The perfect scanner - more thoughts

At LegalTech there was a lot of information about great scanners.  One scanner that I was excited about was the Fujitsu ScanSnap, which is supposed to go for about $500 bundled with Acrobat Standard 7.0.  It's got a small footprint and supposedly scans at about 15 pages per minute.  I heard that there getting drivers for the Mac is dicey, but the Fujitsu rep told me they would be out by September or so. 

I was thinking the Fujitsu would be a good scanner to recommend (and it may well be) but then a knowledgeable tech consultant told me about The Xerox Documate 252.  Actually, he raved about it.  The Xerox 252 is a TWAIN-compliant sheet fed scanner with a USB 2.0 connection.  It can handle 25 pages per minute, or 50 in duplex mode (i.e. scanning both sides of a double-sided document).  It's going for about $850 at Amazon.com right now, and there is a great review on the product page from someone who raves that this scanner "changed his life."  According to the reviewer the scanner works well with both Macs and PCs.

Comments

[garrett]

I don't think the xerox works on a mac. The fujitsu works well on a mac if you download the japanese mac software. There is a hack floating around out there that changes the japanese menus to english -- so works very well on a mac.

Hope this helps.... would love it if the xerox would run on a mac....but that is the main reason I went for the fujitsu.

[Marie]

I mention this only because you mentioned a Xerox product. A couple months ago I got the Xerox DocuMate 510 for my office (not a law office). It is more for the budget minded in the $300 plus range and does not do two-sided scanning.

It's been years - maybe decades - since I bought or used anything by Xerox. But, after months of doing price and feature comparisons, I took the plunge.

Having not bought a scanner since 1998, I didn't really know what to expect. I was pleasantly surprised by the ease of use and features.

Unfortunately, it also does not have Mac support.

[Marie]

Oops! I meant to add, even though I don't work in a law office any more (after almost 30 years), I would recommend this scanner for any small law office or solo practitioner.

[L. Rickenbach]

.::::: Scansnap Owner and Attorney :::::.

I am fortunate enough to have done some good research and made the decision to get the Fujitsu ScanSnap. I had purchased several automatic document feed (ADF) scanners for the small firm I work for and none of them did a great job, especially when it came to scanning to PDF format. The fujitsu, on the other hand is unbelievably good on scanning.

An Example.
We are scanning some of our library to pdf format for better searchability and to clear out some space in our office. The little scansnap will do an entire treatise in a relatively short time as it scans both sides on a single and rapid pass. I have personally scanned over 10,000 pages into my little Fujitsu and it works like new. The PDFs are solid and compact and of great quality.

I can't personally compare it to the Xerox, but having read other reports on the xerox, I'd go with the Fujitsu. Take that for what it is worth. On the other hand, I can compare it HP low end ADF scanners. Compare is, however, the wrong word because there is no real comparison. The scansnap beats the HPs in EVERY aspect. It not only beats it, it obliterates it. You think that I speak in hyperbole on this? I assure you that I am not.

Lastly -- I can't provide you with any substantive information on compatibility with Mac. We run PCs with Windows.

Thank you.

[B. Sharpe]

The Canon DR-2080C is also a great scanner for these types of applications.

[Denning Crowe]

I have the Xerox 252 (actually made and marked by Visioneer) and am quite pleased with it. However, the Fujitsu is a fine machine. Newegg has it for $380 (plus a $50 rebate). Since Adobe Acrobat Writer 7 (standard) is bundled with it, it substantially lowers the price of the scanner. I would not, at this price, hesitate to get the ScanSnap fi5110eOx2.

http://tinyurl.com/cyvnf

[dd]

Go with ScanSnap. Fujitsu apparently just announced a boundle with Mac OS X. I've been using their scanner with Windblows and Mac OS X. Works really well even on OS X with that bastardized Japanese beta driver and English menus. It's missing a couple of features that Windows version has but I would expect that the production software is fully functional.
I've scanned 3000+ pages in 3 months and had no problems.

[Gail Young]

Our one-lawyer office bought an HP Scanjet 8250. It's fast, with a commercial driver; it does two-sided scans; it even has a slide adapter. A three-year next-day replacement warranty is available. We are moving all our files to CD and a backup drive, and the HP does an awesome job. It's less than $1,000.00. It comes with PaperPort (adequate) and ReadIris OCR (excellent). We couldn't be happier.

[david webster]

Thanks for the great site and useful discussion. It's very helpful to read reviews by people who actually use products in real world environments.

At any rate, am considering the ScanSnap and I see on the vendor web page for the product (http://scansnap.fujitsu.com/spec.html) under the system requirements section, "Windows® XP
(Less than SP1)".

In 2006, who is still running an unpatched copy of XP? No one, I hope.

Can anyone comment on using this scanner on a PC running XP SP2?

I assume that it works, but some testimony one way or the other would be helpful.

Thanks!

David