23 out of 23 people found this review helpful.
No more file cabinets
Date of Review: Dec 2, 2007
The Bottom Line: No problems at all, I would recommend wholeheartedly.
I've read so many things about this scanner, it almost seemed too good to be true. But, after a month of use, I can confirm it is incredible!
My wife uses a Kodak scanner at her office and loves it. The insurance company where she works has gone paperless and they have several of the Kodak units. We have meant to buy one for months now, but the $800 to $1000 cost just seemed too high.
A GTD (Getting Things Done) oriented web blog I enjoy, www.productivity501.com has been running articles regarding a paperless office for some time, and the author, Mark W. Shead, loves his Scapscan so much, he convinced me to give it a try.
Well, I did it and the price was less than half the price of the Kodak plus a 50 dollar rebate on top of that.
SIZE
I opened the shipping box and could hardly believe how small the unit was - it is only about 11.2" wide by 6.2" deep and 6.2" in height when closed. The top paper feed folds open and the front paper collector folds down and about doubles the height and depth, but still incredibly small.
It only weighs about 6 pounds and is a pleasant black front and ivory rear in color. I believe the Macintosh unit is all ivory, but otherwise identical specifications. It also goes by the designation S510M.
SPECS:
It actually has a maximum resolution of 1200x1200 but the optical scan resolution is given at 600x600. Standard scan speed is rated at 18 pages per minute.
There are four modes that you can select from:
Normal - Color 150 dpi, B&W 300dpi, duplex 18 ppm, 36 images per minute;
Better - Color 200 dpi, B&W 400dpi, duplex 12 ppm, 24 images per minute;
Best - Color 300 dpi, B&W 600dpi, duplex 6 ppm, 12 images per minute;
Excellent - Color 600 dpi, B&W 1,200dpi, duplex 0.6 ppm, 1.2 images per minute.
Note that this scanner digitizes BOTH sides of the sheets read plus it reads color as well. Many high speed units only do black and white.
NON-TWAIN:
This is a non-twain unit. My other scanner, a 2400x2400 Epson flatbed uses twain to work with my imaging software. Twain is a standard software protocol and applications programming interface. In other words, it allows that particular scanner to talk to my computer and software. It you want to convert your images to JPEGs or other photography type images, TWAIN is a must. However, if you are only going to convert your scanned sheets into PDFs or import them into Word or Excel, you will NOT miss it. This is an IMPORTANT item to understand – what you want to do with your scanned images determines if this unit is fantastic or just a boat anchor (and a small one at that).
By the way, TWAIN is not an acronym for anything. It comes from a Rudyard Kipling poem that has the phrase in it " ... and never the twain shall meet ... ", which implies the difficulty getting scanners and computers to play well together.
INCLUDED:
Hardware included are the unit itself, the power cord and a USB cable. No cords to buy.
By the way, it is USB 2.0 Complaint and Energy Star rated.
It also comes with 5 carrier sheets. I had to do a lot of researching, but evidently lighter paper and paper that has been folded needs a carrier sheet to attach to in order to scan correctly. Each sheet has a lifespan of 500 scans. Note that I've scanned all types of paper and sizes and have not used a carrier sheet yet. The scanner is rated for use with paper between 14 and 34 lbs in weight, but I have scanned some pretty lightweight receipts that are almost see-through with no problem.
Not included, but available as an option, is a carrier bag if you want to transport this around. Maybe if you are a traveling notary, or legal aide? I am glad it is an option as I would never use one.
SOFTWARE:
Here is where it gets good. It comes with its own software, Snapscan Organizer version 3.1 - this allows you to save the scanned file as a PDF, or convert it and send it off to Word, Excel, your Fax, your Email, or your printer. This software works great.
PFU Cardminder version 3.1 - lets you scan business cards into a basic file that can then be used as is, or imported to a number of other programs, including Microsoft Outlook. I've not used this yet so can not speak as to its effectiveness.
Adobe Acrobat 8.0 Standard version - I just priced this at my local office supply store for 300 hundred dollars by itself alone! You don't have to install this if you already have Adobe Acrobat reader installed. You do have to register this software and I have read complaints about that. I will say, I read the user agreement fine print, and it allows you to install it on two personal computers as long as you do not run both Adobe Acrobat versions simultaneously.
ABBYY FineReader version 3.0 - this is OCR software (optical character reader) - I was a little concerned as the current version of this is 9.0 and costs 400.00 for the pro version, 600.00 for the corporate version and 180.00 just to upgrade the 3.0 to 9.0 professional. BUT,the 3.0 version works great as is and converts my scans into Word or Excel with minimal reworking. I work with scans that have a lot of numbers and charts and boxes so it does get confused, but with straight text it is extremely accurate.
HOW IT WORKS:
This unit is so easy that even non-computer types can use it. You load paper (up to 50 sheets), push the scan button on the front of the scanner and wait for it to read all of the pages into the unit. It comes preset to automatically determine paper size (you can mix sizes in a scan batch), determine if the back is blank and not scan that, automatically aligns sheets that are skewed, and once done, the computer screen pops up with a box asking you what you want to do with the stuff you just scanned - do you want to save as a PDF or convert to something else. It is actually that easy.
One noted problem. I have been scanning a lot of my old college and work reports that have the plastic binder on the binding edge. This is where the small rectangular holes are punched continuously along that edge. I have to paper cut these off as it read the holes as a letter or multiple letters on OCR scans. No problem if just scanning to PDFs however, you just see the holes as black spots along the side.
I have also had an occasional jamb, but that is only when I am mixing paper sizes and some are real small. The small receipt type pieces of paper scan best alone.
I have also inserted over 50 pages with no problem, but I do try to stick to their recommended 50 page limit.
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:
It recommends a minimum of a Pentium 4 with 1.8 GHz, 512MB of memory and 1400 MB of memory. Also, it comes on a CD so you need a CD reader and it works best with USB 2.0, although I have 1.0 and do not notice any loss in scanning speed.
I am running it under Windows XP. It says it will work with Vista, but I can not confirm if that really does work.
LIFE SPAN:
It comes with a one year warranty, but the pads are rated for 50,000 sheets and the roller is rated for 100,000 sheets. That is a lot of scans!
