Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500 Instant PDF Sheet-Fed Scanner for PC
by Fujitsu Imaging
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List Price: Our Price: $414.49 You Save: $80.51 (16%) Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Buy Used: from $360.00 (click here) Category: CE See more product details |
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500 Instant PDF Sheet-Fed Scanner for PC
Customer Review: This thing ROCKS!!
Summary: 5 Stars
I just finished off scanning about 3,000 pages of old files, and this thing ROCKS!
Boxes of old papers are heading to the recycle bin!!
For those of you who still have just a flatbed scanner, and you have lots of paperwork - you need one of these!
I've now got both, and couldn't be happier!
What it does really well:
Gobble up hundreds of pages of old documents (mortgage docs, bills, reports, taxes, financial statements, user manuals, receipts etc).
Multiple pages sizes from business cards to cash register receipts up to legal and letter size paper - double or single sided intermixed.
Saves them all in nice clean PDF documents that can easily be viewed on-screen. Ripe apart bindings, or cut them off with a paper cutter, and then scan all those manuals in the file drawer (software, appliance, etc).
It gobbles pages up - hundreds and hundreds - different sizes, single/double sided, color / black & white... and out come nice PDF that can be easily read on screen -- I'm not wanting picture perfect quality - just enough to flip back through and re-read a document later if I needed to.
Resolution is adequate to read (and speed is amazingly fast) -- I could increase the quality (decreases speed, increases file size), but why bother?
I wouldn't use this for high resolution photograph quality - for that I would use my flatbed scanner.
I've also used the Canon DR-2510C (borrowed my friend's) - higher price point - not enough noticable advantages to justify the price, and frankly it jammed more and recovered from the jams much worse, and the included software froze up requiring reboots (windows XP).
SnapScan doesn't integrate with various other applications as mentioned in other posts - but who cares!
Love it - great buy!
Update from a few months later:
I STILL LOVE IT!!! GREAT PURCHASE!!! NO REGRETS!!!
While I writing this I just scanned another 500 pages of old mortgage and refinance documents! It ate up the different page sizes, thinknesses, etc. I have truly scanned and shredded a dozen big boxes of old paperwork. Miracle. Perfect for a pack-rat like me. You might have to buy a better paper shredder!
But... read the negative reviews. I do have a flatbed scanned for high quality pictures and applications that need TWAIN integration - so make sure you understand the limitations.
Customer Review: Businessmen, this is the best...
Summary: 5 Stars
I have held off from buying scanners for years. I knew I had a big case coming up wherein I would be scanning literally 100's of sheets of paper...applications, approvals, proofs and so forth...
I began looking for a scanner that would do this effortlessly and began reading all about scanners...canons, HP's, epsons and on and on. I saw a very expensive Fujitsu in a friends office that was scanning about as quick as he could shove stuff through it. I knew that was the feature I needed...so I began reading about Fujitsu. Well, the scanner he had cost about 1800 bucks, but the S1500 cost 400 bucks and seemed to do most of the same things the more expensive one did. In any event, it sure beat the pants off the one-page-at-a-time desktops that I automatically have with my HP printers. So, I ordered the Scansnap 1500. It arrived from Amazon in about 3 days. I plugged it in, stuck in the software and bingo, it was ready to go. It is about the size of one of those specialty bread loafs sold at the grocery store...you know, the 12 multi-grain stuff. It opens with the lifting of 2 flaps...the lifting turns it on (shuts it off when you close the flaps). Instant on. will scan 50 sheets... when done, it gives you a screen that says "save to folder" or "email". Click on it. If the scanned material is too big for its email memory..you have to save it to a folder, go into your word documents, and send it from there. I have high speed phone lines. All 50 pages zip right through...and saves the sent email in your Outlook so you have a nice proof. In the past 25 days (which is about as long as I have had it) I have scanned maybe 500 to 600 pages. some as big as 50 pages, and some as small as 2. It has not failed once. For the average small Businessman (real estate, insurance, accounting, mfg. rep.), I can't see that 400 bucks is too large of an investment into something that demonstrates this much quality. And it does color too. I did try a couple of photos.. Not being a bit photo buff, they looked fine to me, but I could tell that they were not 100% quality reproductions, so I think that a slower scanner might be better for photos...
but, if you were scanning some pix to send to grandma or a photo of a building that you were working on for a client, it would be just fine. I give this a 100% satisfaction rating.
Customer Review: GREAT scanner....until it died! UPDATE 23 March!
Summary: 4 Stars
I really like the Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500. I have owned two of them. However, I am forced to give this a one star because I have now paid Fujitsu over $800 and I don't have a scanner. What happened? Well, I bought my first S1500 about a year ago. Absolutely loved it. I could scan anything from legal documents to photographs. Literally everything with the push of a button. And it was converted into a .pdf in a snap. Scannnn...SNAP. It was that easy! At 50 ppm, I scanned hundreds of pages in a matter of minutes. I loved it. Until it died. Just stopped working. Frustrated, I checked the warranty and it had just expired! Darn the luck! So I shelled out another $400+ and bought a second one this last November. My wife had a pile of professional paperwork stacking up and I was frustrated at doing one page at a time in our old scanner. I counted down the days 'till I got my new ScanSnap. What a great day it was! Once again, I was back to scanning...professional paperwork, documents, even things that I just wanted to digitize and archive, like birth certificates and old phone numbers. I was scanning like a madman! Until tonight. Four months after I opened the box, I am sitting next to yet another dead ScanSnap. Luckily, this one lasted less time than the first, so I think it might still be under warranty. Maybe. But why should I be worrying about that with only a four month old piece of equipment? That I cannot tell you, but it's true. This is probably one of the greatest scanners ever...but I'm not sure if I can bear to own another.
Update...23 March 2010...I called customer service (even before the reply to my post was posted) and within minutes, I was talking to a human customer service representative. I explained the problem to him, and he told me it sounded like a bad power supply. No problem, he took my address and said he'd have one in the mail the next day. Sure enough, not a week later and I had a new power supply! And the scanner works great again! Very happy with it. The only reason it isn't five stars is because this is apparently a rather common problem. Fujitsu will fix it for you (new cord and power supply) but it does make you go through the process of calling them and getting a new cord sent out. I hope this one lasts as I plan on using my machine for a long time to come.
Customer Review: Bought two of these 1 yr ago, so after the honeymoon...
Summary: 5 Stars
After the honeymoon period, I love them. I have one at home and one at work. At home I've scanned, receipts, forms, insurance paperwork, just about anything I didn't want to keep but thought I might need someday, got scanned and tossed. It's great for decluttering your life. I've also used this extensively for estate paperwork, keeping records of everything. I've also used it to scan in textbooks (although cutting the paper out takes some time...), but once they are OCR'd they make a great reference for me without having all the books collecting dust etc. I don't want to be moving books twenty years from now, but slowly but surely, my 500 or so books will make it into pdf format and into the woodstove in the winter.
The work one has saved me innumerable times. I scan everything in my office and can then access it remotely and order it as I wish. The adobe included works beautifully, no one should be without it, and it makes the value of this scanner incredible.
I have rarely experienced any difficulty in scanning receipts, invoices, direct deposit forms, glossy textbook pages, etc. However, I read some reviews about trouble scanning, but there are many settings you can use to scan. I typically set the sensitivity so that it doesn't stop on any one paper feed problem. The few problems I have experienced have usually been with previously stapled (or worse, many times stapled) sets of paper, then not individually separating the pages at the corner where they were stapled before scanning. I've discovered a trick that when I have 30 or so pages which have lived with a staple(s) for more than 5 years, and are nearly self adhering to the staple marks on a corner, that I put the stack in upside down with the staple area at the top away from the feeding mechanism, it then pulls each page, and sometime tugs the page from the others, but it usually works flawlessly and without any intervention on my part. Then once in acrobat, I run OCR on the document which orients each page correctly -- how can you go wrong?
I consider these scanners the best use of ANY technology dollar I've spend in the last 5 years, and I buy a lot of gadgets... they are simply awesome!
Customer Review: Fast, good quality, and most importantly, it just works.
Summary: 5 Stars
I have never had a dedicated document scanner before. In the past, I used the Auto-document feeder on my all-in-one printer/scanner/fax machines to scan documents into adobe acrobat. That meant for each batch of papers, I needed to set the color/resolution/paper size/quality settings and then work through Acrobat in order to save each file. It worked, but it was slow going.
Then I bought this new scansnap 1500, based on the ratings of the earlier model (the scansnap 510). I installed only the main program to my computer (the software also includes OCR programs, organizational programs, and acrobat 9, which I already have). I hooked up the scanner and stuck in a stack of old notes I took from some college courses--some notes were in color, some were b&w, some on two sides, some on one side, and some of the pages were upside down. I hit the only button on the machine (SCAN), and to my sheer amazement, it started flying through the stack of notes without any additional prompts or effort. It then automatically saved my file as a pdf--all of the pages were in order, color pages were in color, b&w pages were in b&w, etc. The only issue I noticed was that if there were any marks whatsoever on the back side of my note papers, it included those blank pages in the file.
I repeated this process with any papers I could get my hands on. I even tried sticking in papers of varying sizes, and it sped through them all without a problem. I am officially hooked. (In a moment of either stupidity or genius, I sliced the spine off of an old book and scanned that in too.)
I did notice a few things that are worth mentioning specifically: 1) This scanner is much smaller than it looks. I was expecting something the size of a inkjet printer, but it is actually about the size of a loaf of bread. 2) You have to place the papers GENTLY into the scanner or it will jam. If I push the papers in too far, it pulls through several pages at a time and the software warns you to start over. 3) I am running the software on Windows 7 RC1, so I can tell you that, at least in my case, it will work on Win7.