Fingerprint Scanners

As part of our paperless office newsletter, we looked at the APC Personal Biometric USB Pod (BIOPOD). I installed the fingerprint scanners on two Windows 2000 Pro machines.

On one machine, the fingerprint scanner or its software made the system so unstable that we had to uninstall it after one week.

On the other machine, the computer was a little less stable, but it would often take multiple tries before the fingerprint would be recognized. Eventually, we had to uninstall from the second computer since we were wasting so much time with it.

Paperless Office Desktop Scanners

In our paperless office we have a higher speed scanner by our administrative assistant. On my desk I have a small "desktop"scanner. I have used a Visioneer Strobe Pro XP 100 and a XP 200.

What is great about these scanners is their size. They are about as big as a rolling pin. Thus, they don't waste much desk space.

The Visioneer Strobe Pro XP 200 was much faster than Visioneer Strobe Pro XP 100. The XP 200 recognized the end of the paper automatically. The bad news was each Visioneer Strobe Pro XP 200 was unreliable. After 6 - 9 months, they stopped working.

The Visioneer Strobe Pro XP 100 is very sensitive to static. Usually once a day I have to unplug and then plug in USB cord.

I am curious about other people's experience with the Visioneer Strobe Pro XP 200 , Visioneer Strobe Pro XP 100 or other very small business scanner.

Dave Kaufmann