Epson Workforce GT-S50 Review
I've been looking to move to a more paperless environment at home. It seems I get a daily deluge of mail that I have no intentions of archiving in its original form. I decided that the time is right to get a document scanner and start archiving these documents into PDF for safekeeping and retrieval.
My initial goal was to get a Fujitsu Scansnap but I was a bit put off by the fact that Fujitsu made separate scanner models for Macintosh and PC. Im on a Mac right now but I like the flexibility that PC support gives. So I decided to keep my eyes open for any other cross platform scanners and the Epson was announced shortly afterwards.
So after unpacking the Epson Workforce scanner I noticed the heft of this product. It's a sturdy peripheral and well designed in my opinion. The installation process was a bit
tedious. I had to supply my administrators password 6 times to install the various application and drivers. I do not know if Windows will have the same annoyance.
The software included for Mac is Abbyy Finereader 5 Sprint, Presto Bizcard reader, Epson Scan, Epson Event Manager. Let me be honest and frank with you. The bundled software literally looks like it comes from the 90s. Epson should have done better and partnered with better vendors. Fujitsu includes Adobe Acrobat and a superior Cardminder for business card scanning in addition to the superior scansnap manager.
The performance of this scanner is stellar. I ran a page through at 200 dpi and it felt as though it was ejected rather than fed. At higher dpi the scanner slows down a bit but its still a good performer. I've been having some issues with the deskew feature. I scanned a few small documents and they were not properly deskewed and captured slightly crooked. I looked at the driver and the deskew button was grayed out. Still haven't found out why I'll keep checking. All document scanners tend to skew the scans a bit so deskew is important if you like your documents straight.
Application support- The Epson Workforce scanner uses TWAIN (industry standard) and ISIS (higher end) drivers. I found that my Adobe Acrobat 9 easily accessed the scanner, and quickly created a searchable PDF via its OCR function. Acrobat with built in OCR and a document scanner may be all some of you need. It works very well. Other applications I tried didn't always have a TWAIN interface preferring to to use Apple's Image Capture. No worries though you can setup which folder you want to scan too and some applications will "watch" a folder for files to import. Suffice it to say you "will" get your documents into your app somehow even if you cannot scan it in natively.
Comparison. Fujitsu this year announced the new S1500/S1500m Scansnap. It is not available nor on Amazon at the time of this review but it is now on Fujitsu's website. I downloaded the data sheet and user manual for the new scanners. They are impressive. In addition to a sensor that can tell if two sheets have been fed (a feature of the Epson GT-S80 at more $$$) they also automate some of the scanning. You can toss in files of differing sizes with no problems. The biggest thing though to me is the Scanmanager software seems so much more fluid and modern to me. I also read that it may support both PC and Mac platforms in one device which was a feature I had to have. I will keep my Epson which works great yet is no frills and see if the Epson Scan software improves though I could see myself replacing this scanner with the S1500m and taking advantage of the superior Scansnap software. Epson WorkForce Pro GT-S50 Document Imaging Scanner
For the last year and a half, I've been using a Fujitsu S510 SnapScan page scanner, which is a natural competitor to the Epson GT-S50. So, when I was offered the chance to review the Epson, it seemed like a natural fit - somebody looking to purchase one is likely to also look at the other. (Go to Fujitsu ScanSnap S510 Sheet-fed Scanner to read that review. It was fairly far down, on page 4, when I last looked.)
Let's look at the two scanners...
First of all, both scanners are top fed and scan both sides of a page in a single pass. They are infinitely faster than the scanners built into the "all-in one" printers and suitable for high volume scanning...the Epson is rated for 1200 pages per day.
The Epson GT-S50 comes with both TWAIN and ISIS drivers, giving it with a clear advantage in interfacing with software from other companies. Almost every program that can read from a scanner uses one or the other. The ScanSnap, on the other hand, uses its own proprietary driver, which only ties into their ScanSnap Organizer program...a program that displays small images of the scanned pages. Both scanners come with OCR programs, for converting scanned images to editable text, but, with the TWAIN driver, only the Epson directly interfaces with different programs - OmniPage Pro, Textbridge, or whatever else you prefer.
The Epson driver offers more choices in output resolution. Whereas the SnapScan has four levels - Normal (150dpi), Better (200dpi), Best (300dpi) and Excellent (600dpi) - the Epson has eight levels ranging from 75 dpi up through 600 dpi. For some strange reason, neither company's software allows you to name the output file before scanning. After scanning, you'll need to manually rename each file with something recognizable. (The default date/time stamp doesn't give you any useful information if you need to find a file a month later).
The Epson ships with software for both Macintosh and Windows systems. I've tested both versions in a mixed Windows/Mac network and they both work smoothly. The Fujitsu ScanSnap, on the other hand, comes in dedicated Mac (S510m)and Windows (S510) models. I've only used the Windows version.
Both scanners are similar in their physical shape, although the Epson looks quite a bit larger...it's about 1" longer, 2" taller and an inch or two deeper than the SnapScan. It holds 75 pages in the input slot, versus 50 in the SnapScan. The Epson has a two-line display on the front. The SnapScan only has "scan" and "power" buttons. Both units are solidly built and give the feeling that they'll last for a long time...I've used my SnapScan for 30K+ pages and it's still going strong. Both units have user replaceable pads and rollers to keep them running smoothly.
How do they operate in real life? To begin my testing, I fed the same 42 page document through each scanner. The document was complex as they come, with both text and color graphics on most pages. It was also laid out to be used in a vertical flip chart (letter-size, but bound on the short edge)...from the scanner's perspective, the back-side of each page was upside down. My theory was that a scanner that could make sense out of it could handle almost anything...
The Epson scanned my test document faster than the ScanSnap, but software processing of the scanned image took longer. The ScanSnap took 3min 10sec from the start of the scan to PDF file creation, without using text recognition; the Epson took 4min 6sec. The OCR software runs in the background on the SnapScan, but runs in the foreground on the Epson. Because of this, the SnapScan can be used to scan the next document while the text is being recognized, while the Epson remains busy until it's completely finished. My test document tied up the Epson for 12min 20sec from the time that I started the scan until the OCR finished and saved the file. My computer's no slouch, but a faster computer would obviously shorten that time. If you use an outside text recognition package, you can always run it at a later time and eliminate this time waster.
The ScanSnap features automatic rotation of upside down and landscape pages. (Everything is fed in vertically on both scanners.) The Epson doesn't...you get what you feed in. In my test document, the ScanSnap flipped the upside pages right-side up. The Epson left them upside down. Even with the upside down pages, the OCR worked fine.
The Epson can handle mixed page sizes in one scan. You can drop all your receipts in and have them scanned at once. The ScanSnap needs all the pages to be the same size in each scan...a longer page is assumed to be a misfeed and aborts the scan.
The Epson has a straight through paper path. It can handle credit card and ID Card scanning. The ScanSnap doesn't and can't. This makes the Epson perfect for a medical office where health insurance cards are always being copied.
The Epson can scan documents up to 36" long. The ScanSnap stops at legal size (14"). This is useful when you are scanning cash register receipts, but as a practical matter, I seldom run into anything else that's longer than 14"...at least not without also getting too wide for the scanner.
Using the default settings, the ScanSnap had a sharper output at 600dpi. Clicking the "unsharpen" box in the Epson software produced a scan that almost exactly matched the ScanSnap's output...why unsharpen actually sharpens is a mystery. In solid-color blocks, the Epson was clearly superior, producing a solid-color output. The ScanSnap had a lot of off-color noise that was clearly visible when enlarged.
The Epson also has the ability to drop out colors, which is useful when scanning something printed on colored paper. It would also be useful if you need to remove a red "confidential" or "top secret" stamp from a borrowed document. :)
Besides the drivers and other utility software, the Epson includes PaperPort 11 SE, which is a visual file organizer. It operates similarly to the ScanSnap Organizer. I didn't test it out...the last time I installed PaperPort 11 Pro (NOT the SE version), it messed up my computer so badly that I ended up reinstalling Windows to get rid of it. (If you have a minute to kill, go read the reviews on Amazon for PaperPort 11 Pro!) I assume that Epson's version is more reliable, but having been burned more than once, I'm not about to try any version of PaperPort ever again! Both scanners use the ABBYY FineReader software. It works nicely. The ScanSnap also includes a full version of Adobe Acrobat Standard...a $200 program if you were to go out and buy it separately.
So....which scanner would I buy? The short answer is that it depends on your application. If you're using both Macs and Windows machines, the choice is clear...the Epson works with both. Both scanners are built for years of use and each has unique features (e.g. card scanning) that point it in one direction or the other. The Fujitsu ScanSnap is designed to be a more "push the button and it goes" type of device. The Epson GT-S50 is more flexible. I like them both. - Scanner - Epson - Duplex - Scanners'
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