Face it, bar charts can be boring.

And unless your audience is a bunch of economists, viewing page after page of data can definitely be a mind-numbing experience.

With a scanner, you can quickly liven up your web site, reports, or presentations with non-digitized pictures and graphics. Now that a decent color scanner can be found for $300 or less, if your office doesn't have one now, it might be time to reconsider.

True Value Hardware

Although there are several different types of scanners, the most flexible one is the flatbed model which allows you to place items on top of a glass platen to be scanned. Similar to a copier, a flatbed scanner allows you to scan pictures, books and anything you can place on top of the scanning surface.

There are three things to look for in a color scanner. First is color depth, which is measured in bits per pixel. Most color scanners are either 30-bit or 36-bit. Higher bit depths allow for more accurate color reproduction of scanned images.

Second, look for the resolution of the scanner. Resolution is measured by how many dots per inch, dpi, a scan captures. If the bulk of your work consists of graphics and manipulating images, at least 600x600 true resolution is required for decent detail capture. Discount sales pitches that talk about a scanner's interpolated resolution. It is a way to create additional pixels that has not been captured in the original scan, which can be helpful when enlarging scans but does not improve upon the detail captured.

Finally, test for scan speed. Unfortunately, the only reliable way to get a sense of how fast a unit scans is to try some samples. Determine if the speed is going to be a time constraint for the type of work you will be doing. Usually, if a scanner is going to be used for data entry, you need a unit that scans quickly in a lower resolution setting.

Scan speed is also greatly affected by the computer powering the scanner. If you don't want to spend minutes waiting for an image to be scanned, you'll need to use it with your speediest computer, both in terms of processor and RAM. And you'll also want a hard drive that's got plenty of space. When scanning at a high resolution and capturing full color, one image can easily take up more than 10 megabytes of hard disk space.

It's the Software, Stupid

The most advanced hardware features do not necessarily guarantee quality output. To a certain degree, a scanner is only as good as its software. Most scanners come bundled with an image editing program and some kind of optical character recognition, OCR, software.

Make sure to factor the software bundle into your ticket price. Paying a hundred dollars more will definitely be worth the money if it comes with high-end software like Adobe Photoshop that can cost hundreds of dollars to buy a la carte.