacity of 100 sheets, the DR-6030C is designed with attended batch scans in mind, and as such there are USB and SCSI interfaces for connection to a workstation, but no network port. Canon doesn't give recommended minimum specifications for the host PC, but our tests suggest that it doesn't need to be anything special for everyday jobs. That said, there are many image-processing features in the driver such as text orientation recognition. Switching them on adds a significant processor overhead, so if you want to use these features we'd opt for a computer with a modern multi-core processor to keep things moving smoothly.

In landscape orientation, the scanner fed, ejected and processed a single A4 sheet in six seconds, slowing down only by fractions of a second as the resolution was increased. Connected via USB the pause between sheets depends on the host's speed and the options selected, but it's momentary for simplex jobs at 150dpi. With deskew disabled, we timed a stack of 100 sheets at six and a quarter minutes, suggesting that the scanner is quite happy to continue feeding as the driver processes previous pages.

We continued testing, feeding and refeeding the scruffiest media we could find, but we had no paper jams: we thus wouldn't expect them to be a regular occurence, but when they happen it's obvious how to open up the DR-6030C's central mechanism for removal. This is shaped like an 'L' lying on its back, allowing it to pivot up and out through 90 degrees to give brilliantly easy access to the whole paper path.

With a maximum resolution of 600dpi it's obvious that this scanner is optimised for documents, forms and other office work, but its image quality is surprisingly good. Scans are crisp even at the highest resolutions, and colours are faithful enough. Our only criticism is a slight loss of detail between subtly different, very light shades, but this simply isn't an issue for the intended use.

Canon claims class-leading energy efficiency for this scanner, with a 46-watt operating power consumption. In our tests it used a maximum of only 22W, dropping to just 2W on standby. It's not tricky or expensive to maintain, either, with the only consumable being an exchange roller kit rated at 250,000 scans a monthly job at worst.

So what's our verdict?

Verdict

The DR-6030C is reasonably priced for a production scanner, efficient and likely to prove highly reliable. It's easy to use, and easy to clear paper jams should they ever happen. As such, it's ideal for any organisation needing a user-friendly scanner capable of handling significant volumes.

Optical resolution: 600x600dpi 24-bit colour Compatible with Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7 Part code: 4624B002

If you are the kind of person that goes to a lot of conferences or networking events then you probably find yourself picking up plenty of business cards. Even in this modern age, that old fashioned small rectangle of card seems to be the most popular way of exchanging contact details with someone you meet face-to-face.

However, when you get back to the office, you are left with the tediously time-consuming task of typing the contents of these cards into your computer. Thankfully, you can just simply scan the cards into your computer instead.

There are several business card scanners on the market. The IrisCard Anywhere, the latest model from long-standing manufacturer Iris, looks very impressive on paper. The Anywhere is a small, portable, battery powered scanner that can scan not only business cards but also other documents up to A6 in size (105 x 148mm). The bundled software can store the scanned information and export it to a wide range of applications and data formats.

The scanner's small dimensions of 160mm long, 43mm tall and 56mm deep means it shouldn't take up much room in a laptop bag. It is powered by its own internal battery, which is charged via a mini-USB cable. Iris claims the battery is good for more than 150 scans.

Since scans can be stored on the scanner's internal 512MB of flash memory, cards can be scanned without the aid of a computer. Alternatively, scans can be saved to a USB flash drive, or to an SD card (or microSD card in an SD adaptor). These ports and slots are located on the back of the scanner. A 1GB SD card is supplied which should be more than enough storage. Scanned cards are, by default, saved as JPEG files. In our tests, these were between 102kb and 228kb in size depending on its complexity.

The scanning procedure is very straightforward. Having inserted the SD card or USB stick, or left the slots empty if you want scans stored on the scanner's internal memory, you press the power button and wait the adjacent light to stop blinking. You then feed a card into the front of the scanner and it is pulled through to the back. Then you feed in another card, then another and so on.

The scanning process is fast, and usually processing is finished by the time a card is spewed out of the back of the scanner. Only really colourful cards, or those containing photographs, seemed to need a bit longer. A light flashes while processing is underway, and it goes out when processing is finished so that you know you can insert a new card.

You can leave your business cards as JPEG files, but doing so seems like a waste when you can use the contact details from each card in other software. To make that happen, you need to use the provided CardIris Pro 5 software.

When connected via USB to your PC or Mac, the scanner's storage acts like any external drive, so you can view its contents and delete them when you've imported cards to the Cardiris Pro 5 software.

CardIris Pro 5 imports multiple scanned cards as a batch and uses optical character recognition (OCR) to read the contents of your scanned cards. It then creates entries for each contact in its database and fills in the appropriate fields. Inevitably, its OCR didn't get it right all the time, but it was pretty accurate, and the very well designed user interface makes it easy to correct any errors.

CardIris' contacts database has a fairly good range of fields for contact information including Skype number, email and web site address. You can add custom fields for otherwise unsupported information, such as a Twitter name.

The program is a basic but competent contacts manager. Data can be exported from CardIris Pro 5 to a wide range of external contact management applications including GoldMine, Lotus Notes, Outlook, Outlook Express and GroupWise, and to a variety of formats including HTML, XML, vCard, .csv, JPEG, TIFF, and even straight into an email.

It can retain the scanned card images as an aide memoir. You can view both the front and back of each card, rotate and crop cards, and even change the brightness and contrast of each image. More usefully, you can attach notes and a picture of the person in question to each business card.

There's no getting away from the fact that the OCR capability in CardIris Pro 5 is not perfect, so you will need to check every scan over and make a few tweaks here and there. This wasn't a time-consuming task though, and the scanning process is straightforward too.

Overall, the IrisCard Anywhere is a clever product that does its job well. What may prove more troublesome is being diligent enough to use it regularly, instead of accumulating a huge pile of unscanned cards.

Verdict

The IrisCard Anywhere 4 can be used to scan business cards and then store their contents – as well as facsimiles of the cards themselves. The CardIris Pro 5 desktop software, which works on both Macs and PCs, can be used as a contacts database and can also export contact data to a wide range of external applications and file formats. Some tweaking of the scanned and processed text may be required, but voracious business card collectors will find this perfectly acceptable.

Document feeding: Sheet feed type (single) Resolution (default): 300dpi Document Size (Max): Up to A6 Interfaces: SD, xD, MS, MS Pro, MMC, USB Slave (type-B Mini), USB Host (Type-A) for USB flash drive Output File format: JPEG On-board flash memory: 512MB Battery: 700 mAh Lithium polymer rechargeable battery through USB cable

Business trips, field work and meetings away from the office can all be sabotaged by a lack of essential equipment, particularly when it comes to printing and scanning. Canon's Imageformula P-150 sets out to solve one of those problems.

This is a portable scanner that can be folded down to just 42 x 282 x 98mm. Despite its remarkably small size, the P-150 is a fully-functional duplex sheet-fed document scanner, capable of batch scanning up to 20 sheets at a time.

Its folding design is ingenious. A rear paper feed unclips and hinges up and out from the scanner's brick-link folded state. Guides fold out from the tray itself to support paper of any height and width up to A4. The main body of the scanner also hinges open to allow access to the feed roller and separation pad, which ensure the seamless feeding of scanned documents. These are consumable parts. You'll be prompted to replace the roller after 100,000 sheets have been scanned and the separation pad is good for 10,000 pages.

A4 pages were fed smoothly, without any of the issues with alignment, skewing, creasing or paper jams that we've seen from some sheet-feed scanners. For optimal scan speeds the P-150 requires two free USB ports - one for data, and one for power, although it can run off a single USB port. A mains adaptor is also available.

It's very quick - we scanned 10 duplex pages in just one minute, three seconds at the scanner's default 200dpi. At the P-150's maximum resolution of 600dpi, everything moves a bit more slowly: 10 single-sided full colour pages were scanned in seven minutes and 39 seconds. A single page 600dpi scan took 50 seconds. While this compares well to a typical flatbed, it's significantly slower than most office sheet-fed scanners. The same page scanned in just eight seconds at 200dpi and 11 seconds at 300dpi.

Scan quality at 600dpi was excellent, with sharp text and accurate reproduction of colour and shading. Lettering scanned at the default 200dpi setting was rather fuzzy around the edges, which made reading large blocks of scanned text on screen into a rather dizzying experience. However, everything was present and legible, particularly when printed out, so 200dpi is enough to do the job for archival purposes. That said, we preferred the appearance of 300dpi text, which was sharper and more solid, and takes just a few seconds longer to scan per page.

The brilliantly simple CaptureOnTouch scanner interface makes it easy to configure scan profiles.

We loved the simple driver interface which allowed us to configure scan settings such as colour, quality and duplexing. The interface also makes it easy to save completed scans as a PDF or image files, open them in other applications, email or print them. The P-150 comes with a range of software to handle your scanning and document management requirements, including a full version of Nuance's PaperPort 11 document management suite.

This can perform Optical Character Recognition to turn scanned text into an editable document and create searchable PDFs. Newsoft's Presto! Bizcard 5 business card scanning and contact management software is also provided.

Various options are available once you've scanned a document.

The P-150 doesn't have many competitors. Indeed, the only really comparable devices we've seen are Fujitsu's ScanSnap 300 series. While the latter are slightly faster at 600dpi, both Canon and Fujitsu's hardware produces scans of a similar high quality.

The P-150 and the duplex SnapScan 300M are similarly priced. However, Canon's scanner has an advantage in that it comes with standard TWAIN and ISIS drivers, while the ScanSnap requires you to use its own proprietary driver and document management software. The P-150's flexibility makes it easier to integrate with existing systems.

Saving a document as a multi-page PDF makes it easy to share.

Verdict

For deskbound office users, the Imageformula P-150 is too expensive and its highest quality scan mode too slow to make it worth buying, even if you're desperate to save desk space. However, if your business relies on travelling representatives who need to file signed documents with a distant head office, this sturdy, high-quality scanner is an excellent choice.

Scanner technology: CIS (Contact Image Sensor) Quoted scan speed: 15ppm (200dpi B&W) Max resolution: 600dpi Paper thickness: 52 - 128gsm Duplex scanning: yes Warranty: 1 year RTB

With more and more multifunction printers entering the market, sales of single-function scanners may have dropped, but in one way this has improved offerings, as scanner makers have to offer extra features. HP's ScanJet N6310 is a duplex machine, with an Automatic Document Feeder (ADF) and a transparency scanner. Although aimed at the office market, the ability to scan slides and negatives gives it uses in the SOHO environment at one end and in the graphics market at the other.

The ScanJet N6310 is styled in off-white and dark grey, with every corner curved. The big radii on these corners make the machine look modern and well designed, so it would sit just as well in an office full of Macintoshes as it would surrounded by PCs. The driver software is provided for both platforms, too.

There's a 50-sheet ADF on the top of the scanner and its feed tray extends to take legal-sized paper, as well as A4. The ADF is duplex, so can scan both sides of each page in a single job. In the underside of the lid is a transparency adapter, which can take up to three, 35mm negatives or a couple of mounted slides.

The hinged lid isn't counterbalanced that well. The hinges have two notched positions, around 80 degrees and around 45 degrees. The fully-open position is fine and the lid stays where you put it, but the half-open notch (as shown in the photo with this review, as it happens) appears to hold the lid, but when you let go it bangs down onto the flatbed. We imagine this isn't intentional.

The control panel, which juts out from the front of the machine, has a backlit, two-line by 16-character LCD display and a series of the usual buttons for menu navigation and to start and stop a copy job. There's a single USB socket at the back, as well as a low voltage input from the separate, black block power supply. Shame there's no front panel USB socket for scanning to memory drives, though, as this would add an extra facility to the scanner's feature set.

Software provided with the ScanJet N6310 comprises control utilities for scanning and copying which comes from HP, OCR software from IRIS and document management software PaperPort, from Nuance. HP's own utilities include a range of standard scan presets, such as Scan document to PDF' and Scan picture to email', which speed up the whole scanning process. You can add your own, with parameters that best suit the documents you want to capture.

To test the scanner, we started by scanning a 10-page single-sided text document from the ADF at 300ppi into the ReadIRIS OCR, which took just 29 seconds to scan though longer for the OCR to do its work. A 10-side duplex scan took three minutes to complete, even though it was being scanned to PDF without character recognition. Each page makes three passes through the scanner, but this does mean the scanned document remains collated.

We then scanned a 15 x 10cm photographic print at 600dpi, which took just over half a minute and finally a 35mm transparency at 2,400ppi, the maximum resolution of the scanner. This resolution is needed if you, for example, want to enlarge a 35mm transparency to a 300dpi, 10 x 8in (roughly A4) print. This would require image dimensions of 3,000 by 2,400 pixels.

When scanning high resolution, the ScanJet N6310 doesn't excel on speed. It took 5:20 to make the transparency scan, quite a bit longer than the average dedicated slide scanner, so if you have a lot of transparencies to scan, a slide scanner would be a better option.

As for the quality of the scans the machine produced, text scans were adequate for both PDF creation and OCR and the colour image scans we produced at low and high resolutions showed good colour reproduction of business graphics and photo images. The scanner is well equipped to be used for small-scale archival work, using either compressed page images or recognising the text and storing it in the form of a searchable PDF.

HP is trying to widen the scope of business scanners with the ScanJet N6310, to deal with changing requirements, particularly increased emphasis on photo scanning. It has managed this pretty well and with the quality and speed of the scans we produced, this scanner is well worthy of consideration. It's not a production scanner, though, and you should think in the 100-300 pages per day range as a target.

Verdict

A business scanner with some pretentions to the graphics market, at least when it comes to resolution and transparency scanning. Scanning is easy, thanks to HP’s utilities, and scan quality is up to the company’s usual high standards. Speeds are variable, though and if you have a lot of slides to convert, a dedicated device will suit you better.

2,400dpi, 15ppm, duplex A4 scanner 24-bit colour, 256 greyscale 50 sheet (75gsm) auto-document feeder Multiple-feed protection Built-in transparency detector Nuance PaperPort, Readiris Pro 11 OCR, scan to PDF, JPG, TIF

Kyocera Mita's new TASKalfa range is a departmental level multi-function device, based on a copier engine, but with full network print, fax and scanning facilities. It handles A4 and A3 paper as standard and can include a duplex scanner, as well as duplex print facilities.

The look of the machine depends on how many of the options you choose to add. In its basic configuration, it has two, 500-sheet paper trays and an additional multi-purpose tray for special media, including card up to 163gsm. All the trays can be configured to take A4 or A3 paper and the built-in flatbed scanner has an integral 100-sheet Automatic Document Feeder.

This is only the start, though, as you can enhance the configuration with a range of extra trays, finishing devices and multi-bin collators. There are hole punches, folders and staplers, so fully extended, the TASKalfa can produce folded, A5 booklets of up to 64 pages, in one operation.

All such printing and copying tasks are controlled from the machine's full-colour, 216mm, 800 x 600 pixel, touch-screen. While the array of different options can be daunting, particularly if the machine is well expanded, Kyocera Mita has tried to simplify things by offering a series of up to 10 programmable function keys, which take you straight to any control screen with a single press. There's also the facility to assign a sequence of settings to a virtual button, so you can, for example, have a single button for producing that 64-page, A5 booklet.

Consumables load from the front of the machine in typical copier fashion and the TASKalfa, like most Kyocera Mita machines, benefits from the company's long-lasting ceramic print drum, which should be good for 300,000 pages. Black toner is supplied in 25,000 page cartridges and colour toners are each good for 18,000 pages. This gives the machine page costs of around 0.53p per black page and 2.7p per colour one.

These costs assume a direct purchase of the machine. Many customers will opt for lease purchase or per-click leasing and several different options are available through Kyocera Meta's dealer network.

Kyocera Mita quotes speeds of up to 50ppm for black print and 40ppm for colour, both on A4 paper. At A3, the equivalent claims are 25ppm and 19ppm. We tested with 20-page and 60-page black text documents and produced a top, real-world, normal mode speed of 34ppm. While this is some way off the headline figure of 50ppm, it's still a respectable speed for this class of machine.

Our 20-page text and colour graphics document gave 30ppm and when we printed the 60-page duplex document, we saw 28ppm. This is a very good speed for printing double-sided pages, where there's usually a drop-off of 50 per cent or more from the single-sided speed. On A3 pages, we saw 17ppm for simplex colour and 12ppm for duplex.

Colour copying is also fast, with A4 pages fed through long-edge first for extra speed. A 20-page copy took just 34 seconds and when we combined the 20 pages down to a 10-page duplex document, it still took only 41 seconds. Finally, a full-colour 15 by 10cm photo came through in 12 seconds.

When we'd finished printing a 60-page job, the papers were almost painfully hot to take from the machine. We queried this with Kyocera Mita and the company said it would expect the paper to be hotter when printing duplex because of passing the hot fuser twice or using coated papers. Our job was single-sided and on normal copier paper, though.

The other immediate shortcoming is that the paper-out tray is immediately under the scanner and behind the large control panel. A new user may miss this altogether and wonder where his/her prints or copies are and, even when you know where to look, it's not exactly a convenient layout for retrieving pages.

Print and copy quality is very good. Black text comes through dark and dense and, although the machine's default resolution is just 600dpi, this is enhanced to 9,600 by 600dpi in software. Colour graphics, whether from original print or copies, are bright and dense and ideal for business use. Registration of text over colour is also very good, and we could see no haloing in our test samples.

Even our test photo print, something many colour lasers have trouble reproducing, looked surprisingly natural, with less of the 'small gamut' colouring that often plagues such prints. There's no sign of banding and there was even some detail in darker, shadowed areas, which is often lost.

The TASKalfa 500ci is a big, capable machine and Kyocera Mita appears to have covered most of the bases in producing an expandable multi-function device, which prints quickly, has low cost of ownership and enough expandability to grow with your business. A couple of design glitches, such as the positioning of the standard paper

Verdict

This departmental, multi-function device enjoys very flexible configuration options and can produce single and double-sided prints and copies easily, controlled by a large and well thought-out touch control panel. It's long-life drum ticks sustainability and running costs boxes and print quality is easily good enough for any office use.

DPI: 600dpi (9,600 x 600 enhanced), 40/19ppm A4/A3 printer

Paper tray: 2 x 500 + 100-sheet paper trays

Duty Cycle: 15,000 page monthly average duty cycle (150,000 max)

Connections: Direct print USB socket, USB 2.0, 10/100 Ethernet

Languages: PCL6 and PostScript L3 drivers,

Features: PDF direct print, duplex, booklet printing

The UK's emergency services will start using data-enabled handheld devices that support TErrestrial Trunked RAdio (TETRA) from next year, following today's announcement that O2 Airwave has signed a PDA deal with Motorola.

By 2009, most of the country's police forces will be using the devices to cut down on paperwork and increase officer visibility to deter criminals and reassure the public, according to John Gherghetta, Motorola's corporate vice president and general manager for Networks and Enterprise, Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA).

By partnering with Motorola in this way, O2 Airwave, a secure digital radio network dedicated to the UK's emergency and public safety services, has signed the world's first commercial contract to buy TETRA-supported Motorola MTC100 PDAs.

"Everything is enabled now," said Gherghetta. "The pipes are there, the devices are there and so are the applications and a number of forces are willing to [adopt]."

He added: "We probably won't see widespread usage in the next 12 months, but I'd say that in two to three years there will be a high percentage of forces using these devices."

The rugged PDAs will run a suite of applications, created by O2 Airwave that will give front-line emergency service workers access to the critical data they need to do their jobs.

They come equipped with Microsoft Windows 2005 Mobile Edition as standard, in addition to added security and messaging functionality, a large 3.52 TFT touch screen and an integrated camera and flash.

Users can also opt for additional features such as an integrated 802.11 Wi-Fi radio to enable rapid data synchronisation, the ability to create a personal area network (PAN) using Bluetooth to connect to portable devices like scanners or printers and an integrated global positioning system (GPS) to pinpoint a user's location.

Pete Richardson, chairman of O2 Airwave added: "Being able to access intelligence on the move will enable the emergency services and other TETRA users to achieve so much more in their roles.

"The PDA and its supporting applications will demonstrate the crucial role mobile data communications technology can play in improving public safety."

The devices will help police forces meet the aims and objectives outlined in the Association of Chief Police Officers' (ACPO) UK National Strategy for Mobile Information.

The MTC100 PDAs feature multi-slot packet data capabilities, increasing officers' productivity and patrol visibility by giving them access to applications that will operate on O2's existing mobile applications gateway.

The devices will connect to the Police National Computer and other key sources of criminal intelligence for rapid information transfer while working remotely.