Fujitsu ScanSnap S510 Sheet-fed Scanner

my legal department loves it
When I heard about the concept of a sheet-fed scanner, I started looking for one. Our legal group was laboriously scanning contracts a page at a time via a flat bed scanner. We found this nifty little device, read the reviews, decided to give it a shot, and the legal group is now much happier.Pros:* Fast. Even with the quality turned up, this scans an entire contract in the time the our Canon flatbed takes to warm up.* Easy. Once you get the software installed and tweak any settings you feel like tweaking, scanning involves hitting a green button on the face of the scanner and clicking a single button on the screen. The provided software gives you a thumbnail of each document, lets you easily rename the documents, lets you double-click to view in Adobe or a program of your choice, lets you drag-and-drop documents to the desktop, etc.* Cute. Okay, ‘cute’ is probably not a selling point for most IT departments, but it really is! It has a very small footprint and a clean design in black and silver. The blue power LED lights up in welcome when you open the document feed cover.* Paper jams are easy to clear. There’s a single silver button that gives easy access to the paper path.* No Engrish. The manual and software is refreshingly free of mutilated Japanese to “Engrish” translations. I only noticed one or two minor translation glitches.* Good OCR software. I experimented with searchable PDFs, and the software does a good job of text recognition.* Good software. I’ll be honest, one reason I chose the Fujitsu over a similar Canon product is because I have never liked the look, feel, or usage of Canon’s software. I don’t know what the Canon would have been like, but I like the Fujitsu software. The out-of-the-box defaults work well, the settings are easy to tweak if you need to, and the ScanSnap Manager is intuitive and easy. There are many, many software options that I haven’t tried and probably will never try, but it’s nice to have them there just in case I ever need them.* Can scan receipts. It comes with a plastic sleeve that you can put clippings or smaller pieces of paper inside of for scanning.Cons:* Minorly annoying software installation. There are three different disks to install from — four if you count a disk full of trial software. Some of the installation processes have been tweaked since the manual was originally printed, so there are extra paper inserts to describe the new steps. If you get confused, look through all the manuals and inserts until you find screenshots that match what is happening on the screen.* Doesn’t have a TWAIN driver, as has been stated before, but who cares? It works seamlessly and quickly with the provided software, so this is only a theoretically downside for me.* Not flat bed quality. If you want exact duplicates of documents without noise or artifacts, get a flat bed. If you want fast and easy scans and are okay with slightly lower quality, go for it.* Can jam on faster feed modes. The first document I tried was a 4-page contract that had been stapled in one corner. Turning down the speed, AKA turning up the scan quality, and changing the feed direction solved the problem.* Can jam on curled papers. A packet that has been rolled will not feed well until you flatten the papers a bit.I’d change my review to 4 stars if I could, but I’m still quite happy.

Speedy Scans
I really like this small machine. I’ve had it about a month and have so far scanned thousands of old work invoices and statements for storage as well as family photos and patient medical records. Does them all. Very easy set-up, and relatively easy to figure out with-out getting deep into the included written documentation. I scan all kinds of stuff, this scanner zips through them with virtually no problems. I agree with other reviewers-“Blazingly Fast”. My only very small complaint is it does occasionally jam but it is incredibly easy to unjam in seconds. It isn’t a “twain” compliant scanner, so if that is important to you definitely be aware of that limitation. In my applications this is not a huge problem but has surfaced as a “hmmm… wish it did this” type of situation. This is why I gave it four stars-it isn’t absolutely perfect but close. Another nice feature is it picks up the job where it left off, if something does get jammed or you are manually feeding in different sizes of documents.The device has a relatively straight through pass for the documents or photos which makes it great at scanning old photos-so the photos don’t get all bent up. The ability to duplex scan (both sides at once) is a real time saver.It comes bundled with all the software a person could want or need so it is ready to go right out of the box! I like it so much I’m considering buying another one for work. For the price this nifty little scanner can make short work of most of your scanning needs.