NeatDesk Desktop Scanner and Digital Filing System- Macintosh
by The Neat Company
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Category: CE
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Digital Photo Product Details
Manufacturer: The Neat CompanyFormat: DVD-ROM
Platform: Mac OS X
Model: 698
Color: White
Product features:
- Transform paper into information that works
- Automatically extracts key information from scanned receipts; can export to Quicken, Excel, and pdf
- Scans are IRS-accepted digital copies, making tax preparation a snap
- Scan up to 10 receipts, 10 business cards and 10 documents at once or a single, 50 page document
- Developed for OS X to look and feel like the applications you use every day
- AmazonBasics USB 2.0 A-Male to A-Female Extension Cable (3.3 Feet/1.0 Meter)
- AmazonBasics USB 2.0 A-Male to Mini-B Cable (6 Feet / 1.8 Meters)
- AmazonBasics USB 2.0 A-Male to B-Male Cable (6 Feet / 1.8 Meters)
- AmazonBasics USB 2.0 A-Male to A-Female Extension Cable (9.8 Feet/3.0 Meters)
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of NeatDesk Desktop Scanner and Digital Filing System- Macintosh
Customer Review: Does not scan grayscale. BW poor quality, color to slow
Summary: 1 Stars
I really really really wanted to like this scanner. I received the unit on Friday and had planned on spending Saturday scanning in all my documents and then relaxing on Sunday. I am sooooo disappointed with the quality of the scans and software when scanning in documents like car insurance or doctors statements that I am sending it back.
The main issue is that the manufacture's web site states that the scanner can scan grayscale and B/W documents in at a rate of 25 PPM. This is an outright lie on one level and a stretching of the truth on another level.
First let me start off with the truth stretching. The scanner is very fast while scanning in B/W images but it did not seam like it was 25 PPM fast so I timed it using a stop watch. I was able to scan in a page (two sides) in 6.4 seconds that's 10 PPM not 25! As Fujitsu rates their ScanSnap S1500M at 20 PPM whether you scan one or two sides, I assumed I would see the NeatDesk scanner do the same. Thinking that they (NeatCo) must have been playing with some slick marketing numbers when they came up with the 25 PPM rate I figured I would see the 10 PPM rate double to 20 if I only scanned one side of a page instead of two. I was very disappointed to see that the rate did not change between one or two sides. Normally I would think that 10 PPM is a very quick scan, which it is, but it is more than half as fast as advertised.
That was the truth stretching now onto the lie.
My main complaint is not the scan rate of B/W or grayscale scans. I would be very happy with a 10 PPM grayscale document scanner. The problem is that the scanner / software package does NOT scan in grayscale. The scanner DOES send the images to my iMac in GRAYSCALE and then the horrible software converts it to B/W. Yes you heard me right! They take a perfectly legible (8 bit, 256 levels of black) grayscale image and turn it into a very poor quality B/W (2 bit, 2 color) illegible image. I can't for the life of me understand why they would do such a thing.
If you are only interested in scanning in receipts, which by their nature are only black and white, then you might be happy with the software. Unfortunately about 95% of the stuff I wanted to scan is various types of documents / kids school work / insurance papers / medical records etc. If you have ever looked at these kinds of documents you will notice that most of them have shaded areas on the page that highlight important text. These shaded areas, along with the text, usually become unreadable when converted to B/W. Not only can I not able to read them the OCR can't detect them either. It makes me angry to see a scan show up on the screen that looks GREAT only to have it destroyed a few seconds later by the software as it converts it to black and white.
I contacted NeatCo about the ability to scan to grayscale. Their support person was very nice and polite; unfortunately she confirmed for me that the software does not support grayscale. Her response is at the end of the review.
You may think that I should just scan in color. Unfortunately scanning in color is very slow. A color scan took 15 seconds for a single sided page and 27.5 seconds for a single 2-sided page (weird that color scans do double the time for 2 sides unlike the BW option). At this rate it puts color scans in at 2 PPM not the 8.5 reported on their web site. At 2 PPM it will take me several hundred hours to scan everything I need to scan.
The quality of color scans is very good if you are willing to wait 30 seconds for a single 2-sided scan.
Here are my timing results for the BW, color, 1 side and 2 sided document. All times are for a single sheet of paper.
Page Sides | Color Mode |Time to Scan |Total time to scan & OCR 1st page
1 | Color | 15 sec | 52 sec
2 | color | 27 sec | 1:15 (m:sec)
1 | BW | 6.4 sec | 36 sec
2 | BW | 6.5 sec | 40 sec
Just for reference I have a late 2008 24'' iMac with 2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo and 4 gigs of ram. I have also updated the NeatDesk software to their latest version as of 10/30/2009 which is 2.1.9
I have taken some screen shots of the grayscale images before they are converted to BW and will try to post them to Amazon. In the screen shots you can see that the initial image looks very nice. If NeatCo fixes this issue the package might be worth a look.
Here is the NeatCo response to my grayscale question.
Response (Campbell) - 10/29/2009 08:45 PM
Hi Chris,
There's no way to set to scan in a gray scale at this time. I will put in a feature request to our developers so they can include this capability in future releases.
Question Reference #091029-000359
Product Level 1: NeatDesk for Mac
Date Created: 10/29/2009 08:45 PM
Last Updated: 10/29/2009 08:45 PM
Status: Solved
Description of NeatDesk Desktop Scanner and Digital Filing System- Macintosh
You've got information trapped on paper. We've got the key. Because when your information is free, so are you free to store it, organize it, even edit and reuse it. Whatever works for you. NeatDesk for Mac is a desktop scanner and digital filing system that lets you scan and organize receipts, business cards and documents. Neat's patented technology identifies and extracts the important information and automatically organizes it for you. Transform receipts into expense reports, business cards into Address Book contacts, and create searchable PDF files from any document. You can even export information to PDF, Quicken and Excel. NeatDesk for Mac lets you manage the paper at home, at work and on the go.Digital Cameras & Photo Categories
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