Fujitsu 50 Color & Monochrome Scanner w/Automatic Document Feeder

Rating:
Summary: Pixellation Problems-Probably Proprietary
Review: Although this scanner works well in b/w with text documents and in color with all documents, it has a problem which has been not experienced or has been unnoticed by previous reviewers. When scanning images in b/w mode and for .pdf, whether at 150, 300, 600, or 1200 dpi, and no matter what the brightness level, scans of images will sometimes have added blocks of pixellated material that is entirely absent from the original image. While from a practical point of view this degradation is clear and demarcated and appears to only occurs in white or light areas, and thus can be accounted for without virtually any loss of knowledge as to what the image looks like-since one knows where all the blocks are and can simply abstract them-from an aesthetic point of view this is a problem when it occurs. It was found on two computers, one an Athlon XP 3200 running Windows 98SE and and one a Pentium III 400 running Windows XP, and thus it likely not related to specific hardware or software incompatibilities, nor to a defect specific to this scanner since JPEG and color PDF mode worked fine. These pixellations are likely artifacts of the compression algorithms the FI-5110EOX uses when processing raw image data in b/w mode.

[...]

A subsequent experiment using an old Umax 1200S scanner with Adobe 6 Standard showed absolutely no pixellation problems on one of the exact same images that the ScanSnap handled so poorly by itself (in adding pixellation). (I know that the Adobe engineers will be relieved...Even if Acrobat were the problem, one would still wonder why Fujitsu used their technology to start with. But, given that color PDF works fine, and given that Acrobat 6 on its own has no problem with b/w mode, the problem is not Adobe's.)


Rating:
Summary: Nothing else like it!
Review: Have had it for around 18 months now (the previous model of Scansnap). Sure it has some quirks (scan quality is not like a flatbed, sometimes doc feeder misbehaves)...but still giving it 5 stars.

This thing is *fast* - joy to watch it work.

Its one of those products that re-defines a category like iPod or Tivo, once you have it, you cannot be without it.

Has had a measurable impact on me over the last year - my college notes, over 10 years old, from the garage are slowly all scanned in, so are half my product manuals and bits of random paper. Its so much easier to search for something sitting comfortably in a chair on your computer looking at PDFs than sifting through dusty papers. I can instantly pull out any bill going back last few years.

Before I bought this I tried a flatbed with an ADF attachment, which was a big waste of time (I think Microtek's). I still use a flatbed for nice color/photograph scans.

Overall, I thought I would use the OCR more than I do - its not worth the extra effort (I even bought Omnipage for this). Acrobat writer that comes bundled is very useful however, more than I would have guessed.

Other minor issues: 1. I ended up replacing the pad assembly at 8k sheets (10k recommended), documents were not getting fed correctly. 2. Sometimes the image is too light, even at the darkest scan setting.

Footprint is good and compact, saves desk space.

Rating:
Summary: best thing out there
Review: I have been tasked with evaluating scanners for our office so we picked out 3 of them including the ScanSnap. This thing wins hands down as the perfect machine when you want to scan to PDF. You put the documents in the feeder and you press the scan button. A few seconds later it has named the file and inserted it in the directory of your choosing. Done.

It scans color as quickly as Black and white documents. There are no questions to be answered about dpi, greyscale, color, ocr, nothing. It just does it. The scans were oriented correctly as well. The scans from the other machines were sometimes crooked.

On top of that, it comes with a copy of Adobe Standard not Adobe Reader, so once you get that PDF you can actually do something with it besides look at it.

While not listed as a portable machine, it comes in a box the size of a small toaster oven that even has a handle on it. The machine itself is the size of a toaster. The HP machine I have is about 3 times it's size.

The software is simple to use and easy to reconfigure. HP's software was combersome and confusing. HP machines might work in the home environment, but this ones shines at the office. I wouldn't get this to scan pictures, tho I am sure you could make it work for that as well.

Buy this if you need to scan pdf's quickly and easily.



Rating:
Summary: Tough Little Workhorse
Review: I must admit I have been pleasantly surprised by this little guy. I was looking for a sheetfed scanner to archive about 30 bankers' boxes of files for my law office. The ridiculously low price of this machine finally made me decide to try it. I have been extremely happy with it.

So far we have scanned a little over 46,000 sheets. Yes, you read that right. This was done in less than 3 weeks. I found that a competent operator could get this baby to churn through 2 full boxes per eight hour work day. I was concerned about the speed of scanning, as I was only using a 700MHz P3 laptop. I would estimate the speed with this setup as 30 pages per minute. With it's tiny footprint and diminutive size I must admit I thought this may be more of a toy than a useful piece of office equipment. I stand corrected. The one-button operation and the included software which creates consecutively numbered .pdf files with any name you wish is astounding.

It does suffer from paper jams, although bear in mind I was scanning documents up to four years old which had been stapled together and stuffed in a box for that time. My operator developed a fairly intricate process of removing staples, bending the corners against their crease and then flipping the pages to separate them. One of the many excellent features of the included software is that it shows you an image of the last page scanned before a paper jam. That allowed finding the correct next page and restarting with just a mouse click. Clearing the jams is simple as well -- there's one button that holds the feeding mechanism closed.

The scanner also creates color images so the photographs in my files are stored as well. I have already had two occasions to use the archived material and it was easy to find and print the needed images with the included Adobe Acrobat standard (v.6).

I am really impressed with the amount of paper this little guy has moved. The software is intuitive, the hardware is simple. I cannot recommend this enough for a medium-sized office. I look forward to using this scanner for years. It does require replacement of the sheetfeed roller (they cost about $10.00) every 50,000 images, and some other roller each 100,000 images (the other consumable is about $20.00).

The only down side appears to be that people don't seriously believe this little piece of hardware can do as much work as it can crank through. Color me impressed.


Rating:
Summary: I returned becuase
Review: ScanSnap fi-5110EOX does not support TWAIN and ISIS standards.

Other features are fine.

Rating:
Summary: don't buy it
Review: This is an inexpensive version of their better models. It doesn't feed well. I am pretty creative with machines but I could not get it to work. It may have caused a major conflict with Windows XP, because my DVD burner would not work. Even the internal CD burner would not not write acurately. (Although I am not a Windows expert - so I not sure if Snapscan was the cause). I could not get the $100.00 rebate (I didn't save the box.) I put it on a shelve and I probably will never use it.

Rating:
Summary: The Best Tech Device I've Ever Owned
Review: This is my fourth scanner. Each time I got one, I had a dream that I would use it a lot, and just throw away documents that I've scanned. With this, you can actually do that.

This is one of the few computer gadgets I've ever owned that does exactly what it is supposed to do, does it exceedingly well, does it fast, and does it without a lot of hassle or problems. I've never had any kind of problem in the 5 or so months I've been using it, and I've now scanned 2,841 pages (the software has an automatic page counter). The quality is outstanding. The Acrobat software, alone, costs about as much as the scanner, which comes with the full version.

I don't usually write reviews, but this product is so good, I couldn't resist. BUY IT!

Rating:
Summary: Wow!
Review: This is only the second time I have ever rated an item on Amazon (I started buying here when the company first came on line) - the last time being because the item was so unfailingly bad I thought I owed it to others. This case is just the opposite.

I was looking for a FAST and SIMPLE means of dealing with the need to archive and share paper stuff - both for business and personally. To me, the ideal product would do only that (I already have a multi-function machine, the first product I reviewed on Amazon, and a flat bed scanner) and do it well. I did a little research and decided to test drive the fi-5110E0X.

It took a few minutes to install the software and Acrobat 6.0 standard (provided) on to the server I have at home (1.8G Pentium, 512K memory, Windows 2000 Server). I checked the settings, set the default directory and chose the lowest resolution, duplex scan, auto detect color and auto rotate options, dropped in a sheet of paper and literally in seconds was looking at the PDF.

I was so tickled I ran a few pages through upside down and even cut several pages from a Herrington catalog to test the color and duplex features. Again they were processed flawlessly and in seconds Acrobat had opened and there they were!

My experience on machines like this is that the success or failure ultimately depends on whether the manufacturer gets the software right. When the software works well I actually USE the product as intended (HP can't seem to get the software right to save their lives). In this case Fujitsu really got it right and it seems that Adobe Acrobat has been improved to work seamlessly with a machine like this. On top of it all the machine has a small footprint and simple controls.

Try it - I think you will be pleased.


Rating:
Summary: Excellent product for business
Review: This scanner does exactly what it says, scans documents to PDF. It comes with Adobe Acrobat Standard 6 - full version from what I can tell. We use it in an accounting office to scan for our paperless document storage, and it does an excellent job. It has everything we need, scan to PDF, USB2 (no cards to install), and Acrobat STD for document management, and a good price.

Also, it is a duplex scanner - both sides at one pass. The scanner interface software (proprietary, not TWAIN) has automatic blank page detection, so we just leave the duplex option on all the time.

Rollers and pickups are replaceable, manual says after 1 year or 100,000 pages. Haven't had it that long, but it hasn't misfed anything yet.

It has a small footprint, so it fits easilly on a desk without taking lots of room

Don't expect this scanner to do everything for everyone. It has scan settings for black&white and full color scan, and only couple of resolution options (their terms fastest, better, best). So if you want to scan in 8 bit gray scale at some strange resolution, and scan to something other than JPG or PDF, this isn't for you.

Read the manual online, and make sure it does what you want. If you're a business who wants to scan documents to PDF, want a fast and inexpensive duplex scanner, this is the one.