Having used scanners from Canon, Xerox, Lanier, Visioneer and Epson, I have a good base from which to compare this scanner. It is excellent! The feed mechanism on this scanner is superior to all prior scanners I have used, including other scanners in this price range. This unit has multiple rollers located in the base and cover that spin at different speeds to pull only one sheet at a time. In other scanners, folded paper - like documents received in an envelop - will double/multi feed. I have not had a single double feed with this unit. I am using it with File Center Pro software to convert more than 1,600 legal files to paperless .pdf format. I was so impressed with this unit that I now have 4 of them in the office, each going at least 8 hours per day with virtually no jams or double feeds. It's worth the money for an office setting where you don't have time for jams and double feeds. Fujitsu fi-6130 Duplex Scanner (PA03540-B055)
This has been a frustrating experience. I have owned the Fujitsu Scansnap S510 for years and have been pleased with it except for the constant misfeeds. I found I could get an acceptable function on the S510 if I monitored it and just refed the missed sheets. I bought the Fujitsu fi-6130 because I needed a more reliable and more industrial strength model for the large volume of old and new files I needed to archive. This scanner is definitely faster than a new S1500M which I also purchased.
Now the problem is the setup. It comes with a jumbo of disjointed and overlapping software without any real guidance on what to do. The included ScanALL software is not at all like the elegant and now more appreciated proprietary fujitsu Scansnap Manager which works only on the Scansnap line of fujitsu scanners. The first batch I fed it with 1 legal size page and 6 letter size copies kept jamming on the legal page. It was not automatically recognized as a mixed size batch. I called tech support and they told me to tweak the settings to legal sz with end of page sensor on. Same issue with color and B&W copies in same batch. You have to decide to do B&W and lose the color on the one letterhead or scan the whole batch as color, needlessly ballooning your file size. I gave up and just scan in B&W. The Scansnap just did the mixed copy sizes and the mixed color/B&W and paused to allow you to name and store the file where you wanted it. The fi-6130 under Adobe Acrobat just scans in every doc as untitled1 and I have to rename it before saving it. It is either that or lose control of how you name the file.
Fujitsu tech support tells me all the former Scansnap users are disappointed with the software on the twain compliant scanners like the fi-6130. Just isn't the same thing. To sum it up, the two redemptive qualities of this scanner are faster speed and more reliable paper handling. Otherwise I like the Scansnap line better in the look and feel and operation.
This is a great scanner, but the real magic lies in the Kofax VRS capture-preparation software bundled with the product. (Kofax VRS is an image enhancement tool to improve the quality of your scans.) I bought a Fujitsu 5120c several years ago when I decided to go paperless. It has run flawlessly for three years and is still going strong, albeit on a computer running WinXP x32. When I decided to buy another scanner for use at home, I chose this model as the successor to the 5120c.
I recently bought a new laptop with Win7 x64 pre-installed. Fujitsu has kept their drivers and software up-to-date and both run under the 64-bit OS. The problem lies with Kofax. While Kofax VRS is the single best reason to buy the scanner, it does not work under Win7 x64. The Kofax website will not tell you this fact, but the installation program announces that Kofax has not been certified to run on Win7 x64 and advises that you are installing at your own risk. No amount of fiddling could get Kofax to communicate with Acrobat under Win7 x64. [I saw a post somewhere indicating that the Fujitsu ISIS driver will allow Kofax to communicate with Acrobat under Win7 x64, but was not able to make that solution work myself.]
My preferred method of operation is to scan to PDF files via Acrobat with the Kofax TWAIN driver. That method has proved simple, direct, and accurate in the past. Under Win7 x64 I get an error message that "Acrobat cannot communicate to [sic] this device [the Kofax driver]". Kofax support options are non-existent for OEM licensees. You are on your own when you buy a bundled copy of Kofax.
Things got so bad I considered downgrading the OS to either Win7 x32 or WinXP x32, but the manufacturer of my new laptop (Dell) foreclosed that option (another sorry story). I finally hit upon the idea of creating a virtual machine running WinXP x32 and installing Kofax on the virtual machine. (I used VirtualBox because it was free; VMware would also work, although it is expensive.) This solution worked quite well. I am now able to scan to PDF with the Kofax TWAIN driver. I have cloned the VM and saved it as a "virtual appliance" which can be moved to different computers, giving me the added benefit of being able to scan from the VM while running Linux as the host OS.
Kofax must account for at least half the purchase price of this scanner, if not more. The full retail version of Kofax costs over of $1,000. The steps required to get this scanner working with Kofax under anything but WinXP x32 are complex, time-consuming, and not for those of restless temperament.
Microsoft and its OEM co-conspirators have rammed a 64-bit OS down the throats of customers. Developers of niche market applications like Kofax have not been able to keep up. When Kofax is able to write native 64-bit code that will run on Win7 x64, this scanner will again become out-of-the-box friendly. I highly recommend this product used with WinXP x32. If you are running any other OS, you can still enjoy the magic of Kofax, but it will require a lot of work.
UPDATE 10/18/2010: The VM solution was neither as fast nor as stable as I had hoped. I finally gave up and purchased another computer (this time a white-box assembled locally) and installed Win7 x32. I can report that all software installed correctly and the scanner is runs great. I'm able to do everything I did with the 5120c under WinXP, only faster and with slightly better results. Final evaluation: The hardware gets five stars, the documentation gets one star (really poor translations from the Chinese, if you are understood what I mean to say by this). Kofax gets five stars for output, one star for support, and zero stars for not telling customers that their product does not work under Win7 x64. This has been an expensive education with a lot of down-time for a mission-critical application. - Scanner - Scanners - Duplex - Fujitsu'
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