The Canon DR-2580C document scanner ($875 street) doesn't look much like its lower-priced cousin, the DR-2050C, but it's aimed at the same audience—those in small offices or small workgroups—and shares an emphasis on speed. It's the fastest scanner for the price if you want to scan to PDF image files, and the fastest we've seen at any price for scanning, recognizing text, and saving to searchable PDF format.

The DR-2580C is slightly smaller and lighter than its cousin, at 3.2 by 12 by 6.6 inches (HWD) and 4.2 pounds. Unlike the DR-2050C, its smallest dimension is height rather than depth, which gives it a somewhat larger footprint but also allows a straight-through paper path option, so it can scan documents as thick as a driver's license or plastic ID card.

It's also one of the few document scanners that offers a flatbed option ($550) for those who want to scan books, magazines, or other originals that can't go through a sheet feeder. The flatbed, which we didn't test, increases the footprint to 12.4 by 21.9 inches (WD).

To set up the scanner, you snap in two rollers and plug in a USB cable and power cord. The setup instructions, like those of the DR-2050C, make the rollers sound optional, but without them, the paper won't feed.

The software bundle is mostly the same as that of the DR-2050C, including a combination ISIS and Twain driver, letting the scanner work with just about any program that scans, such as Canon's CapturePerfect 3.0, which can scan and save to an assortment of formats, and Adobe Acrobat 7.0 Standard. The DR-2580C also supports VRS (Virtual ReScan), a widely used program for enhancing images that are hard to scan well, such as text marked with a highlighter.

The bundle is missing the DR-2050C's OCR program, though. You can still recognize text with either CapturePerfect or Acrobat, but you don't get the full range of options and formatting features typical of a program designed specifically for OCR.

A document scanner's core task is turning large stacks of paper into digital format in a hurry, a task that the DR-2580C excels at. Canon claims that at resolutions of both 200 pixels per inch (ppi) and 300 ppi, the engine can process 25 pages per minute (ppm) in simplex mode (scanning one side of the page) and 50 images per minute (ipm) in duplex mode. Our test times when scanning to PDF image files were just below those speeds, at 24.5 ppm and 49.1 ipm. Although that is not the fastest we've seen, it's the fastest at this price or below, which is impressive.

For the combined tasks of scanning, recognizing text, and saving in searchable PDF format—generally a more important task in real-world document scanning—the results were even more impressive. This is one of the few scanners we've seen that takes no more time for scanning, recognizing, and saving than it does for simply scanning and saving.

Scanning, recognizing, and saving our 25-page duplex test document to searchable PDF format took just 1 minute 1 second, a new record. As a point of reference, the second fastest scanner we've seen was Canon's far more expensive (but more heavy-duty) DR-3080CII, which is rated at 68 ipm and took 1:34. The DR-2050C holds third place at 2:13. No other scanners have broken the three-minute mark.

Like the DR-2050C, the DR-2580C includes no document-management program or indexing program. To manage your scanned documents, you'll have to buy such a program, like ScanSoft's PaperPort, or indexing software like X1 Desktop Search from X1 Technologies. But even without these programs, the DR-2580C is a capable enough package to be a convincing Editors' Choice.

Compare the scanners mentioned above side by side.

Don't miss the Canon DR-2580C's Ratings.