nice idea, software is buggy

I purchased this in an effort to reduce the clutter of boxes and boxes of business cards, but unfortunately using Cardscan to go from the paper record to the electronic database world is not a completely smooth process. For one thing, the software is downright buggy - it can hang the whole computer. The hardware is finicky about having its own USB port and not sharing a port with anything else. It will not work if you put it into one port of a USB hub. Don't count on the tech support for much help, either. It is either the live but clueless variety, from out of the country, or canned email "responses." Also, given the variety of business cards these days (shiny paper, colors, white letters on black, graphics, etc) more often than not one must correct the address and other contact info by hand. So ---it is less work than typing in name, address, email, fax and phone info into a database, but by no means "scan and done, it is in your database" either. If you can get your kids to help you clean up the data, go for it. Another plus - it gives you an image (picture) of the card, which you can use as a graphic in other programs or directories. And it will store both sides of a two sided card, if you choose to scan both sides.