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Fujitsu ScanSnap s1300 Reviewed

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I’m trying to go completely paperless this year, but don’t quite have all the necessary tools. My current HP Photosmart all-in-one can only scan a single page at a time, making it pretty labor-intensive to get a week’s worth of mail scanned and uploaded.

After reading Dan Cohen’s review of the Fujitsu ScanSnap s1300 over at GearDiary and seeing one at the Evernote office (InkShow coming soon), I’m thinking about picking one up. There are a few ScanSnap, but the s1300 is portable and can run off of PC’s USB port. The S1300 is a duplex scanner, which means it can scan both sides of a sheet of paper in a single pass. This is a huge advantage compared to my current flatbed scanner, which doesn’t even have an automatic document feeder.

Dan already has a good document scanner at home and says there’s nothing he’d change about the S1300. Since I don’t, have a good scanner yet, I’m torn between getting something that’s mobile vs. getting something that’s more robust, but will have to live on my desk.

I still have a lot of documents and mail that I don’t want to keep around, but need to for tax purposes or ‘just in case.’ This is what I hope to do with it from now on before sending it to the shredder.

Are you completely paperless? If so, what tools do you recommend using?

11 Comments

11 Comments

  1. Raphael Malikian

    03/22/2010 at 10:34 am

    I would love one of these but I am surprised at how slow it scans. I currently use an Opticbook 3600 which scans loose and bound documents very quickly – approx 6 seconds for a 300 dpi color scan, but only some single sided scans and hasn’t got an ADF. I guess with the ScanSnap some time can be saved by loading 10 pages and going off for a coffee instead of sitting fixed by the scanner!

    • Xavier Lanier

      03/22/2010 at 10:48 am

      Good point on speed. Waiting for scans can be frustrating, especially for big projects- like taxes. The logical part of me says I need to get a big scanner or AIO. The mobile geek in me wants the S1300.

  2. Joe

    03/22/2010 at 11:08 am

    Looks pretty cool, but not $265 worth of cool to me.

    • Xavier Lanier

      03/22/2010 at 11:36 am

      Yes, definitely a tradeoff for mobility. I could get a nice AIO scanner/printer for that price. As soon as I say I want something, the GBM community talks me out of it :-)

  3. Mike aka C-141xlr

    03/22/2010 at 2:01 pm

    I have ScanSnap S510 and it is the greatest office tool for going paperless – next to my TPC of course. Depending on the weight of the paper, it can take 25 to 30 pages in duplex and OCR them at the same time. There are a lot of settings for quality and thus speed. I have my OCR done by Acrobat, so I save time on the scans. I scan whole text books in and it does a great job. The only issue with mine and possibly the the S1300 is a lack of twain drivers. So I can’t setup Acrobat to get a document from the scanner, but I can setup the software with the ScanSnap to us Acrobat, or whatever program you want.

  4. tabletenvy

    03/22/2010 at 2:24 pm

    Another vote for the Fujitsu ScanSnap S510. I use it in my medical office to scan dozens of reports into my EMR every day. It’s an absolute workhorse. Fast, quiet, and a very small footprint on the desk.

    Not sure if there’s a durability trade off for the smaller, mobile S1300?

  5. DP

    03/22/2010 at 3:58 pm

    Yet another vote for the Fujitsu ScanSnap. I have the S1500 — the big brother of the one you’re considering — and it is, without a doubt, the single best technology purchase I’ve ever made. No flatbed scanner can compare to a good sheet-fed model for scanning scads of paper, and in my experience, no other sheet-fed scanner available for under $500 can touch the ScanSnap family. I honestly can’t think of another digital tool that has consistently saved me more time than this little guy.

  6. Rob

    03/22/2010 at 7:39 pm

    Good post. I bought a Neat Mobile Scanner early last year for about $80 and have used it ever since. I like the simplicity and the programs is pretty user-friendly. I am fortunate to not have a lot of paperwork to scan and I always look to get receipts emailed to me whenever possible. I like the HP’s dual scanning; both sides is a pretty nice feature.

  7. Jonathan Cohen

    03/22/2010 at 8:01 pm

    Has anyone taken a look at the Hovercam? It’s a camera on a stand that works as a scanner. It snaps a pic instantly so there’s no waiting to scan:

    https://www.thehovercam.com/html/index.html

    I have no connection with the company; I’m simply interested in the product and can’t find any good reviews…

  8. RandySpangler

    03/23/2010 at 6:59 am

    I have had a SnapScan S1500 for about a year. I also have a S300 portable scanner that I won in a drawing (can you believe that?) The S1500 is the best scanner I have ever used and I have been looking for a good scanner for over 25 years. It is less than $500 and is worth every penny. The S300 is similar to the S1300 and is slow compared to the S1500, but is still a great portable scanner. Both use Adobe Acrobat to create searchable PDFs. The S1500 scans both sides automatically in B/W and/or color at about 23 ppm or 46 ipm. Fantastic.

    My secret sauce, though, is Dropbox. I have four PCs that I use throughout the day. Two different desks at my home, my office PC and my HP tablet. I have Dropbox installed on all four. Dropbox, for those who don’t know, synchronizes a folder (and its subfolders) on your pc with Dropbox servers in the cloud and then immediately with other PCs that have Dropbox loaded.

    I have my SnapScan folder set to be within the main Dropbox folder structure, so all of my scans immediately get replicated. I have also installed the Acrobat ifilter so that Windows Search will index with searchable PDFs. I also have installed the SnapScan software on a PC at home and my office PC, so that I can scan at both locations and the results are immediately available ANYWHERE! Document Nirvana.

    So, my corporate Exchange server is being read by Outlook and cached on all computers, plus all of my scans in Dropbox, PLUS every other file that I need in Dropbox = ubiquity. I no longer lose email or files and if I lose any spoke on the wheel or the hub of the wheel itself, I still have my data.

    (Dropbox gives you 2GB storage for free. Enough to get a really good test. I am on the $9.95/mo 50Gb plan and I am not even at 20% yet.)

    This combo work well for me. Give it a shot and GET THE SNAPSCAN!

  9. Glenn

    03/23/2010 at 9:55 am

    Xavier, I think that Jonathan Cohen is on to something with the Hovercam. It is new and I can’t find a lot of mainstream reviews, but the optional functionality seem to make it worth the price. Thanks Johnathan.

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