I purchased this scanner as a first step in creating an electronic filing system for a home office. As I accumulated 20 filing cabinet drawers of paper documents going paperless seemed to be an answer.
Purchase of the Fujitsu S1500 was based on the numerous 5 star reviews. I am reasonably tech literate and have used the scanner for about 2 weeks. Here are my initial impressions:
Pros -
1. Speed: This scanner seems blazingly fast. Not a resource hog. Will scan duplex 20-25ppm at default settings on Win2K/1.8mhz/1gb platform.
2. Scan quality very good at all settings.
3. Size and looks: Small desk footprint. Looks great open or closed.
4. Excellent paper feeding as long as documents are same size and 20# or greater paper weight.
Cons -
1. NO TWAIN DRIVER. I knew this going in but did not appreciate how much this would cripple the device in day to day use. Let me explain. I had envisioned creating a virtual file cabinet in my computer using Windows Directory/Folder/File system then scanning my paper documents into this system as pdf files. The problem is that the native Fujitsu software does not let you append an existing pdf file!!!
As an example take a file for utility bills. D:/Home Expenses/Utilities/Gas_Electric.pdf. You can easily scan in all prior bills(limited by 50 sheet ADF)and a pdf with one page for each bill will be created. But if you had more than 50 prior bills or when next months bill comes then the next scan you perform to include these new documents will create a new pdf and does not allow the option of appending this more recent scan to the existing pdf. As you can see one could easily end up with 1000s of individual pdf documents in your filing system. The work around is to launch Adobe Acrobat (not reader) and use it to open the old composite pdf and use Acrobat to append the newly created pdf to the prior file. This work around takes longer than scanning in a 30 page document. Twain based scanners easily work with existing windows file structure and allow you to append an existing pdf without invoking Acrobat.
2. Paper catch tray very fragile and ADF paper support does not stay up (also reported by other reviewers).
3. Double feed sensor: stops scan and reports. This is good. However you cannot retrieve the double fed sheet and place it back in proper order because the next sheet is already in the scanner and cannot be backed out. You have to either cancel the scan and start over or put the unread sheet back in out of order and then use Acrobat to rearrange the pages in the resultant pdf document. If you choose to cancel the scan the document that is halfway into the scanner will not be ejected and you need to perform an new scan to retrieve that sheet.
4. A scanning run will only handle one size document at a time. In my experience if you have a mix of paper sizes you will need to do a scanning run for each paper size. Each run will generate a separate pdf file with you will then need to deal with.
5. I paid extra for the scanner bundle with Rack2File software thinking it would help me create the filing system I envisioned. After loading and spending several hours with this software I don't understand how it works or what it is supposed to do. I consider the extra $30 dollars I spent for the "bundled" scanner money poorly spent.
6. Other minor annoyances are:
While the scanner and snapscan software will run on older platforms the bundled software Rack2file and Acrobat require XPpro SP3 or newer. This is not clear from specs.
ADF will hold 40-50 sheets but output tray will start to jam after 20-25 sheets.
Documents printed on less than 20# paper and with printing on both sides the back side printing will show up on the front side scan. Many commercial invoices are printed both sides on thin paper.
Cannot set several default scanning profiles. You need to reset the scanner parameters each time you want a different profile.
Bottom line:
This would be a 5 star low end document scanner if it only offered a twain driver. As it is I can recommend it only to prospective buyers who understand the full implications of this limitation. I thought of returning this scanner and getting one of the twain based models like the Epson GT S50 but at this point I have learned enough of Acrobat to quickly append my pdfs retrospectively.
I strongly recommend avoiding the "bundled" product since I don't see what added value the Rack2File software brings.
I considered giving the scanner a one star review just to get people's attention but the hardware is so good 3 stars seems about right. Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500 Sheet-Fed Scanner
I have scanned about 8000 sheets so far. I have found these settings helpful with rack2filer:
1. Auto color detection, Duplex, Best image quality (300dpi Color/Grey 600dpi BW), Options [Only Blank page removal checked (no auto rotation - slows down page viewing)], Continuous scanning.
2. Same as above except change color mode to gray.
And in general I have found:
The multifeed detector works great and has detected many double feeds. It handles old thin thermal fax paper without double feeds - pretty amazing, because I would think that if anything would jam or double feed it would be that. The prompt shows the image of the detected multifeed and gives you the option of keeping it or discarding it - this has been helpful when it detects sticky notes on scanned paper that are supposed to be there.
It has handled many old papers - barely legible and has done an adequate job picking up light print.
Very light or old papers with light print or pencil hand writing are better handled by forcing the color detection to grey. Otherwise Auto everything works well.
Blank page detection - does not work with the other side of lined loose leaf paper or graph paper that has nothing written on it. That is to be expected - but a possible design improvement idea for this product. And to get around this, I have set the scanning side to single-sided. Otherwise blank page detection worked well.
Scans looked exactly like the originals and in rack2 filer the binders read and looked as well as the paper binders.
When it does jam (which was rarely the scanners fault and mostly from staples, taped paper or over loading), the prompt shows the last few pages scanned which makes it easy to recover.
Fanning and creating a step-like pattern of your paper stack before loading the paper makes a big difference in preventing paper jams.
Some of the advantages:
I can take many binders worth on information with me on my notebook without dragging the heavy paper binders in my bag - or one of those wheeled bags that my colleagues use.
There is the security of now being able to have multiple copies of my binders in physically different locations [desktop, notebook, and off site backups] all without using a copy machine.
I need less space for file cabinets [files], bookshelves [binders], and thus less office space.
Everything is now in one place. My office is too small to have all my binders and files together, but now they all fit in one folder on my hard drive.
Although I will still use paper to write on, I don't foresee a reason to ever need to bind or file papers anymore. Just take notes, scan, and recycle.
The actual images for Rack2Filer and CardMinder are in PDF files so if anything happens with Rack2filer - you can always access the data via windows explorer and acrobat.
I have used NeatWorks for my accounting (receipts), documents, and business cards for about a year now. The mobile scanner scans at 3 ppm black and white and 2ppm color - single sided only. So for duplex color ScanSnap is (20ppm x 2)/2ppm = 20x faster - a huge improvement. The NeatWorks software is also heavy and slow compared to Rack2filer and CardMinder.
However, NeatWorks is better than ScanSnap organizer or Rack2filer for receipts. And it can import the PDF scans from the S1500. So, I recommend using NeatWorks software (not the NeatWorks/Desk scanner) for receipts, Rack2Filer for documents and CardMinder for Business cards. - Pdf - Fujitsu - Scanner - Document Scanner'
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