Fujitsu ScanSnap S510 Sheet-fed Scanner
by Fujitsu Imaging
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Our Price: $1,699.96 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $319.98 (click here) Category: CE See more product details |
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Fujitsu ScanSnap S510 Sheet-fed Scanner
Customer Review: A good little scanner
Summary: 4 Stars
I have purchased two of these scanners. The one on my office desk sees almost daily use; the one at home is used less frequently. Between them, I've scanned well over 25000 sheets.
What I like:
* Very compact. When the input and output trays are folded in, the scanner uses only 6"x11" of desk space - smaller than a sheet of paper.
* Well built. Unlike inexpensive consumer-level scanners, the ScanSnap has a substantial amount of mass. It feels like it has a powerful motor as well as a fairly substantial metal chassis inside.
* Very easy to use. There are two buttons on the front - Scan and Power. There is also a silver latch which pops opens the front, allowing the removal of any misfed pages.
* Both sides of a page are scanned at once. Blank pages can be automatically removed and skewed images straightened or rotated. Images can be scanned in black and white or in color, and the software can select which is most appropriate. You can set a default page size, or the scanner can set it based upon the document size. Resolution can be set in four different levels, from 75 dpi up to 600 dpi.
* It is fast! I just scanned 31 printed pages in 92 seconds. It took about seven seconds more to finish processing the data on my PC and putting up the thumbnail of the PDF. A faster computer (mine's nothing special) would obviously be quicker and eliminate the occasional data-transfer pause while scanning.
* The software package is good. A complete OEM version of Adobe Acrobat Standard 8.0 was included with each scanner. Acrobat 9.0 Standard retails for $265 by itself. The ABBY Fine Reader software does a good job of OCR'ing the scanned documents and making them searchable. Lastly, the ScanSnap Organizer helps in parking and retrieving the files.
* User replaceable pads and rollers. When the pads and rollers wear out and pages don't feed properly, you can purchase a pad and roller kit and fix the problem yourself. The pads are rated for 50,000 pages; the rollers for 100,000.
What could be better:
* Double feeding. One of my scanners works almost perfectly; the other double feeds all too frequently. With both my scanners you have to be careful to fan previously stapled pages or the staple holes can pull an extra page through. Most double feeds are caught because of a slight misalignment in the pages. The misfed page appears to be longer than the previous page and this triggers an alert in the software.
* Mixed page size. Because of the way that the scanner detects double feeds, it can't handle a stack of mixed size pages. This is a problem when scanning receipts; business papers are generally letter or legal size. The solution, of course, is to scan each receipt separately.
* Imperfect scanning of vertical lines. If you scan a form with vertical lines (or a piece of graph paper) you'll see occasional offsets of a fraction of millimeter. There's also occasional color fringing caused by misalignment of C/M/Y colors. This generally isn't a problem for documents, but isn't acceptable for photos.
* Not TWAIN compliant. None of the standard software packages (at least that I've found!) contain a way to directly interface to this scanner. The ABBY software must be used to generate a PDF, or tie into Excel, PowerPoint, or Word. It's fairly seamless, but you can't use OmniPage or Textbridge Pro as your OCR program.
* Non-standard icons in ScanSnap Organizer. This is just a bad design decision. Whoever wrote ScanSnap Organizer hard-coded some really ugly icons into the program. When you create a subfolder, they're in blue...and look really bad if you look at them outside of Organizer. The same with the other directories that it creates.
* ScanSnap Organizer only allows one top-level directory to be used. By default, it sets it up in the Documents folder and labels it as "My ScanSnap." That can be easily changed. What can't be changed is the fact that you can't have multiple top level directories...I'd like to be able to look at files sitting in "My ScanSnap" and in a different place altogether (i.e. on another networked computer) at once.
Does it work for me?
For my purpose, it works very well. It's helped me tremendously reducing and organizing my office files. Stuff gets scanned, stored locally, backed up to my server and then automatically encrypted and backed up off-site. When a client calls, a few keystrokes and their information is up on my screen. It would, however, be a mistake to use it to scan in your family photo album. If that's an important feature, you should get a high-quality flatbed scanner instead.
Customer Review: Amazing Paper Management/Productivity Tool!
Summary: 5 Stars
Anyone out there who, like me, tends to accumulate a lot of paper needs to beg, borrow, or steal to get their hands on this baby. I've had it exactly a week today, and it's already had a huge impact on my life. I've had one of those "milk crates" sitting in my office, stuffed full of papers I wanted to keep or scan using my flatbed scanner for several months. I would make a dent in it every so often, but certainly never emptied it. With the ScanSnap, I finished it in under one week.
The scanner is a lot smaller than it looks in the pictures - takes up very little room when closed, and not much more when opened fully. It was simple as can be to hook up - install the bundled software, plug in the power and USB cords, and you're in business! It has worked like a dream since scan #1 and I am finding the ScanSnap Organizer software adequate for my needs.
I'm fine 90% of the time with the simple PDF format, but the OCR/searchable PDF settings have worked just fine also with the software I already had installed. the scan quality at Normal/Fastest is still clear enough for most things I want to save, and even when I've changed the setting to Best Quality a few times, the scan was still pretty fast.
As most people have noted, the scanner does not have TWAIN support, which was my only concern pre-ordering this, as I am pretty attached to my Nuance PaperPort software. But I haven't missed it at all. PaperPort can still view, organize annotate, and edit the ScanSnap PDFs just fine. I just allow PaperPort a view into the new folder and voila! The PDF format is just so universal these days, that I just don't think it's an issue. If the ScanSnap's output was a proprietary format, my opinion might be different, but you just cannot argue with 1. place papers to be scanned in tray, 2. Hit big green button to scan. 3. Throw newly scanned papers away. Open PDF in whatever program you want to use to edit, annotate, etc.
I have had minimal trouble with papers jamming and when it did happen, I could easily see why - paper had a tear I didn't see, a stray staple got stuck, etc. The rollers do slip and make a squealing sound on glossy paper sometimes. I have had maybe 2-3 instances of the scanner pulling through more than one page at a time, and again, I could usually see why this happened. More user-error than the fault of this wonderful invention!
Another big-time bonus for me -- when scanning with my flatbed through PaperPort, that software holds the scans in a temp file somewhere until you have scanned your whole batch. You also have to scan a blank page between each set of pages to separate articles. On more than one occasion, I have scanned a pile of magazine articles or something into PaperPort, made sure all my blanks were in place, and hit the "Finished Scanning" button, only to have it freeze up on me and lose EVERY single page. I have yet to find where those temp files might be (if anywhere) to try and salvage them when this happens. I'd resorted to scanning only about 20 pages at a time before letting it do its thing stacking and dividing. Definitely slowed me down even more than scanning one page at a time with a flatbed should take.
But that has all changed. The ScanSnap is the tool I have been waiting for to help me FINALLY finish my office decluttering. It is truly amazing, and if any of what I've said rings true for you, you NEED this scanner. It's not a luxury - it's a necessity!
Customer Review: my legal department loves it
Summary: 5 Stars
When I heard about the concept of a sheet-fed scanner, I started looking for one. Our legal group was laboriously scanning contracts a page at a time via a flat bed scanner. We found this nifty little device, read the reviews, decided to give it a shot, and the legal group is now much happier.
Pros:
* Fast. Even with the quality turned up, this scans an entire contract in the time the our Canon flatbed takes to warm up.
* Easy. Once you get the software installed and tweak any settings you feel like tweaking, scanning involves hitting a green button on the face of the scanner and clicking a single button on the screen. The provided software gives you a thumbnail of each document, lets you easily rename the documents, lets you double-click to view in Adobe or a program of your choice, lets you drag-and-drop documents to the desktop, etc.
* Cute. Okay, 'cute' is probably not a selling point for most IT departments, but it really is! It has a very small footprint and a clean design in black and silver. The blue power LED lights up in welcome when you open the document feed cover.
* Paper jams are easy to clear. There's a single silver button that gives easy access to the paper path.
* No Engrish. The manual and software is refreshingly free of mutilated Japanese to "Engrish" translations. I only noticed one or two minor translation glitches.
* Good OCR software. I experimented with searchable PDFs, and the software does a good job of text recognition.
* Good software. I'll be honest, one reason I chose the Fujitsu over a similar Canon product is because I have never liked the look, feel, or usage of Canon's software. I don't know what the Canon would have been like, but I like the Fujitsu software. The out-of-the-box defaults work well, the settings are easy to tweak if you need to, and the ScanSnap Manager is intuitive and easy. There are many, many software options that I haven't tried and probably will never try, but it's nice to have them there just in case I ever need them.
* Can scan receipts. It comes with a plastic sleeve that you can put clippings or smaller pieces of paper inside of for scanning.
Cons:
* Minorly annoying software installation. There are three different disks to install from -- four if you count a disk full of trial software. Some of the installation processes have been tweaked since the manual was originally printed, so there are extra paper inserts to describe the new steps. If you get confused, look through all the manuals and inserts until you find screenshots that match what is happening on the screen.
* Doesn't have a TWAIN driver, as has been stated before, but who cares? It works seamlessly and quickly with the provided software, so this is only a theoretically downside for me.
* Not flat bed quality. If you want exact duplicates of documents without noise or artifacts, get a flat bed. If you want fast and easy scans and are okay with slightly lower quality, go for it.
* Can jam on faster feed modes. The first document I tried was a 4-page contract that had been stapled in one corner. Turning down the speed, AKA turning up the scan quality, and changing the feed direction solved the problem.
* Can jam on curled papers. A packet that has been rolled will not feed well until you flatten the papers a bit.
I'd change my review to 4 stars if I could, but I'm still quite happy.
Customer Review: A very good scanner, easy to use, fax machines are now obsolete.
Summary: 4 Stars
Update 11-2009
I have had the machine since 5/2008 and it works great. I would add to my original review that there is an excellent feature where it will ask you after scanning a series of pages if you want to continue scanning. This is great because it allows you to scan a single set of documents of any size, despite the feeder only taking 50 pages at a time.
I also noticed the price is now $900?? Truly ludicrous. I know there is a new machine replacing the S510, the S5100 at $400 and there is an Epson model around the same price. I would stay with Fujitsu and buy the S5100 if I were buying a scanner at this time.
Original Comments:
I have had the scanner going on 24 hours and it works well. I was using a very slow all-in-one HP machine. The scansnap does in 3 minutes what took my HP over 90 minutes.
The scansnap software was easy to install but the ABBYY software will not install on my computer. I keep getting an error code. The scanner comes with a ful version of Adobe Acrobat. This adds a lot of value to this purchase!
I scan loan packages which saves me a lot of money, and time on next day air. I have already scanned 2 full packages, 85 pages each and it works great. If you are concerned about the 50 page doc feeder being too small, not to worry as the software will allow you to bundle your larger scans into one single file.
If you are e-mailing large files, you will need to use a file service such as [...]. These services work very well, are secure and password protected.
There just isn't any comparison between a scan and a fax document. The scan comes out nearly as good as the original. You know how faxes look and print. Also, sending an e-mail to multiple recipients is much easier than faxing. While toll charges for faxing inside the US might be cheap, calling internationally might not be. Lastly, you will save paper scanning versus faxing. My fax machine has become obsolete. I receive my faxes with [...] and e-mail all replies.
In summary, this is a good machine, probably the best in its price range. Frankly, I think the price could be much lower and I suspect it will be in the future.
Update 11-2009
I have had the machine since 5/2008 and it works great. I would add to my original review that there is an excellent feature where it will ask you after scanning a series of pages if you want to continue scanning. This is great because it allows you to scan a single set of documents of any size, despite the feeder only taking 50 pages at a time.
I also noticed the price is now $[...]. Truly ludicrous. I know there is a new machine replacing the S510, the S5100 at $[...] and there is an Epson model around the same price. I would stay with Fujitsu and buy the S5100 if I were buying a scanner at this time.
Customer Review: Sheet feed only scanner-Excellent value
Summary: 5 Stars
SUMMARY: This is an excellent sheet feed scanner with a small footprint. It scans rapidly and stores documents as Adobe PDF files [no proprietary formats are used]. To make the pdf searchable you can open it in Acrobat Pro and use the Acrobat OCR engine or you can use the ScanSnap software [which uses the ABBYY OCR software]. Accuracy is about the same either way.
I have Adobe Acrobat 9.0 Professional installed and I was previously using it with my EPSON Perfection 4990 flatbed scanner [scanning directly from Acrobat Pro]. If I needed to scan more than a few pages it was tedious because I had to remove the old page and then insert the new one. It got the job done but was a pain. So, to make sheet feed scanning easier, I purchased the S510 based for the most part on the reviews I read here.
The S510 has a very small footprint [12 inches wide x 7 inches deep] and has a USB cable [provided-its about 6 feet long] and power supply cable [external power supply], both connect to the back of the unit.
To use the S510 I installed the ScanSnap software [comes on 1 CD] and ABBYY FineReader for ScanSnap 3.0 [2nd CD]. You also are provided a CD with Adobe Acrobat 8 Standard. The ScanSnap software installs the driver, the software, and a taskbar icon that informs you when the unit is powered on [closing the cover turns the unit off]. Using the taskbar icon you can easily change the drive and path where documents are scanned to [I set up D:\ScanSnap]. In this folder you use the ScanSnap organizer to set up subfolders [called cabinets]. When a document is scanned it shows up in the main folder as a PDF. You can rename it and drag it to a cabinet. Since all of this is within the D:\ScanSnap folder, backup is very easy since you know where your documents are located. No proprietary scanned formats are used-the documents are saved as Adobe PDF files. You can also scan directly to any drive:\folder you wish-bypassing the ScanSnap organizer. I'm not sure which way I like best yet but I'm leaning towards using the SnapSnap organizer and cabinets.
To scan you load the documents, push the "scan" button on the unit, and your documents show up in the ScanSnap Organizer [or directy in drive:\folder] as a single PDF file. If you want to make the PDF searchable you can do it in ScanSnap [uses ABBYY] or just open the pdf in Adobe Acrobat Pro and use the OCR engine within Acrobat. I tried both ways and they seemed about equally accurate.
Bottom Line: Excellent Scanner to get those loose paper documents or loose photographs saved as PDF's.