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Intelliscanning: not as smart as it should be
It took me much longer that it should have to review the Intelliscanner Mini, a small, wireless device to scan barcodes and import them into personal databases. That’s because the first time I tried using it, it felt like I’d been bitten by a snake. I began to wonder if I had somehow provoked the innocent-looking little thing, but nevertheless regarded it warily, giving it a dirty look every time I passed its box.
Surely this product, which is a fantastic idea, couldn’t be that bad. Surely I was wrong. So I gave it another try.
I was right. This thing is a snake in the grass.
The idea is one whose time has come: we have so much stuff — books, CDs, DVDs, wine, groceries, electronics — that there must be some way to more easily organize and catalog it all.
The Intelliscanner Mini is a bite-sized version of several products offered by Intelliscanner Corp. for small business and personal use. The Mini is a wireless USB device that allows you to scan 100 barcodes at a time, bring the data back to computer and seamlessly import them into programs that will automatically bring up the items you scanned. Included in the $300 package is software for organizing media (books, CDs, movies); for making a database for your wine collection; for sorting your kitchen inventory; bringing in your home assets; and, finally, your comic book collection.
Sounds brilliant, right?
The problems begin with the Mini’s hardware itself. It’s a USB device, but for some strange reason requires that it be plugged to an ugly, clunky serial adapter and then converted back to a USB cable before it can connect to your computer. What was a tiny, sleek little device becomes a mess of wires and unsightly plastic on your desk. It’s 2008. A small USB device shouldn’t need this much rigging up to function:
Especially when you consider what the Mini is actually doing: it converts barcodes into a series of numbers and spits them out the moment you plug the thing in to your computer. If you don’t happen to have the right window up on the right piece of software to correspond with what you just scanned, you will lose that information instantly. The moment the Mini connects with your computer, those numbers are spit out and lost. If you spent an hour scanning 100 books on your shelves and you didn’t have the software set to accept the barcodes when you plugged in the Mini, you just lost an hour of your life.
You also can’t mix barcodes: you can’t scan in barcodes for comic books on the same trip as books, wine or kitchen items.
And although I didn’t test out the wine software (I don’t have enough bottles of wine in my house to constitute any kind of collection), the comic book and kitchen software were abysmal.
I couldn’t get the software to recognize a single comic book barcode I scanned in. My comic book collection isn’t exactly state-of-the-art, but after about 50 tries, I gave up. And an integrated viewer to subscribe to Web comics barely functions at all. I tried to access a few popular Web comics via their RSS feeds (a user-unfriendly step to begin with), and they didn’t work. Half of the comics that were already built into the Web comics feature also didn’t appear.
The kitchen software only recognized about 7 of 20 pantry and refrigerator items I scanned, even items made by Kellog’s. Forget about H-E-B or any other regional/local brands. It recognized the manufacturer, but not any specific products.
Add to this an ugly and confusing Windows interface and you have software that kills what might otherwise be a very useful, worthwhile product. If you’re used to dealing with Apple software, more recent incarnations of Microsoft Office products or even decent Web 2.0 Web sites, you’ll be stunned by how inelegant and old-school the Intelliscanner software feels. It badly needs a visual makeover and a usability rehaul.
For me, there was only one redeeming feature: the Media program actually functions very well and recognized a pretty good variety of video games, books, DVDs and music CDs I own. It brings up a wealth of information about each (including a photo) and is idea for creating a personal library, especially if you tend to lose track of belongings you’ve lent out.
You can also assign barcode stickers and create your own library (most useful for comics, I imagine, many of which don’t carry barcodes), but it seems pretty labor intensive to me.
If you are anal retentive about your media and have $300 to spend, the Intelliscanner Mini may be worthwhile. But, disorganized mess that I may be, I have better things to do with my time than wrestle with impossible software and a badly designed product.
Here are some photos and screen shots of what some of the Intelliscanner software looks like:
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