Scan-Optics Delivers Four Additional 9000M Scanners to Major Customer.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

MANCHESTER, Conn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 13, 2004

Scan-Optics, Inc. (OTC BB: SOCR), a leader in information capture and customer service solutions for government, insurance, order fulfillment, proxy, health claims, test scoring and other paper-intensive businesses, today announced the delivery of four additional 9000M scanners at a major U.S. customer site (the Customer). The Customer has been a long-time Scan-Optics end-user, and this recent order of four machines brings their current total to twelve 9000M scanners installed and in production.

The Scan-Optics 9000M scanning system provides high-speed, high-volume, image-based capture and optical mark sense recognition, and is able to accommodate extremely high volumes of time-critical work for the Customer, processing peak loads of over 4.5 million documents weekly in 2 shifts. This processing volume represents a productivity increase of more than 50% on a year-over-year basis for the same period in 2002.

"The selection of the 9000M over other scanning options underscores its superiority at handling high volumes while still providing accurate and reliable image capture, OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and OMR (Optical Mark Read)," stated Richard C. Goyette, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Scan-Optics. "We are very proud to continue to handle this mission critical workload for our customer and we look forward to continuing to provide the best solution available in the market to ensure their success."

About the 9000M

The Scan-Optics Series 9000 family of scanners is designed specifically to handle the Imaging and Intelligent Character Recognition demands of customers requiring high accuracy data recognition. The 9000M is fast, reliable and provides features such as inline OCR/ICR/OMR for data recognition, programmable document serialization, selective image output, stacking options along with intermixed or non-intermixed forms processing at a reasonable cost. The 9000M is modular in design, making it easy to choose from a number of optional product add-on packages to meet specific forms processing requirements. The system can be configured to read a wide range of machine-print (OCR), handprint (ICR) and mark sense (OMR) data with optional simplex or duplex capabilities. In addition, the 9000M can be equipped with one or more cameras selected from a wide range of optional cameras offering varying resolutions and lighting, including color imaging, to meet the unique requirements of the customer's forms processing application. Most importantly, every software and hardware component of the 9000M solution has been designed to be extremely flexible to meet the critical needs of businesses and government agencies requiring a fast, multi-faceted system that can increase production efficiency when processing large volumes of intermixed and non-intermixed documents.

Scan-Optics, Inc., with headquarters in Manchester, Connecticut, is recognized internationally as an innovator and solution provider in the information management and imaging business. It designs, manufactures and services products and systems for character recognition, image processing and display, data capture, data entry, and storage and retrieval. Scan-Optics systems and software are marketed worldwide to commercial and government customers directly and through distributors. Through its Manufacturing Services Division, Scan-Optics also provides business process outsourcing services to customers. Scan-Optics has sales and service offices located throughout the United States and abroad. Additional information is available at www.scanoptics.com.

Statements about Scan-Optics' future expectations, including future revenues and earnings, and all other statements in this press release other than historical facts are "forward-looking statements" made under safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could materially affect future results. Among these risk factors are changes in general economic and business conditions in the United States and foreign markets, which impact capital investments by customers, the cyclical nature of funding within federal and state government agencies, further adverse changes in Scan-Optics' banking, lending and financing relationship, insufficient cash resources, increased competition from similar products, the implementation of other technologies which may provide alternative solutions, ability to complete projects in a timely manner, and other risk factors and cautionary statements listed from time to time in Scan-Optics' periodic reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including but not limited to the Scan-Optics' Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2002.