The Fujitsu fi-4860C2 production color scanner doesn"t force you to choose between color, quality and performance. With hardware-assisted VRS your overall scanning productivity is greatly enhanced by reducing the amount of effort needed in the document preparation process.
After being quite content with my now-outdated Microtek E3 SCSI scanner, I decided to go Microtek again with the new slimscan USB. Although I would say that scans are slower than the older SCSI model, the overall quality is much better, and the interface is improved. As mentioned in other reviews, the OCR provided with the package is somewhat weak, but functional. I would recommend purchasing OmniPage Pro by Caere for higher-quality OCR recognition, although this may run you around a hundred dollars, last time I checked. The model is quite thin, although I too have had troubles making the button in the front, which is supposed to launch applications in Windows, functional. All in all a solid purchase at a solid value.
-Pete
Setting up the actual scanner was remarkably easy; figuring out how to use all the included software was a bit more difficult. The Microtek SlimScan C6 comes with a handy quick-start guide, but detailed documentation is only available in electronic form.
The Microtek SlimScan C6 comes with a great software installer that lets you load all the different software packages one after another. Once we had installed the software, photo scanning was simple--we pushed the single button on the scanner, and our computer automatically launched the scan program. Scanning and recognizing text was also easy; the optical character recognition (OCR) software was completely accurate for most documents we tried.
The Microtek SlimScan C6 also comes with a variety of image-editing and document-management software. Microtek's ScanWizard was particularly useful, since it let us enhance and edit images before we scanned them. It also has a great descreening feature that makes it possible to scan previously printed material without distorted Moire dot patterns.
In addition to performing well as a simple scanner--giving us relatively good picture quality and medium-to-high resolution (600 x 1200 dpi)--the Microtek SlimScan C6 also functions as a fax machine and can convert a color printer into a color copier. Its incredibly thin form makes it a good choice for those with limited desk space, although at 7.7 pounds it's still not quite a portable scanner.
Pros:
Cons:
I just wanted to report that contrary to what others are saying, this scanner works fine for me in XP SP2. It took me all of three minutes to get it working.
I downloaded the latest driver (an ancient one dated 7-30-03) and the driver said it couldn't connect to the scanner. Then I went to the Device Manager (it was listed as a non-working scanner under "Other devices") and said "reinstall driver" and it now works perfectly.
I doubt there is a problem with the driver itself, only with the driver being properly installed under SP2. If you install the driver normally then reinstall it under device manager, it works fine.
There's really nothing wrong with the scanner.
I have many photos and would like to scan them, but do not want to do one at a time on a flatbed scanner. So a while ago, I learned about (and purchased) the HP 5500c Scanjet Scanner. HP's product was junk, the "auto crop" feature was more like auto slop. The resulting image that HP produced included an area around the photo including a bunch of the scanner's mechanisms visible along with the desired image. totally useless. Reading the amazon customre reviews for the HP 5500c Scanjet Scanner product, I learned that others found the Epson product to be the real deal. I found a seller, purchased the item and it arrived this week. I tried it out and had no trouble. Thank you Epson. Shame on you, HP, for aparently not even trying to get your product right before you push it out the door -- and for not doing anything once the problem was reported again and again by your customers. The epson product is the right choice.
Note - scanning does take some time, maybe 30-45 seconds per photo. So no matter what you do, if you've got 1000's of photos to scan, it is going to require some effort. Once I start on my collection, I will most likely hit the project 24 photos at a time, as time allows, rather than try to bang out hundreds at a time.
Epson, you rock.
Overall, the scanner works exactly as documented and is a good value. I've identified only a few problems so far, and one is mostly a minor issue of needing to do a little extra work. I bought it to convert my mother in laws enormous (70K+) slide collection to digital form before the media failed completely.
On the positive side, there's not a lot that can go wrong with this device. It's a straightforward digital camera/projector device, and most modern operating systems recognize it immediately as a digital camera and let you use it with zero software installation. I plugged it into my Macbook and it immediately "just worked". Images are reasonably sized and quite sharp (assuming the original slide is in moderately good shape). The ability to put an SD card in and just scan until it's full is very nice (although supporting a SD card larger than 2G would be nice -- the 2G ones are getting hard to find). If you're doing a lot of slides, I'd suggest having a friend help -- with two people (one loading the trays and one scanning), you can do about 2 slides per minute.
The problems I mentioned above are: 1) if you have the older thicker plastic slide carriers (a hard plastic frame around the slide film), it's difficult to fit them into the trays, and then to push the trays through the scanner. The cardboard slide carriers work fine. Second, 2) the slide tray design forces the slides to be inserted with the long axis of the slide going from left to right. This means that if you have a lot of images that are taller (vertically oriented), you'll have to do a fair amount of rotating images in iPhoto or similar programs to get everything right side up. 3) it's hard to get the slides positioned correctly so that the top or bottom of the image isn't cut off. There are registration notches on the slide trays, but they don't seem to be really calibrated to the position of the lens. You eventually get the hang of it as you work with it, but it would be really nice if the notches matched the image field correctly.
I'm about 35K slides into the project, and so far it's held up pretty well. I'd say it's a keeper.
I do not really understand the missing or scarcely obtainable driver for XP matter. I have just bought an old instance of this scanner, and XP supports it natively, there is no need the UMAX driver at all. I checked the properties of the native driver, it belongs to Microsoft and its creation date is on 2001. There is (Sane) support in Linux too. So far I'm content with the device, at least it was worth of buying for .
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 Scan your documents to create a digital archive that is searchable. View larger. |
Easy-to-Use Software
BulletScan Manager Software makes it easy for you to control your scanning processes, file formats, and scan-to destinations. The BulletScan S400 includes nine scan-to destinations with one-click configuration for scan-to-email, scan-to-print, scan-to-PDF, searchable PDF, and others.
Additionally, BulletScan Manager offers both easy and advanced scan mode settings. In easy mode, default features include auto straighten, auto crop, auto rotate, and edge cleanup. Advanced mode allows for fine tuning of all settings.
Optimum Accuracy with Auto-Language Detection
The BulletScan S400 is powered by ABBYY FineReader Technology, the same technology used for ABBYY FineReader Desktop OCR, a PC Magazine four-star product. With high optical character recognition accuracy, the BulletScan is able to reduce the size of PDF files without any loss of visual quality. Additionally, the smart software retains text-under-image, text-over-image, text-and-picture, or image-only PDFs.
The FineReader technology has automatic language detection, so you get no-hassle scanning, OCR, and conversion. It automatically detects documents in English, French, Italian, German, and Spanish.
System Requirements
The BulletScan S400 requires a computer with a Pentium 4 or equivalent processor, Windows 7/XP (SP 2)/Vista operating system, 512 MB of RAM (1 GB for Vista), 350 MB of available hard drive space, a CD/DVD-ROM drive, and a USB port.
The BulletScan S400 is rated for a daily duty cycle of 3,000 pages and is backed by a two-year warranty.
What's in the Box
Scanner, USB cable, power supply, quick-install guide, and installation CD.
I read the very positive review of this gadget in one of David Pogue's recent NYT Friday articles. He's such a switched on guy and thus I ordered one straight away. I travel to interstate jobs and I get reimbursed for cab fares from and to the airport etc. This scanner reads the receipts, I can input the category of the expense, the vendor etc etc. I can specify whether it is an account, a receipt or just a document being scanned. I can specify if it was a personal or reimbursable expense. It can be converted directly into a pdf file. I bought a new piece of equipment for my home theatre this week and I have copied the receipt and printed it out onto a full sheet of paper for warranty purposes. (Ever had a warranty issue and can't find that tiny proof-of-purchase receipt a year or two down the track?) I'm also using the scanner to copy all my petty cash receipts for the month. The software then enables me to print out a list of that month's expenses and it adds 'em up and totals them too. It will scan documents from the size of a small receipt up to a sheet of letter stationery. BTW you can scan in business cards and the scanner will tabulate the addresses, phone Nº's etc.
Sure I can use my big desktop scanner, but it's a hassle to set up and warm up etc. This small USB-driven scanner is portable and instantly usable.
NeatReceipts Version 2.5 Professional is the easiest way for individuals and small businesses to manage expenses, prepare for taxes, create expense reports, and scan business cards. But it not all just for business--you can also use Neat Receipts for scrapbooking, archiving family recipes, and other family activities. NeatReceipts Version 2.5 Professional edition also includes a new Document Organizer feature in addition to Receipts, Business Card, and Tax Organizers features.
 Use NeatReceipts 2.5 to manage expenses, prepare for taxes, create expense reports, and scan business cards. View example. |
 Organize expenses by IRS form and category. View example. |
 Sync contact information into Outlook, Plaxo or vCard. View example. |
 Scan receipts and save in digital spreadsheet format. View example. |
 Scan documents, recipes, and more and then convert them to PDF. View example. |
Make permanent digital copies of all your financial papers
NeatReceipts 2.5 comes with a high resolution portable scanner. All you have to do is scan your receipts, invoices, and other financial documents through this scanner, and our software will save permanent copies that you can depend on for years to come.
Eliminate financial data entry, simplifies expense tracking
Using patent-pending NeatScan technology, NeatReceipts 2.5 extracts all important information from each receipt including date, amount, vendor and payment type. It then organizes all this expense information into a searchable expense database.
Speed up tax preparation
NeatReceipts allows you to leave digital comments on receipts and mark them for tax purposes. During tax season, retrieve all the marked receipts with ease and review those comments for easy preparation. NeatReceipts stores each receipt in a secure digital format that is accepted by the IRS.
Integrate with QuickBooks, Quicken, Money, Act!, Peachtree
Export to QuickBooks, MS Money, Quicken and most other financial software. By automating data entry and making it easy to export to other software, NeatReceipts makes sure you never have to type information into your financial software again!
Scan business cards
NeatReceipts captures key contact information from business cards and syncs with your Outlook address book. You can also create V-cards to upload to your PDA.
Automatically create expense reports
Automatically creates expense reports from scanned receipts and attaches images of the original receipts for simple verification. Users can email these reports from within the software or export them into PDF, DOC, XLS or HTML formats. If you are looking for expense reporting software with in-built approval, analysis and administration capabilities, please consider NeatReceipts Enterprise.
How NeatReciepts Works
NeatScan Technology Using advanced Optical Character Recognition, NeatScan technology (patent pending) extracts key information from your receipts, such as date, amount, payment method, expense category and vendor. If you scan in business cards, NeatScan automatically pulls out information like name, company, address, phone numbers, email address etc.
NeatScan actually learns to associate an expense category (such as meals or lodging) to a particular vendor (brands such as Starbucks or Hilton) so you don't have to type in the information each time. This ensures that your financial records are filed consistently and with minimal effort.
Each user of NeatReceipts Professional 2.5 receives the NeatReceipts scanner--a lightweight, portable, durable color scanner. Our software was designed with this scanner in mind and offers the following unmatched functionality:
NeatReceipts Professional 2.5 offer many new features like recognition of credit cards by last 4 digits, simplified and enhanced Advanced Fast Find for your folder and receipts, and added printing options that let you print one to four images per page and choice of paper size.
Just like its previous version, NeatReceipts Professional 2.5 includes a business card reader at no additional charge. Simply scan your business cards and sync your contact information automatically with your Outlook address book, or create a V-Card for your palm pilot. Version 2.5 has the added convenience of Plaxo integration, so you can just go online, click "sync with Plaxo" and have your contact information updated.
New in business card features in version 2.5 include an improved interface and parsing, both black & white and color scanning, one-click e-mail to and browse-to options, and completed action item check box column.
Also, for the first time, NeatReceipts Scanalizer Professional Version 2.5 also includes a document organizer so you can keep track of all types of documents and access them up as needed. Document Organizer features include:
I love this scanner. It's super portable and compact. It's also really easy to use, and produces good quality pictures for the size/price of this scanner. I haven't used the picture "covers" that come with the scanner, and my pictures turned out just fine. I have a Mac, so it's not possible for the scanner to be plugged in directly to the computer (which you can do with a regular PC). So I have to save the pics to the card, and then put the card directly into the computer and go from there. It's nice that it automatically saves pictures at jpegs and not PDFs, and there's not a lot of cropping that needs to be done. All in all, I'm very happy with the purchase and would recommend this product.
This is a great scanner. The sheet feeder holds about 75 sheets, and you never have to worry about over-stuffing: it will warn you if there are too many sheets. Staples aren't a real problem either - this thing is tough enough to suck in staples and disfigure your pages, but the staples won't hurt the scanner. Just pop open the case, remove staple, smooth out the pages, and hit retry - scans like a charm.
For speed, this is a great. At 300dpi double-sided, I couldn't pull staples from manuscripts fast enough to keep up with this thing. I also had some materials in Arabic to scan - once you go up to 600dpi, it's slow enough that you have to wait a bit. 1200dpi - you may as well go make some coffee while it scans your 50 sheets. But this is all for B&W with no text conversion - once you add in grayscale or color, the scanner slows down significantly. With Adobe Acrobat, I recommend skipping the OCR text recognition completely - you can always OCR the PDF later, and it will take for freakin' ever to finish your scans if it's doing OCR in between each document.
Now then, this is a heavy-duty scanner. It took me about an hour to set it up and figure it all out. I'm using Windows 7, and I couldn't get all the Fujitsu programs to load correctly. Doesn't seem to matter - Adobe Acrobat 9 loaded just fine, all the drivers loaded all right, and then I was scanning away. Something to watch out for - after your computer goes to sleep, it might recognize the scanner when it wakes up. Just unplug and replug the USB cable. If Adobe doesn't see the scanner, then go to Scan Documents -> Configure Presets and make sure you've selected the Fujitsu scanner.
Once you're good-to-go, you can scan all day. I bought this to archive short stories that have been workshopped for my MFA - at 300dpi B&W, I can read all the text crystal-clear, and all the comments are legible, and I filled up a whole file box with scanned manuscripts with maybe six hours of scanning. (Be careful - if you have several days of scanning, this can become fun and addictive. It's like shredding paper - once you start, you don't want to stop).
For smaller print, you'll want 600 or 1200dpi. 900dpi doesn't seem to work for some reason - I guess the scanner isn't set for it. I have some workbooks in Arabic to scan, and Arabic text is smaller 12pt and the dots can easily be blurred (not to mention the workbooks themselves were copies of copies). For the good copies, 600dpi worked fine. For the poor copies, 1200dpi preserved the copy of a copy pretty much perfectly. As in I can still barely read it, but it's no worse than what I had to start with.
I don't use the color settings much, but they are amazing. If you scan a yellow legal pad with your handwriting, it's like your soul appears like magic on the computer screen. You should try it - it's really cool. Much cooler than B&W scans, but much slower with much, much larger file sizes.
As for file size - you can scan a few hundred B&W 300dpi into about 2MB. Very nice and small. Grayscale or color might push it to 15MB or 30MB, so it's a huge difference. It you're just archiving, B&W is quick, dependable, and readable.
That just about does it. Be careful of staples: they won't hurt the scanner, but the scanner will hurt your paper before realizing there's a jam.
I switched to the Epson Perfection V500 Office Scanner from a Fujitsu ScanSnap S500 Clr 18PPM/36IPM Dupl Scanner, which I love, but is not really designed for scanning photos. The advantage of this model over the Scansnap (and other scanners), is that it is specifically targeted for photo scanning, but also contains a document feeder for office work. Prior to this, there has never really been a sufficient product for photo scanning and semi-large scale office work. That is because no one likes to put photos through a document feeder, which usually will not handle small photos well, skew the images, or simply tear them to shreds. Almost all photo scanners use a flatbed for this very reason. I have used other scanners, such as the HP ScanJet 5590 Digital FlatBed Scanner, which contain a flatbed and a feeder (and even photo negative templates), but that scanner is awful and I haven't seen a decent one since. Fortunately, the Epson V500 seems to handle photos a little better.
The Epson Perfect V500 Office Scanner is nothing more than an Epson Perfection V500 Photo Scanner with an Epson scanner automatic document feeder ( B12B813391 ) attached to it and sold as one unit. If you only need to scan photos and don't have a real use for scanning multi-page documents, you should save yourself some money and get just the photo scanner. If you already own the V500 photo scanner, you should just buy the document feeder and attach it. This product is for people who need both.
As an office product, the scanner works pretty well. The document feeder never jammed on me and fed relatively quickly (but not as quickly as my Fujitsu). One touch scanning of monochrome documents worked well and truly was "one-touch." One big difference I noticed between the Epson and my old HP is that the scanning software with the Epson is much better. Usually software bundled with scanners is awful and bloated.
As far as a photo scanner, I couldn't be happier. It comes with plastic templates for holding your slides and photos. I first tried it out with some old photos and was very satisfied with the results. I do not know too much about Adobe Photoshop Elements, but I am capable of some basic photo manipulation. I didn't need to do any of that because the automatic settings with the software handled my photos very well and I didn't feel the need to do any post processing. It certainly isn't going to give you professional results unless you manually touch up your photos, but what it did do was more than enough for my purposes of just digitally archiving my photos. I next tried some 30-year old slides I had with the slide template. I've tried this before with older scanners and hated the results, and ended up taking them to a photo lab. The Epson, however, scanned my slides and my negatives almost at a professional level and the results were great. The slides came out looking much better than my prints because you can scan them at a higher resolution (6400 dpi compared to only 300 dpi for photos). I did find it a little slow to scan the slides, but it was bearable (too about an hour to scan 44 slides).
My only real problem with the scanner is that I felt like the photo scanning was too slow. Hopefully they will be able to improve on this when the technology is better. Overall though I am very satisfied with it.
We just received this scanner, and it installed instantly. It scans quickly, feeding about 2 seconds per page at 200 dpi and a little over 4 seconds per page at 400 dpi.
We've seen scanners absolutely wreck a computer system, probably due to driver problems, but we checked and did not have that problem with this scanner: the software appears to have been professionally written, though a warning pops up stating that it has not been checked for compatibility by Microsoft.
Pluses are it's fast, easy to install, and very compact: about 1/2 the footprint of an HP Laserjet 4100, but to use it you do have to pull out input and output trays that increases its footprint to about twice its size. It appears to have a very solid paper handling. After watching it work, you can tell it isn't likely to jam or misfeed.
However, the minuses are that it, like a lot of scanners, slightly skews the page, so it looks a little crooked. Most copiers will not do this, so it can't be used to replace a copier. UPDATE 11/9/09: They changed the driver to add deskewing and so as long as you use the sharpie trick below, the pages come out perfectly level.
I run a law firm and our scanning needs are pretty modest, but after seeing how quickly this unit works, we'll be scanning a lot more. I can't say I'm thrilled about the very slight page skew, which my other scanners also have (but they were 1/4 the price) and yet my copy machines don't have, but I haven't played with it fully to see if there is something we can do to correct it.
Update 5/30/06: the skew has to do with the fact that the paper guides spread apart over time as the unit is feeding pages. We put a small marking pen (like a fine tipped sharpie) between one of the moveable guides and the side of the input tray and it has stopped the skew entirely. I'd rate the unit 5 stars now. Most marking pens are slightly cone shaped, so you can put the pen in until it stops and it will hold the moveable paper guides in place. You only need to use one pen: the guides are connected.
Update 11/9/09: As noted, the skew problems are gone with the update drivers. And wow, it's still going strong nearly 1000 business days after I bought it. Never jams. We only run about 200 pages per day through it: it's rated for 4000, but the bulletproof paper handling and speed was worth buying such a heavy duty scanner. 5 years later, I'm only disappointed that Panasonic has not updated their scanners in nearly 5 years, though they did update the drivers and the new drivers give you just about every feature. You can still buy this one or the faster 2046 - twice the speed for more than twice the price. You can buy the cheaper 2025, but it is rated for a much smaller duty cycle - 1000 pages per day, and I'm a bit afraid of how it will last with people beating up on it. You might also look into the Canon 3010c, a slightly faster scanner that came out in late 2008 that appears to have a few more features, like auto delete of blank pages. It's about 0 cheaper than this one. But honestly, to have a mechanical device that has given us no trouble at all for 5 years and cost me about per day of use to purchase, I'd be hard pressed to buy a different one when this one finally breaks. Keep a bottle of compressed air nearby: when it makes noise, spray the paper dust out of it and it will keep running. Clean the rollers occasionally with rubbing alcohol an q-tips.
The KV-S2026C WorkGroup color scanner provide you superior durability with advanced image processing, all at a compact size and price.
Plustek SmartOffice PL1530 Document Scanner, 15ppm/30ipm, with 50 sheet ADF and Flatbed, dual USB interfaces allow sharing between two PCs. Automatic document detection and advanced image enhancement simplify operation, reduce rescans and increase OCR accuracy. Scan to searchable PDF at the touch of a button. Bundled document management applications increase productivity.
