One of my goals this year is to have less paper clutter (yeah I know, but I can try). I have been hearing rave reviews on the Fujitsu ScanSnap from my colleagues at Adobe (Noha Edell recently raved about it to me and my my buddy Chita Hunter reviewed a different model in MacGroup’s newsletter back in 2005). I saw this scanner in action a couple years ago at Macworld Expo and always had it in the back of my mind. I recently ordered one (which is on the way). However, I just read Adobe’s Adam Pratt’s review on it and it got me all excited all over again.
The Fujitsu ScanSnap S510M (The M is for the Mac version) goes for $425 ($495 list) and includes a full version of Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional. It scans in color or B&W and does two sided scanning of stacks of paper. It automatically converts the scans to PDFs and from what I hear it’s blazing fast! Check out Adam’s review for more.
This is a really cool machine. I can vouch for it’s speed. Makes you look forward to getting rid of that paper!
This has been on my wish list for a while now. All the reviews I have read have been positive. I can’t wait to get to a point where I don’t have to hard copies of bills, etc. any more. With the ScanSnap and DEVONthink Pro Office (which supports the ScanSnap), I am envisioning a paperless filing system for all that same stuff. When a new paper bill or statement comes in, I scan it, and it ends up in the Inbox folder in DEVONthink. When I go to pay bills, everything is waiting there to be processed. Finally, I’ll be able to pay the bills from the couch instead of at my desk with a pile of paper. 🙂 Ironic how fiscal responsibility is the reason I don’t have it yet.
Keep in mind that only DEVONthink *Pro Office* supports the ScanSnap:
http://www.devon-technologies.com/products/devonthink/index.html
Also, make sure you update that copy of Acrobat 8 Professional before you get too far if you are running on Leopard:
http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=3856
Let us know how it works out for you!
Hey could you post some of your different scans of different materials when you get it. I would like to see the output. I might get one if the scans look good…..
Thanks
Terry,
I would like to see your review of this product once you have tried it out as I am considering going to a paperless society for all my bills, policies and receipts in the future. I want to have them all stored on my computer where I can review them there rather than go looking for it in the file cabinet.
Look forward to hearing what you have to say about it.
Chris
Hi Terry:
I am anxious to get a more recent update on the ScanSnap S510M (I believe your most recent update was June 2008). My boss has a financial consulting home office business. As his business is growing rapidly, the amount of paperwork required for just one client is tremendous. Therefore, we are looking to go paperless, but I want to hear from you how you like the ScanSnap (if you have purchased one by now, that is) and whether or not, indeed, the ABBYY FineReader software that comes with the ScanSnap does fix the problem of not being able to search for your PDF files by keyword once you have scanned the documents. This is our biggest concern regarding the purchase of this scanner. We HAVE to be able to easily search for and retrieve the documents once we scan them into the computer.
Thanks so much,
Cindy
Cindy,
I’m am QUITE PLEASED with my S510M and even recently got a S300M as well. The ABBYY FineReader does in fact OCR the PDFs and make them searchable. I do recommend this scanner for your needs!
Terry-
Since you have both the S510M and the S300M, perhaps you can help answer a question of mine regarding which unit to purchase. I would like a unit that can painlessly allow me to cut down on the paper clutter in my offices. My needs are fairly modest, as I don’t have tens of thousands of pages to work through. Managing receipts for expense reports is also one of my goals.
While I suspect that the S300M would be more than adequate for what I’m looking to do, I’m strongly attracted by the 510s ability to produce searchable PDFs from the outset. I already have Acrobat Professional 8 and, thanks to a link in another forum, was able to download Finereader 3 for Snapscan from Fujitsu. With these pieces, can I set up the 300M so that it’s workflow is essentially the same as that of the 510m (that is, automatically process the scan through Finereader)? Or would I need to go through the extra step of feeding the scans through Finereader?
Any insights would be greatly appreciated.
Hi Michael
Could you list the forum link for the download for finereader 3 – I have ordered the s300m and was undecided about the s510m because it had the ocr software which only comes with the scanner apparently.
Otherwise Devon seems to be the best one to buy for it.
Cheers
Terry,
I really like your blog… Great info. I am very very close to buying this scanner and seem to read nothing but great reviews about it. I also like that it comes with a full version of Acrobat 8.0 for the Mac which saves me a couple hundred down the road. All the review talk about black and white and color. Do you have any experience with gray scale scanning with it? Most of what I scan now or old documents from pre 1950 and have a lot of darkened pages. I use (XP with Acrobat 7.0 pro on Canon Flatbed) does a great job removing all the crap from the background and leaving really nice white pages. Of course, I assume that 8.0 for the mac would have even better capabilities, but with the one touch button…. ? Does it let you use the TWAIN in 8.0 or just the button. Perhaps I am just over thinking it. Maybe you can find an old darkened page and see what happens. Thanks,
Scott Henshaw
Scott,
I have not done a lot with grayscale, but I think between Acrobat and the scanner settings you will be able to get what you want. Although you can’t use the scanner via TWAIN, you can control the quality settings. It does the same thing in removing the background and giving you a nice white page.
Interesting post – Just to add my thoughts , if your business want to merge two PDF files , my husband saw a service here http://bit.ly/1ZefkXA