A scanner ADF stands for an automatic document feeder. As the name suggests, a scanner ADF can take in several pages at once and scan them automatically one after the other, thereby freeing you to concentrate on other tasks at the time.
A printer with ADF is an alternative to a flatbed scanner. Most flatbeds do not have the ability to scan multiple pages at once, and so the ADF quickly became popular because it allows you to concentrate on different tasks at the same time.
Two terms you will become familiar with while shopping for a scanner ADF are:
- Ipm: Images per minute – this refers to the number of page sides a scanner can capture from in a minute.
- Ppm: pages per minute – this refers to the number of pages a scanner can pull through in a minute.
If a scanner has twice as many ipm than ppm, this means that it is capturing images from both sides of the paper being fed into it. This scanner works fastest and saves you the most time.
If the ipm is lower than the ppm, this means that you will need to flip the page over to scan images on that side. This method is slow and requires supervision and labor throughout the duration of the task.
The scanner ADF thus becomes a very important asset for anyone who spends long hours converting paper files to soft copies. Comparative studies have shown that there is no competition between scanners with ADF and those without – ADF scanners can scan as fast at maximum resolution as their counterparts can at their lowest resolution.
Many ADF scanners also have duplex printing facilities – that is, they can print both sides of a page at the same time. This becomes very important if you plan to convert lots of official documents, like tax returns, property plans on to the computer. It not only saves you valuable time but also saves the documents in proper order.
Often, two brands with the same ipm and ppm will have very different prices. In this case, look through the software they are providing you with. Some sort of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software will be incredibly helpful to you later on. This software enables you to search through scanned documents on your computer using a phrase or a string of words.
Thus, a flatbed scanner ADF can be a great asset, especially in a business environment, for anyone who has to spend extensive hours scanning and wants to save time and money. Given that the average office scans up to four thousand documents a week, and a scanner is a one-off purchase, this might be a very important decision for you to make.
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