Fujitsu Scansnap S510 - PC Quarterly Review

Now that I’m back from my world tour and am beginning to settle down to address the piles of snail mail, email, junk mail and phone messages that are scattered throughout the office, I’ve decided to make some major improvements in my organizational life.

Have you ever found yourself lost in a clutter of paperwork that seems to be insurmountable? When you try to find a document that you thought was right in front of you, do you start to pull out your hair? Well then this article is for you.

Wouldn’t it be nice to take the majority of paperwork on your desk and archive it for permanent reference on your computer? Fujitsu’s Scansnap S510 home office/ small business scanner allows users to easily protect, preserve and share their printed documents. With a 50 sheet document feeder and a color scanning speed of up to 18 pages per minute it can scan both sides of a document simultaneously.

Hang on, that’s only the beginning. With the push of a single button this well designed scanner can save your documents to searchable pdf files or import them directly into Microsoft Word and allow you to edit them even though you only scanned a printed document. The package includes a copy of Adobe Acrobat 8.0 standard (a $299.00 value). In addition, the included ABBYY FineReader® optical recognition software (OCR) makes simple work of converting text from scanned images into editable documents as well as Microsoft Excel and Powerpoint files. It even has an option to recognize and automatically delete blank pages.

Although this unit is not designed for reproducing high quality photos, it is unbeatable for scanning business documents. Once you complete the scanning process the OCR process can be completed at any time, even when you’re not at the computer. The beauty of this is that once the process is complete you can search for any scanned document based on words found within the document’s content. While you’re at it, consider scanning your important personal documents and storing a copy on a USB drive. Make sure to keep your documents in a safe place such as your safe deposit box, so that they are available for emergency access.

I frequently use the unit to scan paper documents and email them to colleagues and clients. You can even protect your scanned email attachments with a password.

In addition, another great feature allows users to organize their business cards by scanning them directly into the included CardMinder™ database application. CardMinder captures information written in 8 languages from scanned business card images and stores this information in an easily accessible format.

Setup is a snap (no pun intended). Install the software, plug in the USB connector and power supply and off you go. It won’t automatically clean your desk but it’s the next best thing.

Scanner Type ADF (Automatic Document Feeder), Duplex color scanning
Output Color/B&W/Automatic color and Bi-tonal detection
Image Sensor Color CCD (charged coupled device) x 2
Optical Resolution 600 dpi
Scanning Speed (A4)(1) Normal mode Color 150dpi, B&W 300dpi :
Duplex 18 pages per minute / 36 images per minute
Better mode Color 200dpi, B&W 400dpi :
Duplex 12 pages per minute / 24 images per minute
Best mode Color 300dpi, B&W 600dpi :
Duplex 6 pages per minute / 12 images per minute
Excellent mode Color 600dpi, B&W 1,200dpi :
Duplex 0.6 pages per minute / 1.2 images per minute
Scanning Range A4, A5, A6, B5, B6, Business card, Letter, Legal and Custom sizes (can be set for up to 5 different paper types) / Automatically recognizes paper type by paper length.
Use of Carrier sheet permits the scanning of A3, B4, double letter and photographs as well as those listed above.
Paper Weight (Thickness) 14 to 34 lbs (52 to 127g/m²)
Hopper Capacity 50 Sheets (20lb)
Interface USB 2.0 (USB 1.1 Compatible)
Driver(2) ScanSnap Manager
(TWAIN/ISIS® not supported)(2)
Software Applications(5) Adobe® Acrobat® 8.0 Standard, ScanSnap Manager v4.1, ABBYY FineReader® for ScanSnap 3.0, CardMinder v3.1, ScanSnap Organizer v3.1 and Rack2-Filer (Trial version).
Dimensions (W x D x H) 11.2 x 6.2 x 6.2 in (284 x 157 x 158 mm)
Device Weight 5.9 lbs. or less, without power adapter

1 Scanning speeds will drop if recommended CPU, memory capacity, and USB 2.0 requirements are not met
2 TWAIN or ISIS applications cannot be used directly.
3 Stacker attachments excluded.
4 Adobe Acrobat 8.0 Standard is not fully supported by Windows® Microsoft Vista™ at the time of this printing. Please see Adobe website at www.adobe.com for details related to current Vista support.
5 Installing Adobe® Acrobat® 8.0 Standard in addition to the other software included with this scanner will require additional 300MB of File Cache memory and Internet Explorer® 6 or higher.

Street price – under $400. after $50. rebate – well worth it.

Manufacturer: Fujitsu

www.fujitsu.com