Kodak Alaris describes the i3250 Scanner ($4,995) on its website as a departmental-level document scanner. However, as one of the lowest-cost models on that list, it's also a more-than-reasonable choice for a large workgroup or a midsize office that needs to scan at larger than letter and legal size, and also needs a letter-size flatbed. The combination makes the i3250 ($3,670.00 at Amazon) our Editors' Choice for heavy-duty scanners for a large workgroup or midsize office.

In addition to its speed—rated at 50 pages per minute (ppm) and 100 images per minute (ipm), with one image on each side of a page—the i3250 offers a 250-sheet capacity for its automatic document feeder (ADF) and a recommended duty cycle of up to 15,000 pages per day. That gives it much the same scan capability for stacks of pages as the Kodak i3200 Scanner ($3,262.00 at Amazon) . In fact, the two are nearly identical, except for the built-in flatbed, which the i3200 doesn't offer.

At 10.2 by 17.0 by 14.6 inches (HWD), the i3250 is a little taller than its near-twin, and it also weighs a little more, at 39 pounds. However, both scanners share the same general design, with an output bin molded into the top of the scanner, and its 250-sheet input tray pivoting down in front to add roughly 7 inches to the depth.

The flatbed is hidden underneath the output tray. Lift it, and you'll see a letter-size platen, with the edge of the platen at the front edge of the scan bed. In addition to letting you scan originals that you don't want to risk harming by putting through the ADF, the platen is designed to let you scan books or other bound material easily. Position an open book with the spine side at the edge of the platen and the facing page hanging over the edge, and the page you want to scan will lie flat on the scan bed.

For scanning stacks of pages, the input tray on the ADF is 12 inches wide, so you can load letter-size paper in Landscape orientation or tabloid-size (11-by-17-inch) paper in Portrait orientation. The input tray includes an extension you can pull out to physically support the larger paper size. For those who need to scan even larger originals, the ADF can take paper up to 12 by 34 inches. You can also manually feed paper as long as 160 inches.

Basics and Setup

Like most other Kodak Alaris scanners we've reviewed, the i3250 earns points for a front panel with an easy-to-read backlit LCD. The three rows of 18 characters offer plenty of room to show descriptive profile names when you scroll through the choices.

The descriptions, which you define in the scan utility as part of each profile, make it easy to find the right one without having to memorize which profile goes with which arbitrary number on a list. The one issue is that the software will let you define no more than nine profiles. With descriptive text, it would easy to choose from a longer list, and I'd like the scan utility a lot better if you could define as many as you like.

Setting up the i3250 is standard fare for a USB-connected scanner. You can add a second flatbed as an external accessory, with Kodak Alaris offering both legal-size ($495) and tabloid-size ($1,400) options. With either one, you connect the scanner directly to your computer by USB cable. What makes them accessories to the i3250 rather than standalone scanners is that you can't use either unless you also have the i3250 (or another supported scanner) installed on the computer.

As with most scanners in this price range, the software that comes with the i3250 doesn't include any application programs. The more-than-reasonable assumption is that offices that need this level of scanner already have all the programs they need.

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Kodak Alaris supplies Twain, ISIS, and WIA drivers, which will let you scan from virtually any Windows program that includes a scan command. In addition, the company says that Linux drivers are available for downloading from its website, and Mac drivers should be available soon.

There are two scan utilities that come with most Kodak Alaris scanners. You can choose whichever one fits your particular scan needs more closely. For my tests, I installed Kodak SmartTouch. The utility includes built-in optical character recognition (OCR), which let me run our standard tests not just for scanning to image PDF format, but for scanning to searchable PDF and editable text formats as well.

Performance

Scanning our standard 25-sheet, 50-page test document to a PDF image file in black and white mode, I got essentially the same results at both 200 and 300 pixels per inch (ppi). The throughput, timed from giving the scan command to finishing writing the file to disk, came out to 37ppm and 74ipm. Subtracting the lag before the ADF fed the first page and the lag writing to disk after the last page finished gave me an actual scan speed of a bit faster than the rated 50ppm and 100ipm.

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The i3250 also delivers good performance for scanning to searchable PDF format, taking 1 minute 9 seconds at 200ppi to scan our 25-sheet, 50-page test document, recognize the text, and save in searchable PDF format. As a point of comparison, that's a tie with the Kodak i2900 ($3,659.91 at Amazon) , which boasts a faster rated speed.

The i3250 also turned in a good score on our OCR tests, but not at its default 200ppi resolution. The accuracy at 200ppi was actually disappointing, with at least one mistake on all font sizes smaller than 12 points on our Times New Roman test page and at all sizes smaller than 10 points on our Arial test page. When I boosted the resolution to 300ppi, however, it read the Times New Roman page at 6 points and the Arial page at 8 points without a mistake.

If you don't need to scan tabloid-size originals, you should take a look at the Kodak i2900. Aside from being limited to a maximum 8.5-inch-wide paper for scanning, it offers most of the same features as the i3250, including a flatbed suitable for book scanning, and it costs significantly less.

Similarly, if you need to scan documents up to 12 inches wide but don't need the letter-size flatbed, you'll be better off with the Kodak i3200, which is essentially the Kodak i3250 Scanner minus the flatbed. That said, if you want the ability to scan at tabloid or larger size and also need a letter-size flatbed—particularly one designed for book scanning—the Kodak i3250 will give you both, along with speed and excellent text recognition. The combination makes it our Editors' Choice for heavy-duty scanning in a large workgroup or midsize office.

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