Kodak i1220 Scanner Review

In December 2008 my agency went "paperless."  We brought in five scanners and thru the course of 6 months we scanned thousands of client records.  Before taking on this task the workers went thru a two day training process on how to use the scanners so that everything would go off smoothly.  I was already familiar with the scanning process as I have a brother-in-law whose law firm went paperless a few years earlier and he was telling me how wonderful this was going to be for us.

My agency is taking baby steps to reach the 2010 Initiative for the state.  This will allow us to forward client files to workers in other counties and at other state agencies in a PDF.  In the past we either had to copy all the paperwork and mail it or send the entire case record to the requesting third party on behalf of the client.

The Kodak i1220 Scanner has a whopping price tag of $929-1199 depending on if you can get it on sale.  I believe we got a state agency discount because my county got five.  The i1220 can scan up to 30 pages per minute and up to 60 if in duplex mode.  Our software is set to duplex mode because we scan thousands of pages daily.  This scanner allows us to scan front and back in one clean sweep.

So, how does it work?  Well, when prepping our records for scanning we had to be sure that we removed all staples because most of the time they will not feed thru.  I have on occasion seen a document come thru the scanner and a staple was still attached.  Usually the staple is going to get stuck on a roller.  You can put the documents on the tray any way you prefer and the image will appear on the screen in that direction.  It might be upside down.  To get an upright image we were taught to "dive in backwards" on the tray.  That means place the papers backwards and upside down and as they pass thru the scanner they will rotate upright.  But don't worry.  If you put it in the tray wrong there are rotation buttons and you can rotate the pages.

Our program is set up so that we have three formats to choose from when scanning.  Normal, watermarks and IDs.  With normal we would be doing regular papers.  The scanner tray will hold documents up to 11 inches wide.  If they are wider than that we must shrink them on a copier and then scan.  The scanner will take any length and the wonderful thing is that in the viewing format the document appears regular size.

The watermark feature allows us to scan documents such as check stubs and birth certificates.  Anything that has the watermarks and could appear blurry will come out clear.

The ID feature allows us to scan picture ids, social security cards, and business cards.  This feature isn't pertaining to the size of the document all those all of these are usually rather small in comparison to a regular sheet of paper.  If we forget to switch to ID mode we can still scan in normal mode but the following occurs.  In normal mode a picture id will only give a black outline of the individual.  There won't be a face and a lot of the information on the card might be blurred.  With a social security card in normal mode the eagle design in the center of the card tends to black out the middle numbers.  However, if we remember to scan in ID mode we will get a beautiful duplicate image of a license or student id.  And if we remember to scan the ss card in ID mode we will get the entire image with name, number and the eagle.  If you forget to take the scanner out of ID mode and scan a regular document then it will just have a light gray appearance where the white background would be.  It doesn't interefere with the quality or legibility of the document.

Another feature is a magnifier.  If a document can't be read we can click on the magnifying glass and zoom in or out.  This is especially good when we are trying to review check stubs.  Some of our clients are applying for other services that would require us to determine their income.

I honestly don't know if our scanner will duplicate a color document in color.  The reason why I don't know this is that when we scan we must enter the client's case number first to tell the scanner where to redirect the information.  I've often thought about throwing in a colored photo or postcard to one of the stacks of papers because I can delete a copy before sending it to the client's record. 

Sometimes we might have difficulty scanning a specific document.  The straight edge might have a kink in it.  The document might be too slick and get stuck on a roller and so forth.  Many times we just turn the document upside down so that a straighter edge will feed thru and then we rotate the document BEFORE we send it to the client's record.  Many times a new license will not read and we will get a message, "No paper found in tray."  The ID is so slick that it gets stuck on a roller.  We just open the scanner and retrieve the ID and try again in a different direction.  If that still doesn't work we make a copy and scan the copy.

We can scan a handful of papers and we can choose to delete pages but once we drop the papers into a specific subfolder we cannot delete them.  Another thing is that if there is a hole punch impression the scanner will read it as a 2-sided document.  So many times we will have to delete the blank side of a document.

Our software is set up so that all we have to do is enter the client's case number.  It prompts us to do so.  When we hit enter it will produce the client's name, ss number, and date of birth.  Then we either choose "no worker required" which means it goes to the worker that the primary case is with or we can identify a worker and reassign it.  Our software allows us to "open" a case record and drop the documents into specific subfolders OR we can designate the documents as incoming mail for someone to view or process.

The only problem with this program is that we must have the client's case number.  In the past we could identify case numbers by ss numbers but this system will not allow that.  I do realize, however, that some of our program may have been developed outside of the peramters of the scanner's features so the kinks that we encoutner may not have anything to do with the prodcut but our program.

I love the Kodak i1220 Scanner and the practicality of it all.  I also have a Lexmark 4-n-1 at home but I have only used the printer function.  Now that I am a pro with scanning I will probably start using the other features of my scanner at home.