Editorial Review

(VPSPDSST410WM) VuPoint Solutions Magic Wand Portable Scanner - Ever want to put all of your pictures on your computer but didn't have the time to sit there and scan one after the other? Ever thought of buying one those scanners but you don't have any room in your office to store it? Than the VuPoint Solutions “Magic Wand” Portable Scanner is perfect for you. The VuPoint Solutions "Magic Wand" Portable Scanner allows you to scan the documents that matter the most to you, and back them up on your computer. Do you have those documents that you've had for a while and you're afraid that they're going to rip or even get lost one day? We'll now you can scan them and keep them safe. MODEL: VPSPDSST410WM. Features: Scanner for color & monochromatic images, documents, magazines; Sensor: A4 Color Contact image Sensor; Resolution: Standard Reso: 300x300dpi (default); High Reso: 600x600dpi; External Memory: Support Micro SD card up to 16GB (Micro SD card not included); File Format: JPEG; LCD: Scanning status display; LCD Display Size: 0.787” x 0.59”; Auto Power Off: Off/ 3 minute/ 5 minute; Scanning Speed: A4 Size: high resolution with color ≤ 28Sec; High resolution with mono ≤ 14Sec; Standard resolution with color ≤ 8Sec; Standard resolution with mono ≤ 4Sec.White Balance: Auto; USB Port: USB 2.0 high speed; Power Source: 2xAA Batteries; Battery Life: ≥ 200 min. Includes: USB Cable, 2xAA alkaline batteries, Pouch, User's manual. Dimension: 10” L x 1.2” H x 1.1” W. Weight: 0.47 lbs. ... Read more

Editorial Review

35mm Film to Digital Image Converter with 2.4" LCD Screen and TV-Out ... Read more

Editorial Review

Featuring one touch scanning, and requiring no PC, the Personal Photo Scanner/converter from Pandigital makes it easy to enjoy digital copies of all your favorite printed photos, up to 8.5x11. Designed for ease of use, scanned images are saved directly to SD card for quick and simple transfer to your digital photo frame or PC. Images are scanned as 600dpi full color JPEGs for incredible clarity and quality ... Read more

Editorial Review

Canon CanoScan 9000F Color Image PERP9600X9600DPI 48BIT USB ... Read more

Reviews

Fabulous performer in this price range!, August 9, 2010
I sold my Epson V750-M Pro to get the CanoScan 9000F instead. I'll divide my review into three categories: speed, quality, and user interface. ____ SPEED: I just couldn't get around to scanning anything with the V750 because the wait with every scan is just agonizing. It sounds like it has to rev up its engine every time. On the other hand, The speed and agility of the 9000F are impressive. I place several pictures at a time on the glass to scan, and the software lets you independently select the settings for each picture, mixing resolutions and corrections. Then it goes and scans each one separately. And because the LED light requires no warm-up time, it works immediately you can just get so much done! I scanned over 150 pictures in the first few days of having this scanner -- more than I did in the two years I had the Epson. However, do keep in mind that when scanning film and slides, scanning speed will be reduced drastically -- that's just the way it is, regardless of the scanner. _____ QUALITY: The V750 is a professional grade scanner (hence the almost $800 price tag) does a slightly better job with dust and scratch removal using Digital ICE. The 9000F uses FARE, which works well, but seems to not be quite as effective. Scans on the 9000F tend to be slightly more blue, but you can tweak that correction easily. ______ INTERFACE: The user interface is a bit clugey (is that how you spell it?), but it does everything it needs to, and while you're scanning a large number of pics it stores them in its own catalog until you're finished, then saves the files in one single sweep. The software seems to not retain some settings (I keep having to uncheck a box to create subfolders by scan date), but overall works very well. _____ CONCLUSION: If I had to choose on one hand between having the best scanner (V750) and never using it, and on the other hand having a great scanner (9000F) and using it like crazy, I would definitely take Option B. I highly recommend the 9000F for its beautiful design, easy setup, very good scanning quality, easy photo correction settings, ability to scan several pics at once, and impressive speed!

This scanner ROCKS, June 30, 2010

great scanner; horrid software, July 2, 2010
The scanner works just great - terrific images. The Canon scanning software that comes with it - terrible user interface. Too many features having nothing to do with just running the scanner. I don't need a picture organizer; I have iPhoto for this. Push the button on the front panel and the menus jump around on their own quite mysteriously. Ugh. Who designed this junk code? Five stars for the hardware; none for the software.

Follow-up on the software. As it turns out, if you install the included Photoshop Elements, the operability is quite nice. I'd still avoid the Canon software except for installing the drivers.

Great scanner...but, July 15, 2010
PROS: This scanner is SUPER quick. I can scan four 35mm Slides at max resolution(4800 dpi), and it only takes 5 min. The driver software has a real nice set of options for pre-scanning. I Love the fact you can walk away from the scanner, and do something around the house while it scans...it will play a soundclip of your choice when it is finished, to alert you.

CONS: The USB chord is WAY too short. They need to package this with a longer chord. I would recommend a USB extender, or a longer chord if you plan on having this on the opposite side of your desk.

I have been having a LOT of problems with the Canon MP Navigator EX scanning software. Besides the good options. Its a resource hog. "Insufficient Memory" errors seem to be commonplace with the Canon MP Navigator EX software. Do your research before this purchase! Make SURE you have at least 4gb of memory.
WARNING: If you have 2gb or less of RAM, this software will not work correctly!

I have called Canon's support center over 4 times, and am still having problems. The only way the software can work on my PC, is I have to start up my pc with bare bones drivers.
There is nothing on the web I have found to help...I had to resort to Canon's support. They really need to revamp, and do something about this horrible horrible software that comes with it.

**side note(update): I updated my RAM to 4gb, and the software runs fine without a hitch. I cannot emphasize enough to you, to have enough RAM for the software.

Probably the best overall "A4" size flatbed scanner under $700, September 27, 2010
I bought this scanner primarily to digitally archive my 35mm film and slide collection. The scanner I was using, a 9 year old Microtek 4900 flatbed, was barely up to the task, with a maximum optical resolution of 2400 dpi, and it had no built-in color correction to remove the orange mask from color negatives, let alone automated dust/scratch removal. And at 2400 dpi, it was far too slow, taking almost an hour to scan a 6-frame film strip. How does the Canon 9000F compare?
1. "Street price", at Amazom.com, was $235 total, almost $500 less than the semi-pro Epson 700 flatbed film scanner. The 9000F can only scan 2 strips of 35mm film in one pass, whereas the Epson can scan 4. The 9000F can scan 4 mounted 35mm slides at a time, the Epson can scan 8. But for most amateur photographers, the $700 price tag of the Epson is pretty steep, and unless you have many thousands of slides or filmstrips to scan, the higher capacity of the Epson may not be worth the extra cost. The scanning rate of the 9000F is at least four times faster than my old Microtek at all resolutions between 300 & 2400 dpi. At higher resolutions, the 9000F slows down appreciably - a single 35mm film frame at 9600 dpi took about 20 minutes, with FARE enabled. During the scan, the drive motor in the 9000F is quite smooth, relatively quiet, and gives me the impression of pretty good quality. Other cheap scanners I have used sound like a concrete mixer.
2. Image quality. I have tried the 9000F on 35mm color negative film at 2400dpi, 3200dpi, and 9600dpi. The quality of the three scans are all excellent and appear to be about equal in consistency. I also tried scanning a regular 8x10 color photo enlargement at 600 dpi; the 9000F was very fast and the scan quality was incredible, resolving tiny details of the photo, plus dust specks and cat hairs that were invisible to the unaided eye. I have no reservations about the image quality of the 9000F, and can't imagine any other scanner at this price point could better it. A word here about the maximum scan resolution of the 9000F and what it means in the "real world". For reflective media like photo prints, the scanner can crank out 4800 dpi, and for transparencies (film or slides), 9600 dpi. But do you really need that much resolution? My one test frame of a 35mm color negative scanned at 9600 dpi had an interesting and unexpected result: The scanner's resolution exceeds the film's resolution by a substantial amount. Turns out that scanning that film strip at anything above about 3600 dpi did not yield any extra detail, just a huge increase in file size. It's possible that the extremely fine grain size of Kodachrome 25 or Panatomic "X" film might allow the 9000F to pull out extra detail at 9600dpi, but none of my film or slides are extreme-fine grain types, so I can't test that hypothesis myself. As for speed, scanning film at 9600dpi on the 9000F is very slow, about 20 minutes per frame with FARE enabled, so you probably won't want to go above 3600 or 4800 unless you really need to. A 3200 dpi scan of the 35mm film frame took a bit less than five minutes with FARE enabled. This resolution produced the maximum detail from my film; a slightly smoother result than a 2400 dpi scan, but you have to look very close at 200% zoom in Photoshop to see the difference. With the 9000F set to 3200 dpi, a film scan results in a 14 megapixel RGB image, but don't let this number mislead you into thinking that you can see tiny details out of 35 mm film scans. A typical digital SLR, with a 12~15 megapixel CMOS sensor (for example a Canon 50D), produces much sharper images than my film scans with the 9000F scanner, and that's not even with a high-priced "L" series lens on the camera. I DON'T mean to imply in that last statement that the 9000F is a poor performer, just that you shouldn't expect miracles out of scanning color negative film. I'd love to see how the 9000F performs scanning test charts shot on Panatomic "X" or Kodachrome 25. As for scanning color photo prints, you will probably not need to go above 600dpi most of the time. Although the 9000F is capable of scanning reflective media at 4800 DPI, most color photo print paper doesn't have anywhere near this fine of a grain size. However, for forensic scanning of "real objects", for example coins, flower petals, leaves, or documents, the 4800 dpi resolution could be useful, giving you the ability to see surface details that would be invisible other than under a microscope.
3. Speed of film scanning. The 9000F is way faster than my old Microtek, but probably not as fast as a $2500 Nikon film scanner. On the other hand, the 9000F can scan anything that will fit on the platen, at 1/10th the price of a dedicated film scanner. Loading of film and slides takes longer on a flatbed like this, and you can only scan 4 slides at a time, compared to unattended batch scanning of a hundred or more slides with some dedicated film scanners.
Following are my actual scan speeds for film scanning:
a. Scanning 8 frames of 35mm color negatives at 3200 dpi with all of the options enabled, including FARE (the infrared dust/scratch removal feature, set to "medium"), Unsharp Mask, High Quality, and Grain Correction, took 38 minutes, or 4.75 minutes per frame. The results were really nice, and all I had to do in Photoshop was rotate the horizontal frames to Landscape orientation (all 35mm Film scan frames are output from ScanGear in Portrait orientation). A few of the really big artifacts were not removed by the FARE engine; these appeared to be cat hairs that escaped my pre-scan cleaning and were still on the film.
b. Re-running the same 8 frame, 3200 dpi scan with the options turned off was 3 times faster, or 1.56 minutes per frame. I think that the slower speed of the first scan was mostly due to the FARE processing. However, the output of the second scan, although much faster, required a lot more manual repair in Photoshop, especially "healing" of dust specks and other artifacts. At 3200 dpi, some of the dust particles on my film were invisible to my eye, yet they still made huge white spots on the output image, as much as 8 pixels across. My opinion here is that it's well worth the extra time to use the FARE system.

What resolution to use depends on your film. For standard grain color negative or slide films, I suggest you start each session with a scan of the smallest possible crop area of your negative, setting the crop frame on something with fine detail like text (a road sign for example) or a human face. Scan this crop at 2400, 3600, 4800, and 6000 dpi, then tile the 4 scans in your graphics editor at the same apparent size, so that you can see them side-by-side, then decide for yourself which resolution yields the most detail. If you decide that your film has a maximum resolution of 4000 lines per inch (157 line pairs per millimeter), use 4800 dpi; you won't get any more detail by going higher. NOTE: The highest resolution color film currently available on the consumer market is probably Fuji Velvia, which has a resolving power of about 160 line pairs per millimeter (and even then, only with high quality lenses). Scanning this film at 4800 dpi will probably bring out all of the available detail. The only film I know of that's finer grain and still available is Kodak Panatomic X Aerographic film, a 9" wide roll film used in aerial mapping cameras. This film is capable of 500 lines pairs per millimeter, which is an astounding 12,700 lines per inch. If you actually had a frame of this film, you might be able to get the most detail out of it with the 9000F set at 9600 dpi, but it wouldn't even fit on the platen glass without trimming, so it's a moot point. BTW, Photogrammetry shops that digitize this film use scanners that cost about $50,000, and the output files are several gigabytes for each frame.

4. Long-term durability. I have only had this scanner for a few hours, so only time will tell if it has the quality built in to keep it running for many years, but it runs, sounds, and feels like a well built device, and the output image quality is everything I hoped for. The case is mostly plastic, like most all electronics nowadays, so it doesn't have quite the "battleship" feel of the $8000 Canon EOS 1Ds camera, but it's not bad for $235.
5. Bundled software and drivers. The 9000F TWAIN Driver and scanning engine, called "ScanGear", has a well thought out user interface with "basic" and "advanced" modes. It automatically senses the size of your source image and adjusts the scan boundaries accordingly, or you can select a scan boundary manually. When scanning film or slides, ScanGear automatically sets crop boundaries around the visible edges of each film frame, so you don't have to scan the entire film strip then manually crop each frame in post-processing (unless you want to for some reason). ScanGear presents you with several options for processing and retouching, including dust/scratch removal (called FARE), fade correction, High Quality, Backlight correction, Grain correction, and Unsharp Mask. These corrections can be applied to all of the film frames, or set individually for some of the frames but not others. The effect of the color, Unsharp Mask, and backlight corrections appear immediately in the preview so you can decide if you want to enable them or not before doing the actual scan. The scanner is bundled with Adobe Photoshop Elements v8, an $89 dollar value by itself (I haven't installed this since I already have Photoshop). It includes three film guides, one for 35 mm strip film, one for Medium format (120) film, and one for 35 mm slides. These film holders are thin plastic and don't feel like they would withstand much abuse, so treat them gently. You might want to consider buying a couple of extra film guides from Canon Parts Department (if possible) for the size of your film, before the 9000F goes out of production and extra film guides become unobtanium. Note that the film guides have to be set on the platen in a particular orientation or the scan will not be calibrated properly (the colors and brightness will be wrong).
The software CD also contains an application, MP Navigator, for file management of your scanning projects, and SilverFast SE, for adjustment of film scans, plus ArcSoft Photo Studio. I have not tried the bundled software yet.

Conclusion: The Canon 9000F scanner will scan any reflective media up to "A4" size (8.5" x 11") at up to 4800 dpi, or transparent media (film, slides) at up to 9600 dpi. It's very fast at average resolutions (1200 dpi or less), and has automatic dust/scratch removal and color adjustment built-in. Scans of color negative film are automatically compensated to remove the orange color mask and inversed to a positive image before being sent to your graphics software. The dust and scratch removal feature, called FARE, can be set to "low", "medium", or "high". I tried it on Medium and it seems to work, but on zooming in really close there are still plenty of dust speckles in the image (these are tiny and probably won't be visible on a re-print up to 4" x 6"). For what you get in terms of image quality, optical resolution, and speed, plus the ability to scan reflective media, film, or slides, I'd say the 9000F is probably the best under-$700 scanner available currently (October 2010). Highly recommended.

Also, delivery of this item from Amazon was incredibly fast - 3 days, and that was with the Free Super-Saver shipping!

THE FLY IN THE OINTMENT, September 28, 2010
I own a Canoscan 4400f, and it performs well scanning. The problem it shares with the 9000f is the two little flat pieces of plastic that hold the negative during scanning the negative. If you lose or break those little cheesy pieces of plastic, you are Esso L, my friend. Look at the photos of the machine here on the Amazon website and you'll see what I mean.

The little hinges on the plastic pieces on my machine cracked after a few months, so I thought I'd buy a couple of these "negative holders" - maybe buy 2 or 3 extras. Sorry Charlie, Canon doesn't sell the holders separately and never did.

I looked at the Canon website, and it's the same deal with the 9000f and the other models. The lousy little pieces of plastic are not for sale as accessories or as anything else.

Canon gave me the non-toll free number of some warehouse in Virginia that was supposed to have the parts but the guy there told me they don't have the junk plastic dodads. I could tell from the tone of his voice that he'd had a lot of calls on the subject. If you're seriously going to buy a 9000 or a 8800, I'd get the warehouse number and see if you can order a bunch of doodads. They don't last long if you scan a lot of negatives.

I'm handling my little negative thingees like they were made out of gold. I'm fitting the pieces together with difficulty to scan negatives. The negatives fall out or the thingees don't stick click together. Maybe I'll see a used 4400f at a flea market or in a thrift store and I can pay for a used scanner just to get the weak part in this machine.

I'd recommend a Canon scanner but not a film negative scanner. Canon, why have a sturdy, efficient negative scanner depend on something so fragile and irreplaceable? I've always trusted Canon, but not now.

CanoScan 9000F, July 31, 2010
I shot slides for 20 years before I purchased a DSLR. I have approx. 10,000 slides with no way to show them unless someone came to my home and I set up the slide projector. With the 9000F,I am transfering selected slides to my computer and don't seem to get any loss of quality. I can correct copies of slides now, including making old slides that may have faded, look like new again. And the scanner comes with Photoshop Elements 8. It is a flatbed scanner that will also copy negative film. I have made up to 16 X 20 prints with no loss of quality. A great machine.

A grown-up scanner for grownups, July 5, 2010

Paid for itself in three days, October 27, 2010
Several times, I've done the numbers on having my backlog of 35mm slides scanned by a service versus doing it myself with some kind of low-cost equipment. Well-reviewed scanners all had some kind of drawback or other -- or were too expensive. And I never wanted to take the risk of shipping irreplaceable slides off to a service. This time, though, the combination of good reviews, reasonable price, and compatibility with Hamrick's VueScan software tipped the balance, and I bought one of these 9000Fs.

I am completely satisfied, both with the machine and with the economics. I looked at various services (whose prices are all over the map, by the way) and came up with a rough average of fifty cents a slide, including outbound shipping. With this scanner, I paid for that, including the cost of shipping the scanner overnight to me, in three days of quite painless effort. Around the four hundredth slide, it became free. Of course, I'm ignoring my time to do it, but since you can multi-task in between batches of four, I was able to continue work on other things.

And what a simple device to set up! If (unlike some other users, apparently) you don't overlook the "unlock" switch, it came up fast and easy, worked first time, and keeps on working.

As far as the software is concerned, use VueScan for flatbed work, but if you're just rescuing large numbers of slides, I find the Canon software to be extremely efficient and easy to use. If you set it up properly, you can scan four slides with one mouse click or carriage return, then go off and do something else for about four minutes, load four more, and do it again. Simplest thing I've used for this process. As always, the most clumsy thing about scanning slides is handling the slides themselves, not dropping them, getting them the right way around -- once they're in the machine, you're essentially done.

One thing to note: you really do want to hook this up to a reasonable PC. I have a dual-core HP desktop with 6g of memory and Win7 64. Some people have reported that less than 4g will turn up issues with the Canon software, and I suppose I can believe it. With the size of image files, all it would take is one memory leak somewhere in the code to cause problems on a big scale. And of course, I can't comment on the Mac experience.

Otherwise, if you have lots of film to preserve, I recommend this machine highly.

An Out of Sight, Fabulous Scanner, September 13, 2010

Editorial Review

Scanner, Epson ,Perfection V300 ... Read more

Editorial Review

Ultra Compact Scanner with up to 2400 dpi ... Read more

Editorial Review

Sleek and fast, this powerful scanner will impress you the very first time you push power. With high-luminance white LED lamps - it's ready to scan immediately, with no warm-up time needed. You'll quickly produce spectacular results, with max. color dpi resolution of 4800 x 9600. Seven easy buttons automate the scanning process, so it's simple to scan, copy and create e-mails and multi-page PDFs. Built-in FARE 3.0 retouching technology helps to enhance your final images. And to save time, you can batch-scan up to twelve 35mm frames or up to four slides - either positives or negatives.

FEATURES:

• Spectacular scans: Produce scans with spectacular resolution of up to 4800 x 9600 color dpi.
• 48-bit Input/Output: Rich, vivid color: 48-bit color depth yields over 281 trillion possible colors.
• Incredible resolution: The included software greatly enhances resolution, up to an amazing 19,200 color dpi.
• Easy scanning: Large function buttons automate the scanning process-select the use for the image, and it's ready in seconds.
• Enhance old photos: Built-in retouching technology removes much of the dust and scratches on original prints, improving image quality.
• Auto-Image Fix: The built-in Auto-Image Fix feature via Easy PhotoPrint EX helps you produce amazing results.
• Faster data: The USB 2.0 interface enables the fastest possible image transfers and scanning speeds.
• Multi-image scanning: To save time, simultaneously scan up to 12 frames of 35mm film strip or 4 frames of 35mm slides (negatives or positives).

Editorial Review

One button scanning to searchable PDF, Scan everything from business cards to A3 sized documents ... Read more

Editorial Review

Insert your negatives or slides into the trays and press one button to scan. the imagelab fs9t scanner transforms them directly into highquality 9 megapixel jpeg digital photographs — without a computer!streamlined efficiency and quality were just few of our primary goals, and the fs9t does not disappoint. the fs9t has significant upgraded specifications from its predecessor the fs5c05. whether it be 35mm film or a stack of your treasured slides, the fs9t’s 9 megapixel resolution will be sure to transfer them to the highest digital quality. to make it even more convenient, you may preview your progress after each and every scan on the built-in 2.4 inch tft preview screen. the fs9t also sports 16mb of internal memory. gone are the days where scanning was dependent upon a lengthy process requiring the use of your personal computer. the fs9t is a standalone unit that can scan your most precious memories, then save them directly to an sd memory card in seconds - no software required. then take that sd card to a commercial print kiosk, or your favorite imaging site and easily upload your archived images. you may even export to your computer for further editing options, should you choose via the included usb cable. using battery power, feel free to scan your negatives in the middle of your living room or the like, with no wires or messy cables to deal with. the imagelab fs9t will allow photo archiving to be a fast and reliable tool that delivers the highest quality for years to come. saving your images and preserving your memories. ... Read more

Editorial Review

EPSON PERFECTIONV600 PHOTO COLOR SCANNER ... Read more

Editorial Review

The Epson Perfection V500 Photo offers extraordinary quality and versatility with 6400 dpi resolution and an earth-friendly LED light source for greater productivity -- all at an amazing value. Remove dust and scratches from slides, negatives and film. Or, restore faded color photos with one touch. Then, take your photos further with the included Adobe® Photoshop® Elements.When it's time to archive important documents, you can scan multiple documents fast with the optional automatic document feeder.It's all at your fingertips with this powerful performer.Best of all, the energy-efficient LED means you can work smarter with faster scans and lower power consumption. Plus, with no warmup time, it's easier than ever to get started. ... Read more

Editorial Review

Take document scanning to a whole new level with the ScanSnap S1300 mobile scanning solution. Whether you're at home digitizing receipts, bank statements or term papers, or at the office capturing mission critical documents for a business trip, ScanSnap takes scanning beyond the desktop and into your world. ... Read more

Editorial Review

NeatReceipts works where you work - weighing in at less than a pound and powered by USB, NeatReceipts is the perfect tool at work, at home or on the go.NeatReceipts helps you free the information that's trapped in your documents, so you can organize, store, secure and activate it.Scan receipts for expense reports, digitize business cards, prep for taxes (IRS accepts NR scans in lieu of actual receipts!), manage documents.You can even export data, scan to PDF, use Smart Sorting to help organize your files, and convert your scans to editable text. ... Read more

Editorial Review

Included items 1 USB cable (2.0),1 ScanSnap CarrierSheet,1 Safety Precautions,1 AC adapter,1 Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional DVD-ROM,1 Set-up DVD-ROM ,1 AC cable and 1 Getting Started ... Read more

Reviews

Great tool for the paperless office, April 10, 2009
Great tool. What a scanner should be. This is another world from the speed and software efficiency you have in the average scanner and All In One Printers. So I am happy to have both a AIO device and this great tool for document management.

My use:
Now all the invoices and in general, all my printed documents are converted into searchable pdf into an easy to access archive.

I can recover from a fax or a printed document and edit it in word or excel tables or iWork and save a lot of time retyping

Business cards are archived in a short time and included in my address book and so also on my iPhone.

PLUS
A single, easy to use, application manages the very fast scanning and efficient OCR conversion of printed documents outputting directly in searchable PDF, Word, Excel, email attachment, address book and VCF contacts. Also business card OCR is quiet effective and the limit is due to strange character and graphics and you can find on some more creative cards.

Compared to what you find in the AIO devices and average scanners, paper handling is superior and errors are avoided. In the case of skipped pages (Happens rarely) a sensor warns you and show you which page is missing.

CONS
Only shortcoming is that Acrobat Pro is included in version 8.0 and not the last 9.0 but I suppose that this will change soon.

Paper eater, April 27, 2009
But I mean this in a good way. The ScanSnap S1500M gobbles up piles of paper at an amazing rate. One-side or two-side scanning takes the same time. I have put just about every type of paper through it, often of mixed sizes and types (e.g., legal and letter size, 3x5 cards, newspaper and magazine clippings, unfolded brochures). A carrier sheet is available for crumpled, folded, or extremely thin paper. I've only had one paper jam (an odd-shaped, somewhat crumpled page that I ran without using the carrier sheet). Clearing jams is trivially easy because of the almost straight-through paper path. I am amazed by the quality of the scans. Photos sometimes look better than the originals. It small and almost silent. The software is easy to use. I have seldom, if ever, had a computer peripheral that I was as happy with.

Worth every penny, April 19, 2009
I've scanned approximately 15,000 pages with this scanner and it couldn't have been easier. I did get the occasional "paper jam" when the sheet feeder picked up the next page as it was feeding the current page. Clearing a jam is trivial: pop the cover open, remove the pages, snap the cover back, continue scanning. Considering I was feeding in papers from 15 - 20 years ago, I expected the pages to occasionally stick together. This scanner is worth every penny.

INVALUABLE & IMPECCABLE., June 22, 2009
This is probably the most valuable hardware I have ever purchased for my Mac and for my office. I am considering purchasing a second one for my home as well. Now the machine looks clunky and large in the picture shown here, but the scanner can be folded down if you are not using it. Look for pictures of folded down machine. It is much more compact and nicer looking then it does on the above picture. That's important too; after all, you want your desk to look neater and less cluttered after getting this machine.

I owned a Neat Receipts Mac scanner previously. S1500M is superior in every way; the difference is so great, I probably should not even compare them. Neat Receipts was agonizing slow and the OCR software was also slow and unreliable (often crashed). I was sorely disappointed. Good thing I tried the S1500M. I've owned this machine for a few months now and have scanned all kinds of documents. Fast and reliable scanning every time. ADF works flawless; never skips a page. Scans both sides of a page automatically when needed; I wasn't even thinking about this feature when I purchased it, but boy that sure is a convenient feature to have.

Adobe Acrobat which came with the scanner is nice; but I recommend also getting Yep! (shareware which utilizes Spotlight -- remember to enable Spotlight or it won't work!) for previewing and organizing all the PDF files you will be creating. You can't work efficiently without a great document scanner and organizer in the 21st century. Invaluable. Invaluable. Get it. Just do it.

UPDATE: Recently some ignorant clerk at the IRS sent me a document of about 20 pages stapled a bunch of times using a broken stapler (the staples were bent irregularly in multiple places). I took off 4 broken staples and ran the document through and realized that there were actually more broken staples in between the documents where it was not visible to me until it jammed my ScanSnap S1500M. It made a grinding noise and I was horrified to discover about 5 more broken stapes between the documents. I thought the S1500M was a sure gonner. After clearing all the jammed papers and staples, it went right back in to smooth action!!! The quality on this scanner is absolutely beautiful. Nevertheless, make sure you thoroughly check your documents before inserting them to your scanner ADF, especially the ones from IRS.

Fast Scanner that needs better software, January 24, 2010
I'm a proud new owner of a ScanSnap S1500M. I've owned many flatbed scanners and a multifunction device with a scanner, and I have to say the ScanSnap is among the best. Like most people, I've been digitizing my documents to reduce clutter. However, with my flatbed scanner, it gets very tedious to open the lid, flip the page, then click on the scanning software to continue scanning. A few pages takes a lot of time to digitize. With my ADF-equipped scanners, it was more hands-free, but the scans tended to be skewed. In all my past scanners, I could not search my PDFs.

My ScanSnap arrived a few days ago, and I've scanned several hundred pages. It is absolutely fast, no joke. Another reviewer said it's a paper eater (to denote scanning speed). It really munches on paper quickly. Actually, it is so quick, I spend more time preparing the documents (unstaple, arrange, etc.) than running it through the scanner. Plus, Fujitsu did a great job with the footprint. It is a very small scanner. Just a little bit wider than a sheet of paper, and maybe half as tall as the long side of a sheet of paper. The trays also fold in, so it looks like a small rectangular block when it's all folded in. The sheet feeding tends to be pretty straight. It did jam a few times, but they tend to be on thin sheets of paper. In case of a jam, there is a compartment you open up, just like un-jamming an office photocopier. Overall, I am very pleased with the scanner device.

The reason I gave it an overall 4 Stars is because their software needs some improvements. First of all, there's no Organizer software that provides the added usability of the PC version. If you go on YouTube, and search for S1500M, you will notice they are pitching the S1500 (PC version). In comparing the software capabilities from the video to what I actually got, I really would like the Organizer. As it is, when you press the Scan button on your scanner, it will invoke ScanSnap Manager on your Mac. That piece of software only lets you control what will happen when the Scan button is pressed (Save to a Folder, Send to Word, Quality settings, ...). But, what happens after the scan is not organized for you.

Open the YouTube video address below, then skip to the time 2:10. It talks about Send to ScanSnap Organizer folder. That's not in the Mac version, consequently, the Mac version doesn't get the View, Crop, and Highlight features in ScanSnap Organizer. Why?

[...]


Another complaint is that unlike the PC version, the Mac version only comes with Adobe Acrobat 8.0 Pro (PC comes with 9.0), although I think 8.0 is pretty good already.

The Searchable PDF feature is great. The OCR is pretty good. Here's the bad part though, and I think it's related to not having Organizer. To make the scans searchable, you have to turn on the "Convert to Searchable PDF" checkbox in the ScanSnap Manager's "File option" tab. When you load your documents and press Scan, the software will create the PDF, then there's another step to run it through OCR. If you scan in low volume, just a few sheets at a time, you'll be okay. But I scan 50-150 pages at a time. The ten or so seconds to OCR a page adds up to tens of minutes per batch. During the time it does OCR, you cannot continue scanning!!! Believe me, I tried but the Scan button does nothing while OCR is working. That's not good at all. I would rather scan my next batch, then queue up the OCR jobs. That way, I can scan everything now, then go to lunch or leave it running overnight, then it's done when I get back. But with their current setup, you will have to sit by your desk to wait until you can do your next batch. It's kind of like the old days of printing. Can you imagine yourself printing a big document, then being unable to tell MS Word to print the next document until the first one finished? It's kind of like that. Think about it.

Overall, I absolutely love the scanner device. I think it's great. Good job for putting two scanning units to make double-sided scans in one pass. The software is okay. It is missing an Organizer found in the PC version. The OCR is pretty accurate, but when scanning big batches, the OCR process will bottleneck your next batch to scan. If you're like many who are buying a fast scanner because you have many file cabinets of paper to scan, you will find that bottleneck very annoying.

Now, if Fujitsu could fix those limitations for S1500M users, then my complaints disappear and they would deserve a 5 Star rating. If anyone else has similar experience, please add a Note to Fujitsu section in your review. Hopefully Fujitsu will get the idea and work on it.


NOTE TO FUJITSU: Please have a Mac version of ScanSnap Organizer available for S1500M owners. Also, please enhance your software to include a Scan Job Queueing capability, so that people can scan their next job while the software is crunching another job. Kind of like how printing used to be one at a time, but later it could be Queued into a spooler so that users can get on with their job right away. Those would make your scanners unbeatable. Please strongly consider.

An exceptionally reliable and versatile scanner, August 21, 2009
I've been using ScanSnaps since they first appeared on the horizon. Prior to that, I'd been on a serious quest to become totally paperless. I worked in a law firm and convinced them to get a scanner and I learned how to use it. The machine was large, complicated and expensive. If it hadn't been so expensive I would have bought one for myself to use at home, but I just couldn't justify it. When the ScanSnap was announced I realized that finally there was a scanner that could scan batches of documents at an affordable price. I assumed that there had to be a catch, and that would mean the scanner wasn't quite top-notch.

I bought one anyway. I realized instantly that this was the holy grail of scanners. And, as I said, I've been using them ever since. Every one of these scanners has been a model of reliability. I've recommended these scanners to hundreds of people and every single person I've recommended it to has wound up falling in love with it. Like anything in the world of technology, it is best if you take the time to explore the settings and figure out how to make it work best for you. As a home scanner there is simply no other option, not in my view. The all-in-one machines are fine if you only want to scan a few things here and there. If you are going to scan stacks of documents then you need a real scanner.

How good is this scanner?

Well, like I said, I'm a lawyer and I've recommended this scanner to other lawyers and helped them set it up. Many other tech-savvy lawyers I know have discovered this scanner on their own. Lawyers as you may know, are huge devourers of paper. A couple of lawyers I know work in small firms where this is the only scanner. It can totally handle the workflow of paper that a small firm of lawyers receives. But, most of these firms quickly decide to get a scanner for each lawyer. And why not? It's not that expensive, especially when you consider that it comes pre-loaded with Adobe Acrobat (which is normally a $200+ value). If you want to be paperless then you want to scan to PDF, and having Acrobat allows you to manipulate your PDFs (e.g. add signatures, insert pages, rotate pages, make sticky notes etc.).

I've used both the Mac version of this scanner and the Windows version and they are completely equivalent. They both work wonderfully. The Windows version of this scanner comes with wonderful software called ScanSnap Organizer, which makes it really easy to batch scan a bunch of different papers (e.g. bank statements, utility bills, receipts etc) and then later on put them into folders or whatever you want to do to organize things. The Mac version doesn't come with this software, but there is a great program called 'Yep' (just google 'yep mac software' and you'll find it) that costs about $34 and is even better (in my opinion) than the Organizer software that comes with the Windows version of the ScanSnap.

It's rare in the world of technology that one product winds up dominating because it simply stands heads-and-shoulders above everything else that purports to compete with it. The Fujitsu ScanSnap is one such product. I advise a lot of lawyers about becoming paperless, and whenever I hear that someone has tried and failed to make the switch away from paper, I often find that the root problem is with their scanner. It's either too powerful (and therefore too complicated), or it's not powerful enough (e.g. the all-in-one device, and this is even true of the $10,000 high end multi-function devices). The ScanSnap is like the porridge in the Goldilocks fable: it's just right.

Install the software, then plug it in and hook it to the computer. Configure it and then load a stack of paper. Try putting a letter in upside down and see what happens (it will auto rotate it to the proper orientation). It will straighten pages that you load crooked, and it will scan the front and back of pages at the same time. But it will toss out the back pages if they're blank. It can scan in color or black & white. You can run OCR (optical character recognition) so that the document will be text-searchable (I don't do this because it takes a little extra time and generally isn't worth it, but you can do it easily if you want). If you get this and want more room on your desk then get rid of your fax machine and get a low-cost web based fax service like [...] which lets you send and receive faxes by email. You've got the Scanner and I presume you have an email account.

What are you waiting for? The paperless revolution awaits you, and all you need to make the first step is this Scanner.

Outstanding scanner, slight room for improvement, September 14, 2009
I am one of those people who keeps every scrap of paper for fear that I will need something later. That receipt for the shirt I bought 5 years ago? Yep, got it. All my notebooks from college? Yep, got those too. Every bank statement, 401(k) form, and electric bill I've ever received? Well, at least the last 3 years' worth. As one might imagine, organizing and storing all of this has gotten out of control. So I figured digitizing would be the perfect solution. I could still "keep" everything, but on disks (with backups) instead of filing cabinets.

I got this scanner on Friday afternoon; it's now Monday morning. Over the weekend, this thing blew through about 4 1/2 filing cabinet drawers FULL of documents, several thousand pages of bound materials (I unbound and tossed the pages in), three 4-inch binders, and a bankers box full of notebooks. The speed on this thing is amazing, and the quality of the scan images far exceeded my expectations. At 20 ppm, I was hoping for legible. This gives me clear and detailed.

My only complaint with the scanner, and the reason I'm giving it 4 stars instead of 5, is that it jammed a LOT. Many of those jams I could chalk up to the quality of the paper, like thin pages or materials that were previously stapled and just kinda stuck in the feed. And sometimes it was a matter of trying to feed too much paper at once. However, a lot of it seemed to jam for no apparent reason. It seemed to have more trouble than necessary grabbing one sheet at a time, especially at the very beginning or end of a batch.

This scanner is definitely meant for documents. I did try scanning a couple of photos, tweaking the scanner settings to highest resolution with jpg file output. The images were pretty good, but not really high-res quality.

Even after reading all the reviews, I was really unsure as to how organization of all the scanned images would work. I was hoping that you could take a scan batch and then drag and drop pages or groups of pages into different folders, thereby creating different files. Not so. A batch will create one .pdf file. If you want to combine or split files, you have to do that in Adobe, which is a little bit cumbersome (still easy, but more steps than drag-and-drop). It's faster just to do a separate scan for each document or set of documents that you want to have as a single file.

A couple of things I LOVE about the scanner:
- Size: It looks big and cumbersome in the photo, like it would take up a bunch of room on your desk. But it's really not. Folded up, the footprint is probably half the size of my MacBook Pro. And you don't have to unfold the bottom catch tray in order to scan, just flip the top feed tray up and let the pages spit out onto your desk.
- Durability: I actually sort of dropped the scanner as I was pulling it out of the box. I'm clumsy. I figured it was toast. Nope, plugged it in and it worked just fine.
- Receipt Scanning: Oddly enough, one of the things this scanner handled exceptionally well was small receipts. Just to test the its capabilities, I threw in a stack of gas receipts (you know the tiny ones that are printed at the pump). I mixed the rotations, some long ways and some side ways, and they all scanned just fine. No jams, and the images all came out correctly rotated on the screen. It was pretty incredible.

When all is said and done, I expect to reduce my paper load from two 4-drawer filing cabinets, four bankers boxes, and about 10,000 pages of bound materials down to a single 2-drawer filing cabinet and a FreeAgent external hard drive. This is one of the best home-office machines I have ever used, and would highly recommend it for anyone who, like me, just can't let go of all those documents!

This is the one to buy, June 8, 2009
Simply the best scanner I've ever used (and I've used a lot of 'em). Works better than advertised. You can jam it if you try to (i.e., force a bunch of miss-match wrinkled old papers and sizes) but it is remarkably easy to clear and the software is smart enough to help you restart your scan where you left off so if you're at the end of a 50 page run you don't have to start over from scratch.

You will not believe the speed and quality of this tiny package. It's so good it scans the the backside, mirror image of very thin gas pump receipts, go figure. The Adobe Pro version is a bundle but for the life of me I can't see what options they have disabled. I'm relatively new to the Mac side of things but have been in IT and the PC world for 20 years. Anyway, it does everything I've every needed and it does it better than the PC ever could. If you do the math they are either giving the scanner away or giving the software away. Works for me.

Spend the money and don't look back!

The Little Scanner That Could, June 29, 2009
We have had experience with several multiscanner products and none of them have come close to solving our scanning needs. We have close to 20,000 pages to enter into our Mac based paperless physician's office and the estimates we were getting to have this work done commercially was more than $4,000. This produced nothing but collective chest pain. Along came a little scanner that does nothing but scan, the Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500M. This product is easy to use, produces scans with great clarity in the blink of an eye, and has not had as much as a hiccup with 10,000 pages done. If that scanner dies today it will have saved us money. The only question which remains unanswered is what do we do with the four other scanners/glorified door stops cluttering up the place.

Best By Far, Worth Every Penny, May 22, 2009
I purchase many things online and rarely write reviews but I am so pleased with this scanner I felt it was worth taking the time to write this one. I had tried 2 others in the same price range as this one (both were returned) before purchasing the Fujitsu and I can tell you that this one was by far the best. I have scanned over 900 documents in the past week without any jams or software hangups. It is fast, accurate, and easy to use. I use this with Yep That Pdf software(from www.ironicsoftware.com) and it has made my transition into the paperless world a breeze. You will not be disappointed with this scanner!! ... Read more

Editorial Review

Scanner,Neat Receipts Desk,USB 2.0 ... Read more

Reviews

Great Concept But A Few Fatal Flaws, June 26, 2009
I purchased a NeatDesk scanner awhile ago to answer a growing need at home for more robust scanning. I'm one of those people that needs to have everything neatly filed away even though I will probably never see it again. I also religiously enter all my personal receipts and track my personal finances in detail. This seemed the perfect product to answer both needs.

I was used to the Fujitsu ScanSnap S510 that I have at work, but in addition to an arm they also wanted a leg. The price of the NeatDesk is substantially less (about 40% for what I paid), and the promotional material for the scanning software was really sexy. So I clicked buy.

After a few days, my conclusion is that although it could be an outstanding product with a couple of tweaks, it's just not ready for primetime. This may be the case of a small company working on tight margins with a product that got too big too fast. It remains to be seen whether or not they can keep up with their new-found popularity.

Here's the dirt:

Hardware:

Good Stuff
- Attractive design.
- You can click the hardware "Scan" button all day, but you don't have to file your scans until you want to.

Bad Stuff
- No adjustable paper guide. Unless you hold it as it's sucked in, every single document is crooked.
- Not enough paper support. Creased documents (like a bill) flop back and aren't grabbed properly.
- I found the slot for receipts and documents to not match any receipt or document I had... Nice slot for business cards though.
- The output tray is not attached to the scanner body. Huh?
- It came with the grim spectre of having to clean and calibrate your scanner. You don't have to clean or calibrate the ScanSnap, although the ScanSnap does include "consumables", so maybe it's a tie.

Software:

Good Stuff
- Recognizes dates, subtotal, sales tax, and credit card used. This alone almost makes the product an overall winner and definitely put it on top for scanning receipts.
- As mentioned above, you don't have to file away your scans until you want to.
- Extremely fast search.
- It's pretty--yeah, that's important.

Bad Stuff
- Always takes the scan from the front but from the sheet in the back, which may be more intuitive for the beginner, but also means that a stack of double-sided sheets will go into the software backwards (page 2, 1, 4, 3, etc.) so you'll have to sort your document before and after scanning. Maybe I just haven't figured this one out, but it does seem like they emphasis multiple single-page documents vs. one multiple-page document.
* UPDATE: I figured out that you have to put the document in face up and everything is scanned in from the last page to the front. Your physical document will come out sorted, and the software will reverse the order of the scanned pages for you so the electronic document is correct.
- Does not auto-rotate to fix crooked problem caused by not having adjustable paper guides.
- Does not do auto-color detection--it's either all black-and-white or all color and you must choose. Those "Scan" and "PDF" buttons on the front are great, but you have to go into the Quick Scan application to set up how everything will be scanned first, defeating the convenience.
- Viewing the documents that are in the library is difficult. Should have a simple hand-tool for dragging and allow multiple documents to be open at one time.
- Moving data around the library is laborious.
- Software installs SQL Server Express, which takes up system resources and at least for me causes the program to not want to start up (try again message a couple of times before starting). Sure the search results come back very quickly, but at what cost? As a developer, I actually already had SQL Server Express installed, but it went ahead and installed another instance... Not very nice.
- Lots of opportunities to categorize data, but searching for the categories is difficult. For example, to see what you marked for follow up click "Advanced Search", click "Looking at..." and select "Action Type", click "Selected in the List", click and check box that says "Follow Up". It's more work finding out what's marked "follow up" than to actually follow up.
- The heavy emphasis is on recording receipts for expenses that will be reimbursed by your employer or be tax deductible. So what happens when I have a pay stub for consulting work? I have to file it as a document where I can't tag it's dollar amount, can't tag it as 1099 income, and it can't be exported to Quicken. That's one of the main reasons I got the scanner.
- Categories for receipts are very limited. Need a split? You'll have to do it yourself when you get to Quicken if you can remember what the receipt was for. Sales tax is always exported as an over-generalized "State Tax".

How it Could (Easily) be Made Great
- Package in or sell another paper guide that is adjustable. You can use the same snap-in style that is used for the receipt/business card guide.
- Add one inch to the pull-out paper support.
- Update the software to take scans from the face down position first on double-sided scans. Take the scan from the face down position only in single-sided scans.
* UPDATE: Even though this way seems more intuitive to me, the way the software does it is okay (see update above).
- Add in auto-color detection and auto-rotate so that scans always come out right. If Neat Co can do awesome text-detection, they could do this.

Conclusion
Seems to be an innovative company so I'll keep it in anticipation of at least the software updates.

Amazing Organization Tool, November 4, 2008
I went to the store looking for the Neat Receipts scanner, and I came across this new product. I could not be more happy for buying it! I had 4 years worth of credit card and bank statements piled up in boxes, and with this scanner system I was able to scan them and organize them on my computer in less than a day (I'm talking hundreds of pages).

I have absolutely no complaints on this (other than the price, which is high, but it is a new product and it will come down).

The scanner can read 2 sided documents and scan both sides, in color! And it does it fast.

It also reads receipts and business cards and extracts the information from them (such as what store the receipt is from, how much total was, how much tax was, date of transaction, etc...) The best part about this feature is that it lets you edit the information (sometimes necessary if the receipt was very worn or wrinkled.

The software is extremely easy to use and very powerful. A great feature about the scanner/software is that you can load a bunch of pages and start scanning them. While they scan you can work on filing other documents. Once the pages are scanned they go into a sort of "inbox" where they wait for you to look at them and decide where to file them.

The two sided, color scanning is great and very fast. Another convenient feature the program has is the ability to combine several pages into one document. All you do is click on the different pages while holding down control and click combine ... and you have one file for a multi page document!

All the files you scan into the program are searchable, so you can enter a search term and it will bring up all the documents (or receipts or business cards, depending on which section you are searching in). Very handy to search back on when you bought something...

Another great feature for those that do not receive paper statements is the pdf import feature! If you get your statements from online, you can still import the file into the program (as if you had scanned it in yourself) and have the searchable capabilites of the other files.

Keep in mind, this is probably not a good scanner to scan pictures with, but for a document scanner, it is fast, and very good. I just hope it lasts the wear and tear I'm subjecting it to right now. I am very thankful that this product has helped me get rid of all of my paper clutter!!!

Pretty Good!! Just some little issues and the cost., October 28, 2008
I am a stickler for detail and this scanner brought this! Purchased it a couple of days ago and started to the scan in the documents. It was pretty quick on all sizes to include long receipts and long paper documents. You can manually push the button(s) on the scanner (I preferred this) or click on the scan button in the Neatworks or Quickscan software.

Nice color (I wish it was more color variations maybe piano black).

Now the bad (not real bad). The software is pretty robust, however between the scanner and the software, it could not read a color background with (lets say blue) and red letters, it would reject the receipt as a "blank". Beyond that it scanned everything I through at it.

Neatco has a very detailed demos for most functions on their homesite, so if there was an issue with something I could not follow in the software, I went to the homepage and normally I could figure it out after watching a demo. The only thing I could not find from the demos was the location (I am using Vista) of the data files. I figured out how to do the backups, but I could not find the physical data... Neatco let me know!

Another issue though, it does not work with Microsoft Money. I hope in the near future they make this compatible with this software and that would complete close my filing issues out.

And last issue... The price is "little" high.

I can't give a five star rating due to software/hardware issues/cost, overall though good fast "filing" of your data.

Great Scanner, but Worst proprietary software ever!, June 13, 2009
I love this scanner, but I hate the software. I have the latest version of the software version 4 SP3. The help function is useless. For example if you want to delete a folder you created, the help tells you to select the folder and then use a "delete" option that doesn't exist.
- All I wanted to do was organize my scanned receipts and paperwork in folders I would create on my computer... VERY IMPORTANT to know that this software DOES NOT let you do that; but rather, requires that you use their proprietary records management system which is unfriendly, unintuitive, and non-responsive. If there was a way to use this wonderful, easy to set up scanner without their stupid, frustrating, lying sack of crap software it would be great. I'm still trying - but I'm getting the sinking feeling that I've WASTED MY MONEY. Really too bad because it's a beautiful piece of equipment.... Also when you try to get help through their chat system during their advertised hours - there's nobody home. Sincerely, John Graham

Very Nicely Done!!!, April 4, 2009

Very nice scanner but with software that could use improvement, April 1, 2009

Software concern with Neat Desk, May 4, 2009
I purchased this product because the concept sounded great. However, once the software was installed, my computer was severely impaired. From login to the display of the desktop was delayed by 6 additional minutes. I contacted the company and found out this is essentially what their software does, and there is no solution.

I found the Quick Scan to be strange. When loading several test documents, it creates individual PDF screens, and then you have to go through several steps to put them into a single PDF file. If you pre-loaded 50 documents, then you would have 50 open PDF's to scan in. Organizing them is cumbersome. I'd prefer to use Adobe Acrobat but you can't do that with this scanner.

The scan speed was fast, but all the additional steps wasted the time advantage. I've decided to return the item because of these reasons. I'm very concerned about the effect of the software on the performance of my computer. It is a relatively new machine with 4 GB of RAM and an Intel Quad processor, which has worked very well to date until this software was installed. Removing the software completely eliminated the delays.

ADDED NOTE: I have since engaged in ongoing communication with the Neat Company. Although I gave a low rating to the scanner as it functioned for me, I would give 5 stars to the company. The focus is clearly on finding solutions to the issues that arose, and making this a very strong, effective tool. It is obvious that many people are having success now, and I expect the future will yield a product that works well for everyone. The staff members were not only professional, but pleasant and interested in understanding the issues.

I would suggest trying the product. If it works for you now, that is wonderful. If not, keep your eye on it because these people will overcome the complexities of all the technology challenges we face with today's new computers, software, and operating systems.

Dead on arrival, no tech support, March 6, 2010
This is a major disappointment. The unit was dead on arrival, and I cannot reach tech support. Forget calling, there aren't even any people answering the sales line. I emailed tech support and didn't even get an auto response. I emailed again, got an auto response, but no human response after 48 hours.

Do not trust documents to this scanner, October 27, 2009
It appeared to save documents. It appeared to do huge backups - 8Gigs+. But when I tried to export to PDF, I get an error message. After six months of denial, customer service looked at the error log and confirmed that my documents are gone forever - and the paper copies have been discarded.

Amazing Scanner!, September 30, 2008
I am someone who travels a lot and need to submit expense reports. I love this printer. It allows me to scan business cards, receipts and full size pages all at once. Then, it inputs the data into reports and databases with accuracy and clarity. It is awesome that it can scan all types of sizes at once and quickly. The older scanner was nice because it was portable, but it was slow and receipts would not stay aligned as well.

I keep this at my desk, load it up, and hit "scan." Its that easy! You can easily scan to a PDF as well, when wanting to send attachments in emails. The IRS accepts these scanned PDFs for tax purposes.

I like the look of the product too. Plus, it is quick and small, and fits nicely on my desk. I cannot recommend this product enough, and I used to use CardSCan for my cards and Neat Receipts for receipts. This does it all. ... Read more

Editorial Review

Ultra Compact Scanner with Vertical Scanning and Up to 2400 dpi ... Read more

Editorial Review

ScanSnap S1500 provides Windows users an effective way to greatly reduce paper clutter, storage space, and security risk associated with unmanaged paperwork at home or office. ... Read more

Reviews

Good hardware but no twain driver is a significant limitation, December 21, 2009
I purchased this scanner as a first step in creating an electronic filing system for a home office. As I accumulated 20 filing cabinet drawers of paper documents going paperless seemed to be an answer.

Purchase of the Fujitsu S1500 was based on the numerous 5 star reviews. I am reasonably tech literate and have used the scanner for about 2 weeks. Here are my initial impressions:

Pros -

1. Speed: This scanner seems blazingly fast. Not a resource hog. Will scan duplex 20-25ppm at default settings on Win2K/1.8mhz/1gb platform.

2. Scan quality very good at all settings.

3. Size and looks: Small desk footprint. Looks great open or closed.

4. Excellent paper feeding as long as documents are same size and 20# or greater paper weight.

Cons -

1. NO TWAIN DRIVER. I knew this going in but did not appreciate how much this would cripple the device in day to day use. Let me explain. I had envisioned creating a virtual file cabinet in my computer using Windows Directory/Folder/File system then scanning my paper documents into this system as pdf files. The problem is that the native Fujitsu software does not let you append an existing pdf file!!!

As an example take a file for utility bills. D:/Home Expenses/Utilities/Gas_Electric.pdf. You can easily scan in all prior bills(limited by 50 sheet ADF)and a pdf with one page for each bill will be created. But if you had more than 50 prior bills or when next months bill comes then the next scan you perform to include these new documents will create a new pdf and does not allow the option of appending this more recent scan to the existing pdf. As you can see one could easily end up with 1000s of individual pdf documents in your filing system. The work around is to launch Adobe Acrobat (not reader) and use it to open the old composite pdf and use Acrobat to append the newly created pdf to the prior file. This work around takes longer than scanning in a 30 page document. Twain based scanners easily work with existing windows file structure and allow you to append an existing pdf without invoking Acrobat.

2. Paper catch tray very fragile and ADF paper support does not stay up (also reported by other reviewers).

3. Double feed sensor: stops scan and reports. This is good. However you cannot retrieve the double fed sheet and place it back in proper order because the next sheet is already in the scanner and cannot be backed out. You have to either cancel the scan and start over or put the unread sheet back in out of order and then use Acrobat to rearrange the pages in the resultant pdf document. If you choose to cancel the scan the document that is halfway into the scanner will not be ejected and you need to perform an new scan to retrieve that sheet.

4. A scanning run will only handle one size document at a time. In my experience if you have a mix of paper sizes you will need to do a scanning run for each paper size. Each run will generate a separate pdf file with you will then need to deal with.

5. I paid extra for the scanner bundle with Rack2File software thinking it would help me create the filing system I envisioned. After loading and spending several hours with this software I don't understand how it works or what it is supposed to do. I consider the extra $30 dollars I spent for the "bundled" scanner money poorly spent.

6. Other minor annoyances are:

While the scanner and snapscan software will run on older platforms the bundled software Rack2file and Acrobat require XPpro SP3 or newer. This is not clear from specs.

ADF will hold 40-50 sheets but output tray will start to jam after 20-25 sheets.

Documents printed on less than 20# paper and with printing on both sides the back side printing will show up on the front side scan. Many commercial invoices are printed both sides on thin paper.

Cannot set several default scanning profiles. You need to reset the scanner parameters each time you want a different profile.

Bottom line:

This would be a 5 star low end document scanner if it only offered a twain driver. As it is I can recommend it only to prospective buyers who understand the full implications of this limitation. I thought of returning this scanner and getting one of the twain based models like the Epson GT S50 but at this point I have learned enough of Acrobat to quickly append my pdfs retrospectively.

I strongly recommend avoiding the "bundled" product since I don't see what added value the Rack2File software brings.

I considered giving the scanner a one star review just to get people's attention but the hardware is so good 3 stars seems about right.

This little scanner is awesome!, April 1, 2009
My old HP scanner (actually, it wasn't that old) died a few months ago and it was time for me to get a new one. I accidently came across the predecessor to the ScanScap S1500 (the S510) last week while I was having my taxes done and was amazed at the speed and compactness of it. My tax person also gave it glowing reviews. As I wasn't aware that Fujitsu manufactured scanners, I thought I'd do a little research which led me to reviews of the S510 here on Amazon. Rather amazingly, I was very surprised to find that the S510 had so many extraordinarily high reviews (something that I don't believe I come across too often, especially with items such as scanners). One of those reviews mentioned that a new model (this one - the S1500) had just been released by Fujitsu. After some more research (it wasn't yet listed on Amazon), I found that this scanner was available and that it had many new features. As it turns out, I was the "first kid on my block" to acquire one and I'm glad I did! This machine is incredible!

The speed is absolutely blinding - an incredible 20 pages per minute but, because it scans both sides of a page at the same time, double sided documents scan at 40 PAGES PER MINUTE! Wow! As with previous models, this scanner is very small and appears to be well built: it's quite heavy for its small size and fits very nicely on my small computer desk. The scanning quality is equally spectacular - it scans up to 600 dpi in color, grayscale, and black and white and mine came with a good assortment of software (Adobe Acrobat 9, Rack2-Filer, and ABBYY FineReader). It scans documents beautifully! While I've been too busy scanning the billions of pieces of paper that have cluttered my life for years (this scanner will actually do that quickly and efficiently - something I've always just dreamed would be possible), I haven't yet tried to scan photos; I suspect that this scanner will do a good job but that another type of scanner would probably do better for archival purposes).

The only problems I've had were with Acrobat (I already have Acrobat 9 Pro on my computer) - I found that importing previously scanned documents into Rack2-filer were always listed in reverse order (ugh!) and Fujitsu tech support replicated the problem. They suggested, however, that I completely uninstall (not just repair) Acrobat and reinstall it. That did the job. BTW, I received great tech support from Fujitsu.

One interesting thing is that this scanner does not come with TWAIN drivers. Because of this, it is not possible to use it to the same extent as other scanners. Just the same, my reason for getting this scanner was to create .pdf files and this scanner does it like no other.

Overall, I'm thrilled with the Fujitsu S1500 - there is no question that it is the best one I've had (and I've had many) and is well worth the money (the S1500 is also the most expensive scanner I've ever purchased). I would recommend this to anyone who needs to scan documents.

Fast, efficient, quality product..., September 15, 2009
I have scanned about 8000 sheets so far. I have found these settings helpful with rack2filer:

1. Auto color detection, Duplex, Best image quality (300dpi Color/Grey 600dpi BW), Options [Only Blank page removal checked (no auto rotation - slows down page viewing)], Continuous scanning.

2. Same as above except change color mode to gray.

And in general I have found:

The multifeed detector works great and has detected many double feeds. It handles old thin thermal fax paper without double feeds - pretty amazing, because I would think that if anything would jam or double feed it would be that. The prompt shows the image of the detected multifeed and gives you the option of keeping it or discarding it - this has been helpful when it detects sticky notes on scanned paper that are supposed to be there.

It has handled many old papers - barely legible and has done an adequate job picking up light print.

Very light or old papers with light print or pencil hand writing are better handled by forcing the color detection to grey. Otherwise Auto everything works well.

Blank page detection - does not work with the other side of lined loose leaf paper or graph paper that has nothing written on it. That is to be expected - but a possible design improvement idea for this product. And to get around this, I have set the scanning side to single-sided. Otherwise blank page detection worked well.

Scans looked exactly like the originals and in rack2 filer the binders read and looked as well as the paper binders.

When it does jam (which was rarely the scanners fault and mostly from staples, taped paper or over loading), the prompt shows the last few pages scanned which makes it easy to recover.

Fanning and creating a step-like pattern of your paper stack before loading the paper makes a big difference in preventing paper jams.

Some of the advantages:

I can take many binders worth on information with me on my notebook without dragging the heavy paper binders in my bag - or one of those wheeled bags that my colleagues use.

There is the security of now being able to have multiple copies of my binders in physically different locations [desktop, notebook, and off site backups] all without using a copy machine.

I need less space for file cabinets [files], bookshelves [binders], and thus less office space.

Everything is now in one place. My office is too small to have all my binders and files together, but now they all fit in one folder on my hard drive.

Although I will still use paper to write on, I don't foresee a reason to ever need to bind or file papers anymore. Just take notes, scan, and recycle.

The actual images for Rack2Filer and CardMinder are in PDF files so if anything happens with Rack2filer - you can always access the data via windows explorer and acrobat.

I have used NeatWorks for my accounting (receipts), documents, and business cards for about a year now. The mobile scanner scans at 3 ppm black and white and 2ppm color - single sided only. So for duplex color ScanSnap is (20ppm x 2)/2ppm = 20x faster - a huge improvement. The NeatWorks software is also heavy and slow compared to Rack2filer and CardMinder.

However, NeatWorks is better than ScanSnap organizer or Rack2filer for receipts. And it can import the PDF scans from the S1500. So, I recommend using NeatWorks software (not the NeatWorks/Desk scanner) for receipts, Rack2Filer for documents and CardMinder for Business cards.

Just what I expected, July 1, 2009
Our office has about six of the predecessor to this scanner -- the S510. They are extremely dependable and do exactly what they promise. When it came time to get another scanner, I immediately looked for a Fujitsu and found this newer model. I ordered it and got exactly what I expected - a very dependable scanner that needs very little babying. We've been very satisfied with the Fujitsu scanners and will continue to look to them whenever we have a scanning need.

A great scanner, June 25, 2009
I purchased this scanner with the Rack2-Filer software so that I can eventually get rid of all the paper that I end up collecting over a year.
I just did an amazing thing with this item: I scanned a 129 page document, having a mixture of legal and letter size paper. I did have to baby-sit the device, adding 20 pages to the back feed tray, while removing scanned pages. I did notice that if can't feed the next page, you may want to slightly lift the feed tray (it is on a hinge). That helps the scanner grab the next page.
It placed the scan straight into my open "Rack2-Filer" binder.
Really nice!

I love this machine!, December 26, 2009
So far, I love this machine! I originally bought it to digitize my book collection (I recently retired and will be moving into a travel trailer: there is no way I'm giving up my books but there is no way I'm going to have room for them all). I've done about 3500 scans so far (about 1000 were test scans while learning how to use the scanner and testing for settings to use) and the machine hasn't even started breathing heavily. The foot print is small when folded up and doesn't increase much when opened up. Firing up the machine is as simple as opening the top cover. Opening out the document out tray is optional. Not using the tray allows more documents to be fed without the already ejected documents getting in the way of the outgoing ones. The document out tray also sets slightly above the desktop so it isn't necessary to clear all paperwork from the desktop to use the scanner.

It's most impressive attribute has been its incredible speed compared to using a flat bed scanner with minimal misfeeds or jams (maybe one every 200-300 scans, mostly my fault). So far, I've scanned one book and a dozen magazines with good results. On magazines, I spend more time cutting off the spine with a rotary paper cutter than I do actually scanning. The same will be almost be true with books (mostly perfect bound paperbacks) once I get my band saw set up to cut off the spines (changing blades is a pain). I found that it is necessary to separate each page from the next prior to loading them (in batches of 20) into the scanner to avoid misdeeds or jams. Even so, once I separated 20 pages and loaded them into the s1500. I was able to get the next batch ready about the time the previous batch was finished scanning. Overall, it took between five and ten minutes to scan a 100 page magazine or book, a figure I'm happy with.

Post edit: While scanning magazines, I've found I can put up to 140 pages (70 sheets) into the scanner without so much as a gentle belch from the scanner. I've found it's much faster to just fan the pages along the cut edge, put them all into the scanner, and deal with any paper jams that may occur because a couple pages were'nt quite separated. The jams are rare and when they do occur, are easy to deal with.

Post edit: Anyone buying this scanner to scan books, be aware that using a saw to cut off the spines is not a good option. After scanning over a hundred books, I found that paper dust on the inside of the glass camera plattens was causing streaks in color and grayscale scans. The problem was caused by my using a bandsaw to cut off the book spines. The teeth of the blade left a fine, friable edge that shed paper dust like a long-haired dog in Spring. No amount of cleaning would eliminate that dust from the cut edge since more would crumble off in the scanner. Because of the large amount of dust, some managed to work its way inside the machine even though I didn't use compressed air (which is forbidden in the manual) to clean it (the band saw also accumulated huge amounts of dust and glue would get on the blade and tires; I had to spend unacceptable amounts of time frequently cleaning glue off the blade and the tires of the saw). I bought a guillotine type paper cutter and that almost eliminated the dust problem. When I called Fujitsu about getting it cleaned inside, they agreed to clean it under warranty but said the scanner was intended only for office work and not for book scanning since the cut edges crumbled so much but they did agree to "clean" it under warranty (they said the cameras were sealed units and would have to be replaced). After receiving the unit back, I cleaned the small amount of dust that accumulated in the scanner after each book (probably no more than 300 or more office documents would have left behind) with a small vacuum (per Fujitsu's suggestion) and a small brush design for dusting off LCD TV screens. The unit has been working fine ever since. If, after several hundred more books, dust gets into the scanner cameras again, I'll just get a second s1500 for scans other than books and save this one for books only. The streaks did not show up in B&W scans, which is what I use for the body of the book and only a small amount in the covers, which I didn't really care about as long as they are readable so the machine would still be acceptable for book scans.

Quality of magazine and book scans is not perfect but is still pretty good, depending on the material being scanned. Because magazines are loaded with color and grayscale illustrations, it is necessary to use the Auto settings and Normal compression to get decent scans. Text tends to be a bit on the faint side. As good as the OCR is it is still unbelievably slow so searchable PDFs are out of the question for this application. This means it will be impossible to read scans on anything other than a computer screen or a large e-book reader. Since I don't plan on scanning magazines until after I've read them, I won't be viewing them except on a large computer screen so that's not a problem for me. The quality of book scans depends on if there are any color or grayscale illustrations on the page. Exposure can be set only when doing black and white scans. Most so called black and white illustrations, even line drawings, are actually grayscale and will look horrible scanned on the black and white setting. If a page is all text, it will look fine when scanned with the auto setting or a grayscale setting. Any kind of illustration will cause the text to be fainter, especially color illustrations. Since most books limit color illustrations to separate pages and the covers so if it proves to be a problem, I can always scan the color pages separately and concatenate them in Adobe, an easy process. I plan on reading my scanned books on an e-book reader but I'm waiting for the prices to come down and the features to improve, such as adding zoom, backlighting (or, if not possible with e-ink, front lighting), etc. I won't be in any hurry for one for at least a year or two so I can wait. I'm guessing it will only take a year or so.

Post edit: I've found using Color and setting compression to 3 gives slightly better results with magazines. Even though the OCR for making searchable PDFs is slow, the desirability of being able to search magazines (all are tech or history related) outweighed my impatience. Even then, the overall process is much faster than it would have been using a flatbed without OCR.

Of course, the intended purpose of the s1500 is office paperwork reduction. Trying to scan all my receipts, statements, etc, on my Epson was painfully time consuming and did not always yield good results. Concatenating files was a pain involving copying and pasting into a Word doc, then converting to PDF with a virtual printer. The s1500 can be set to either scan pages into individual files or concatenated ones. The speed and quality is amazing. I emptied a drawer full of paperwork I had been procrastinating on scanning in about an hour. From now on, as soon as I get receipts, etc, that need scanning and tossing, I'll do it the instant I get them. It is so much more convenient and faster than using the Epson.

Most said that the machine was not suitable for scanning photos (I only have a thousand or two that need scanning). Based on the results and techniques of one reviewer, though, I decided to try scanning some photos. I was able to get slightly better quality from my old Epson 1660 Photo but each photo required one prescan, setting the scan area (basically, cropping the prescan), a second prescan to fine tune the scan area settings, reset the exposures settings, then , finally, scanning the darned thing. Every few photos, I had to take time to clean the platen (every once and a while I had to dismantle the machine and clean the underside of the platen and blow out the dust that somehow makes its way inside). With the s1500, actual scan time was maybe twice as fast as the Epson, but all I had to do, once the initial settings were made, was load about 10 or so photos into the machine, press a button (the only button), wait a bit for the machine to digest them, then load in some more photos from the same batch. The only setting that needed changing between batches was the file name. The machine would automatically append the photo number after the batch name on each photo. The result was I could scan ten photos on the s1500 in the time it took to scan one, maybe two (if I stayed focused; I have ADD--me, focused?), on the Epson.

As I mentioned, the quality of photos scanned with the s1500 is less than what I got from the Epson when scanned at similar settings (600 dpi and similar compression). File size was larger on the Epson. Still, one almost has to look at the on screen images side by side on my 22" LCD widescreen monitor to see the difference. When viewed on my 32" LCD widescreen TV, the pictures look fine from a distance of five to six feet. Scanning photos on my Epson was so slow, I was considering buying an ADF photo scanner but the ones I checked out didn't exactly get sterling reviews. I was seriously considering farming the job out, no matter the cost but the quality of photos scanned on the s1500 is good enough and the speed of the scans so fast, I'll probably do all of them on the s1500. Any photos of exceptional value or I plan on printing enlargements of I can also scan on the Epson (both of them).

A bonus use I hadn't anticipated involves my current project to digitize my CD collection. I kept all my CDs in a huge 400 CD changer (which was maxed out) so to save space, I filed all the CD covers in binders with photo album pages and tossed the jewel boxes. When I move, I won't be able to take the CD changer with me because, besides being huge and full, I would have to remove the CDs from the changer anytime I moved the travel trailer, a pain in the (ahem) I don't need. So I'm ripping them all to my computer. The binders with the CD covers in them also take up too much room and it's too easy to spill the covers from the binders so I've been scanning them with the Epson, pasting the resulting JPEGs into a Word doc (I didn't have Acrobat at the time), then using a virtual printer to convert the Word doc into a PDF. Talk about time consuming!

I tried pulling staples and cutting the CD covers to individual pages and scanning them with the s1500. Most of the time, this worked well at blazing speed. Covers that were multifold rather than a stapled booklet required single sided scanning and being fed one page at a time but it still went much faster than using the Epson. The only times I was forced to resort to using the Epson was when an illustration and/or text spanned more than a couple of pages. I found it was necessary to first scan to JPEGs, then combine them in Adobe. Scanning directly into PDF resulted in lower scan quality and considerably larger file sizes. Again, even with the extra steps, the process was amazingly fast. I can do at least ten covers in the time it used to take to do one using the Epson. The quality is generally better.

The deskew feature worked like a champ...most of the time. Every once in a great while, usually on a page with a predominance of graphics, it would lock on a near horizontal line and actually skew a page going through correctly. The fix is easy; turn off the deskew feature and rescan.

The biggest complaint I have concerns the software. I shelled out the extra $25 for the Deluxe package but, so far, the only extra software I've used is ABBYY FineReader. It works reasonably well but I do not expect to get a lot of use from it. I also installed Card Minder and Snap Scan Organizer. I get very few business cards and it's not that big a deal to manually transfer the info to my phone book. I would rather do that than maintain two separate data bases anyway. I already have a lot of data stored using Windows folder system and have been satisfied with that system so I don't need the Snap Scan Organizer. Again, having only one data base is more efficient. I read in a review importing data into SSO is a pain so why bother. For that reason, I haven't even bothered to install Rack2-Filer. Again, these are my needs and others may be more likely to have use for the extra software.

Post edit: When installing the software, the installer sets them up to start when booting the computer. This noticeably slows overall computer time. Since all I ever use is SnapScan Manager, I removed all the other programs from the startup sequence. I tried removing SnapScan Manager from th startup sequence but found when I fire up the scanner, it doesn't automatically open the Manager--I had to go into the start menu to open it--so I put it back into the startup sequence.

Another really big gripe is not being able to adjust scan exposure on anything other than black and white. That is a HUGE problem. There should be an option to change the default levels in the auto settings, especially since they tend to be a bit on the light side.

The carrier sheet is a joke. I tried using it to scan the CD covers and found out one has to preset the page size in. Otherwise, the entire carrier is included in the document. I found it to be one heckuvalot easier and faster to just cut the covers apart than to use that idiot carrier, preset the page size, then still have to crop the pages in Adobe. The only use I foresee is when scanning REALLY fragile documents. Even ripped documents are more easily taped than scanned using the carrier sheet. And there is always the Epson I can fall back on.

The documentation that comes with the machine is not as good as I would like. One receives two sizeable manuals, set up and safety precautions, but each one has only a few pages in each of several languages. I cut out the few English pages, scanned them, then tossed the manuals. There is a more extensive manual accessed from ScanSnap manager or the right click menu in the tray icon. I found it curious that the manuals, when instructing one to install the software on the Snap Scan disk, do not tell one to also install Adobe. Fortunately, even this computer challenged, old broad was able to figure that one out on her own. Navigating through the documentation is a pain because it is broken up into umpteen dozen separate documents that forces one to keep going back to the menu to go to another topic before continuing. It would have been one heckuvalot easier if it was one continuous document that was indexed. I did find a PDF manual online ([...]) that was set up that way. I've since found it was on the installation disk but accessing it is inconvenient.

Use of the final menus in a scan was a pain to figure out. I bypassed them until I figured them out (sorta).

A minor complaint is the brick power supply. Even when the machine is turned off, the brick is still drawing power. Add that to that all the power the other bricks my equipment use (seven total) and we are talking about a noticeable dent in the annual power bill. I would have been willing to pay more for a machine that had an onboard power supply, even if it was a tad bigger, so the AC could be turned off when the machine was not in use.

Despite my complaints, I'm giving this machine five stars simply because it has wildly exceeded my expectations and, due to the time it is saving me, worth every penny I paid for it, especially since Adobe Acrobat 9 Standard ($236 on Amazon) was packaged with it. Keep in mind this is not a do all machine but it does what it was intended (and then some) exceedingly well.

And the Oscar goes to... Scansnap!, August 19, 2009
Until I tried this product I had given up on the "paperless office" dream. The problem was not so much one of software; it was mechanics, paper jams, throughput speed. I used paperport software and a HP sheetfeed scanner. I would approach the scanner with a 20 page stapled document, remove the staple (therefore creating a hangup opportunity) and the slow scanner would take a few sheets and then jam, as if to tell you "I found the paper imperfection, you can't fool me". Then it wuld take several minutes to un-jam, restart the process, try it sheet-by-sheet, etc. So I ended up having no confidence in the process and saving all my paper because I knew I would go back to a paper office.
I can't tell you how awed I was and continue to be with everything about the Scansnap. I have given it the most unlikely stack of receipts of every size and thickness imagineable and it has devoured and processed them perfectly to my glee. When it does occasionally jam, it is a simple step to remove the jam and then CONTINUE with the process. It is ten times faster and ten times more reliable, which makes it a hundred times more efficient.
If there was an equivalent of the entertainment industry's "Oscar", it should be awarded to this product... it is everything that science and technology should be; in a word, transparent. Pay attention, scanner manufacturers. You have a new benchmark!

Portable Workhorse, February 1, 2010
This S1500 with Deluxe Bundle was an upgrade from the S500 which I put through a problem free rigorous 4+ year workout. I bought this model because of a Windows 7, 64 bit laptop upgrade and I thought now was the time to put the S500 out to pasture (besides Fujitsu did not produce a workable patch for the S500). I'm an international aviation consultant who scans boxes of aircraft documents for analysis and archive so portability, ease of use and reliability are foremost. I've made colleagues using other scanners envious of the speed and quality of both the S1500 and the S500 before which reassures my choice of this product.

While the OCR conversion feature provided by the included Adobe software is not flawless it works well enough for searches of 100 plus page reports saving me hours of flipping through pages of tabulated data. The "CardMinder" software is one of the best added software bundles to come along in a long time. I've scanned hundreds of business cards into files which are easily edited, archived as well as uploaded to Outlook Contacts.

For anyone requiring quality, fast, reliable and portable scanning capabilities I would highly recommend the S1500.

This little scanner is awesome!, April 6, 2009
Love the scanner and Rack2-Filer program. Used for a medical office. Works great for organizing anything from records to receipts.
Hope next version will allow to incorporate search capability within the text of the document itself in the Rack2-Filer binder without needing to go through a PDF or Word conversion first. Also, Binder names do not transfer when looking up through My Documents on the hard drive: they are just listed Binder 1 or Binder 15 etc. (Cabinet names do transfer)
Versatile applications; highly recommended! ... Read more

Editorial Review

Scan photos and 3D objects with amazing clarity and detail. The value-priced Epson Perfection V30 makes it easier than ever with 4800 dpi optical resolution and a host of automatic features. With the scannerżs remarkable resolution, you can easily create extraordinary images. And, it offers easy setup plus one-touch scanning. So, whether you choose to archive important documents or your favorite photos, you can be up and running in no time. Bring those faded color photos back to life effortlessly with the Perfection V30. This versatile performer even includes a high-rise lid for scanning books and other 3D objects. With an innovative LED light source, the Perfection V30 provides fast scans with no warmup time. ... Read more

Editorial Review

Scan 18 double-sided pages per minute Advanced features for the ultimate ease of use! Auto paper size detection Auto de-skew Auto blank page removal Instantly create searchable PDF files Scan directly to Microsoft Office Applications Quickly organize business card information Increase productivity with enhanced functionality Simple installation and operation in a compact design Advance Exchange service program maximizes uptime Scanner Type: ADF (Automatic Document Feeder), Duplex color scanning Output: Color/B&W/Automatic color and Bi-tonal detection Image Sensor: 2x Color CCD (charged coupled device) Optical Resolution: 600 dpi Scanning Speed (A4): Normal mode: Color 150dpi, B&W 300dpi - Duplex 18 pages per minute / 36 images per minute Better mode: Color 200dpi, B&W 400dpi - Duplex 12 pages per minute / 24 images per minute Best mode: Color 300dpi, B&W 600dpi - Duplex 6 pages per minute / 12 images per minute Excellent mode: Color 600dpi, B&W 1,200dpi - Duplex 0.6 pages per minute / 1.2 images per minute Scanning Range: A4, A5, A6, B5, B6, Business card, Letter, Legal and Custom sizes (can be set for Upto 5 different paper types) / Automatically recognizes paper type by paper length Use of Carrier sheet permits the scanning of A3, B4, double letter and photographs as well as those listed above Paper Weight (Thickness): 14 ~ 34 lbs / 52 ~ 127 g/m2 Hopper Capacity: 50 Sheets (20lbs) Interface: USB 2.0 (USB 1.1 Compatible) Operating System: Windows 2000 Pro (SP4)/ XP (SP2)/ VISTA (32-bit) Power Requirement: 100 ~ 240 VAC, 50 ~ 60 Hz Power Consumption: Operating- 28W or less; Standby- 6W or less; Sleep- 1W Dimensions (WxDxH): 11.2 x 6.2 x 6.2 inch / 284 x 157 x 158 mm Weight: 5.9 lbs ... Read more

Editorial Review

When exceptional quality scanning is a must and space is an issue, reach for the perfect solution, the Brother DSMobile 600 scanner. This powerful, compact, and lightweight 600-dpi color scanner is combined with dynamic software to provide exceptional quality scanning and easy management of documents and photos. The DSMobile 600 provides a high resolution scan utilizing the high speed USB 2.0 interface. The additional software will enhance and simplify your scanning needs. ... Read more