Scanners are the backbone of many federal agencies, crucial to any digitization program linked to digital transformation. They play a key role in protecting against the aging of paper documents, as well as speeding up audits and searches.
Some federal records contain evidence or information that is legally protected, making them susceptible to audits and discovery demands under the Freedom of Information Act. Such documents must be quickly searchable.
The Xerox DocuMate 6710 checks all those boxes for federal agencies and includes additional features such as parallel scanning, a breakthrough technology that meets or exceeds the demands of most agencies — all while ensuring security and ease of use.
One challenge that scanners face comes from clunky PC software and drivers coupled with slow USB pipeline rates; together, these hinder scanner speeds.
Out of the box, the 6710 scanner achieved up to 100 pages per minute. This was in large part due to the USB 3.0 port’s SuperSpeed transfer rate as well as Visioneer Acuity’s PC Optimization feature, which ensures that the scanner doesn’t need to pause to catch up with the user demands.
Another feature that supports fast speeds for high-demand environments is the new parallel scanning technology. By using multiple USB 3.0 connections, agencies can now chain several 6710s to a single workstation for a concurrent scanning network.
This topology also provides the ability to keep some 6710 scanners running while others are down for maintenance or working on other projects.
More important, for agencies particularly sensitive to security, a USB 3.0 connection offers a hardwired, safe alternative to networked or wireless counterparts.
Agencies are often challenged when integrating new scanner software into existing IT apps. Setting up the 6710 scanner is not a problem; my test unit was running in a few minutes, and the algorithm ensures that the best possible image quality is always achieved. The 6710 combines speed, reliability and new technology for efficiency, and will be a reliable agency workhorse.
In my testing, the DocuMate 6710 easily handled 100 pages per minute when scanning text documents. I also fed it mixed media at similar speeds to see if it could maintain high quality and fast speed with more challenging inputs.
For a stress test, I pushed the DocuMate with a combination of text, photos and technical schematics. The goal was to keep the scan speed high, but see if quality suffered. I also scanned paper with text hidden inside images.
In all tests, the DocuMate 6710 exceeded my expectations for image quality. Even when scanning photograph-like pages with text embedded inside the graphics, the 6710 quickly burned through the task. When examining the scanned images on the screen, there were few if any artifacts added by the scanner ¬— in most cases, it was difficult to tell that the scan was not an original document.
For most jobs, agencies can probably use a 200 dot-per-inch setting for capturing mixed-media images. Everything I scanned at that resolution was still readable. Although the lower dpi did not really increase the speed, it did make for smaller file sizes, which could increase efficiency of a scan-to-storage system.
The 6710 can also scan at 300 dpi — a good resolution for actual photographs. Again, the change in scan speed is not really noticeable; the quality of the scanned image is greater, but the trade-off is a larger file size.
For legal documents and media that must be captured perfectly — for example, a document with official seals embedded in the paper — the 6710 can scan at 1200 dpi, which yields output quality almost as sharp as 35 mm film. There is a bit of a slowdown when jumping to that quality, but the output is almost an exact replica of the original document.
The DocuMate 6710 worked well when scanning hundreds of pages at all dpi settings. This should provide agencies with good quality scans at reasonable if not fast speeds for any project.
Scan Speed: Up to 100 pages/200 impressions per minute
Capacity: 300 sheets
Dimensions: 18.4x15.5x13.6 inches
Weight: 37.4 pounds
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