A few years ago we interviewed Fujitsu about their ScanSnap automatic document feed scanner. At that time we said it was one of those rare devices that worked exactly as it should, right out of the box. We loaded the software, plugged in the scanner, and without even a look at the manual, we were off and running, making scans quickly with incredibly high quality.
They have updated the scanner since then, and the Fujitsu ScanSnap S510M has improvements in speed, quality, and expanded feature set for the software. The good news is that the improvements haven’t compromised any of the things we loved about the scanner in the past. It can now scan as many as 18 pages per minute in color duplex mode. And you can still scan with one touch of a button.
On the story we posted about the reunion of the Bob Mathias Sierra Boys and Girls Camp, I neglected to mention during the interview that I brought the ScanSnap with me to the reunion, set up a small scanning station, and we used it to scan hundreds of photographs during the weekend. We asked folks to bring their snapshots, and the ScanSnap made high quality JPEG scans of the images. We later took them into Photoshop and cropped and cleaned them, but in terms of capturing a lot of images quickly and painlessly, there is no way we could have done that quantity of images that quickly with so little effort. So, the next time you plan a family reunion, think about packing a ScanSnap. It won’t replace a flatbed scanner for high-quality completely controllable scans, but the image scans are very good, and it’s a scrapbooker's dream, a market that I’m pretty sure the unit was never designed for.
It comes with everything you need, down to a USB cable, and a full version of Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional, and ABBY FineReader OCR software.
Not only can you do automated double-sided scanning, you can also create PDFs, and do optical character recognition to convert printed objects to scans and editable text documents. When we first reviewed the ScanSnap we did so under the aegis of small business products, but since then we have found it to be an incredibly versatile solution for a wide-variety of scanning needs, from images to documents, and even business cards. The Fujitsu ScanSnap S510M is a great product that does exactly what it promises to do, and does so without even a hiccup or problem. Highly recommended.
Harris Fogel, Posted 12/20/2007
For more information on the Fujitsu ScanSnap S510M scanner visit: www.fujitsu.com
