Hardware: Saba Handscan: data goes from printout to worksheet without retyping. (Saba Technologies' low-cost scanner) (Hardware Review) (evaluation)

HARDWARE: SABA HANDSCAN

Once again it's time to prepare a monthly report, and you must get some numbers from a mainframe-generated printout, as well as some PC-generated figures from a staff member. Reentering data into your spreadsheet from printouts of data stored elsewhere is time-consuming, produces errors, and can be costly. Text scanners can eliminate retyping by reading text into a computer, but most scanners produce word-processor files and aren't useful for spreadsheet material.

Enter Handscan, from Saba Technologies. Priced at $649, it is an inexpensive scanner, and more importantly, it works well with 1-2-3 and Symphony spreadsheets.

As the name implies, Handscan is a hand-held unit and, like a mouse, works as a supplement to the keyboard. To set up the hardware, you plug the full-size interface board into an empty slot in your computer, then plug the cable from the unit into the board. To install the software, you put the Handscan program disk in drive A, type install, and follow a few on-screen instructions. To use the scanner, you first load the Handscan software, then the application you want to feed data into, and you're ready to go.

To scan text, you run the unit over any line of alphanumeric characters. Handscan reads the text and sends the characters to your 1-2-3 spreadsheet just as if you'd typed them yourself. Be aware, however, that Handscan does not read typeset print.

One advantage of the hand-held design is that it reads from any size paper. Most desktop scanners are limited to reading pages that fit in their paper-feed mechanism. Handscan can read whole lines or parts of lines, in any order you want them entered. If you need to consolidate information from multiple worksheets and documents, you can print out the data and selectively scan it into a new worksheet.

Handscan lets you modify text as it is scanned: You can strip out dollar signs and commas. You can convert a minus sign following a number into the characters *(-1), so that the scanned 23- becomes 23*(-1), and shows up in 1-2-3 as -23.