IRISCard Pro (Review)

Business card scanners are the latest must-have gadget for people who just don't have time to sit imputing details into Outlook. As a journalist I know I get more cards than I know what do do with and IRISCard Pro is the answer. The idea is simple, you scan your cards and it will record the details and then port them into whichever program you use to store contact detail, for me this is Outlook 2007.

It's a nice enough unit, small and powered by a USB cord but the ability to scan is manual which means human error can often mar the details recorded. The auto scan feature is nice but it does take around eleven seconds for the card to be scanned. The big problem is that IRISCard Pro doesn't work under Windows Vista so I was unable to install it on my main machine.

It does however work perfectly with Windows XP and Macs but you do need a PC to run it, which is a bit of a shame given that most people will use it directly after getting a large numbers of cards, for example at a press event, and would like to scan the details in there and then but might not have a laptop with them.

Aside from that it's a nice little gadget, albeit a little expensive at over £150 and would come in handy for anyone who wants to do something about that pile of cards, ever growing on their desk.

The official site for IRISCard, showing the various models, can be found here.