So as of January 2022, I now have a Medit i700 in addition to my venerable Medit i500. Both are excellent and the i700 is phenomenal. Of course, just as I got it, Medit announced the wireless i700 but, hey, it’s still a great scanner. Furthermore, Medit keeps adding these crazy good plugins to their web based platform. You can do ortho simulations, smile simulations, make temporary crown files to send to your printer/mill, make solid models for the your printer/mill and send cases directly to Clear Correct if you like. Awesome!!!
These scanners output directly and open Exocad which I acquired in July 2021 to print models on my Sprintray and Formlabs printers or mill on my Roland DWX-52D dry milling machine where we mill our own crowns and bridges. So apparently Envista Holdings bought Carestream’s intraoral scanners for, wait for it, $600! Gee that’s not very much for a technology product sale, especially from a well-established company like Carestream that bought up the ashes of Kodak’s failed entree in healthcare. I guess it really is “Dog eat Dog.”
Shortly after returning the CS3600 to Benco, I got a Medit i500. For the money, it’s great. Even without considering the 16-18k price tag, it’s vastly superior to the completely shitty Carestream CS3600. I’m so disgusted with Carestream, that I’m currently in negotiations to ditch CS Softdent and switch over to the much more modern Dentrix. Every time I need to update anything in Softdent I need two days and my IT guy. The installers still think they’re dealing with Windows XP and the program is still 32 bit code! Windows 10 is now completely 64 bit. This makes NO sense and makes upgrades super PAINFUL since the 32 bit installers like to crash repeatedly. If you are looking for Practice Management software, steer clear of Softdent. It’s ancient. I think the only way they’ll retain me is if Dentrix can’t translate their arcane database. Deifnitely don’t buy the CS3600 or the CS3700 which is redesigned outside but contains 3600 guts. There wasn’t a problem with the outside! The scanner body was quite comfortable. It was the camera innards that made it a piece of junk.
The Carestream CS3600 is a really awful piece of equipment. If you’re in the market for an intraoral scanner, don’t even bother with this one. It’s terrible. You’d be much better served with a 3Shape Trios, Aligntech iTero Elements or even a Medit i500. I really can’t say enough bad things about it. As it stands, the Trios is still the reigning champ, lousy customer support or not.
So I did it! On Wednesday May 27, 2020, I declared my independence from crap coding. I called Carestream “Customer Service” and was connected eventually to a dude in Bucharest, Romania(!) that I was desirous to (add verbal flourishes to my site…) to discontinue my relationship with Carestream Dental and their horrible Softdent practice management software. Of course, “Andrei” asked me why and I said that since about 2014 the software appears to have reached the end of its development since with each new iteration, it crashes upon installation and costs me thousands(!) in IT since my IT guy has to sit there with them as they devise workarounds during installations. He did not disagree. Without me saying it, he knew I had switched to Dentrix. I bitched that in October 2019, I spent $900+ on electronic prescription writing. He said that even in the best case scenario, it took 9 months to implement. Nice, since I signed up in October that I’d most likely be out of compliance with the state of Florida that wanted me to have electronic Rx writing by July 1, 2020, Coronavirus notwithstanding.
So, I cancelled support, which in their defense has always been pretty good for a shitty product, and cancelled electronic insurance processing (which did not include x-rays or other supporting evidence attachments which Dentrix does support). Oh, and I got hooked up with electronic Rx writing on May 28, 2020 in less than three hours(!). Nice. “Andrei” verbally confirmed my suspicions even though he knew the convo was being recorded that Softdent is horrible and even said no one on the team wants to code for it any more since there is basically nothing they can do with it. It would have to be scrapped and totally rewritten from the ground up which they are NOT willing to do. As it stands, the program thinks it’s working inside of a Windows XP Pro machine, nevermind that XP Pro has not been supported since April 8, 2014. Nice. So, Carestream goes on and on about selling their digital devices like their latest CBCT units, rebranded average Trophy intraoral sensors, CS36/3700 intraoral shit scanners and their capable (it’s actually pretty good) CS1500 intraoral camera with either Softdent or Practiceworks which apparently are no longer in development. Nice strategy guys! Dentrix is gonna eat your lunch. Even the bloated Eaglesoft is better. So, let me get this straight: they want you to buy their gear so you can “integrate” with practice management software that’s no longer able to handle the bandwidth of digital technology much less everyday tasks and is no longer actually in development? No thanks. Moving on.
Yes, I have to relearn how to do things, but with the ability to add functionality in the future because it’s still in constant development, I guess I’m in. Have to be. I hit the end of the road with Softdent.