Fujitsu ScanSnap S510 Sheet-fed Scanner by Fujitsu Imaging
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Digital camera reviews of Fujitsu ScanSnap S510 Sheet-fed Scanner
Digital camera Review: A Life Saver!
Summary: 5 Stars
I don't normally leave reviews for items I purchase -- and especially for things that I bought well over a year ago. (I got this item in March 2009.) But I just want to say that this little scanner has been a life saver for me! I got this to enable me to begin digitizing old records and files - and it's truly a wonder. Very few electronic items that I've purchased have ever been so trouble-free, easy to use, and work so reliably and quickly. Since getting this Scansnap, I've scanned into PDFs well over 15,000 pages and NEVER had ANY problems with it AT ALL. Due to the feed mechanism, it's primarily for document scanning (i.e., not photos, which I have a totally different style of scanner for) -- but this Scansnap is worth twice the price for the time and trouble it has saved me. I can't recommend it strongly enough. And amazon.com, of course, was the best price, quickest shipment, and as usual, great to work with.Digital camera 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.
Digital camera Review: A great duplex scanner.
Summary: 4 Stars
The S510 is a great little duplex, color scanner. It about the size of a shoe box, scans both sides in the same pass, and comes with a nice software bundle. Please note this this scanner is not TWAIN compliant, so it will not be recognized outside of the software that it runs with. That is the only negative aspect to this scanner. Setup is incredibly easy and the programs that come with it are very easy to use.Digital camera Review: A must for any busy office
Summary: 5 Stars
This is an excellent scanner. Easy to use, quick to scan two sided papers. Out performs a flatbed 2:1. A must for a busy office.Digital camera 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.