Increase keyboard rate on a USB barcode scanner?

We are using a bar code scanner to scan 2D barcodes. The scanner works as a USB device and prints out the results as if it was a keyboard. The issue is that because of the size of the data it takes about 3-5 seconds for the barcode to transfer the data to the program using the keyboard interface. I have noticed that the rate with which it can capture data is somewhat dependent on the OS I am running. We are using it on Ubuntu Linux. Is there a way to increase the speed with which the OS pulls data from the USB keyboard to perhaps increase the overall throughput?

Question by Bogdan on Super User, licensed CC BY-SA. We show a short excerpt and link to the original thread as credit.