The Bottom Line
This is an ideal scanning solution for mobile professionals in real estate industry, legal profession, medical industry and sales positions. It is a compact scanner, which can used easily within a vehicle office with the appropriate power invertor.
Pros
- Easy to Carry and Use Anywhere
- One button scanning.
- Automatically detects whether source is color or B&W
- Possible to scan any size document.
- Can scan directly to Office programs.
Cons
- TWAIN/ISIS® not supported.
- Requires external power source.
Description
- ADF (Automatic Document Feeder), Duplex color scanning.
- Optical Resolution: color 600 dpi and 1200 dpi B&W in excellent mode.
- Scanning Range: A4, A5, A6, B5, B6, Business card, Letter, Legal and Custom sizes.
- Automatically recognizes paper type by paper length.
- Paper Weight: 14 to 34lb (52 to 127g). Capacity: 50 sheets.
- Dimensions: 11.2 x 6.2 x 6.2 in. (284 x 157 x 158)
- Weight: 5.9lbs. or less, without power adapter.
- Requires USB 2.0 (USB 1.1 compatible), Windows 98SE, 2000 or XP.
- Carrying case is an optional accessory.
- Software Included: Adobe Acrobat 7.0 Standard, ABBYY FineReader for ScanSnap 2.0, CardMinder™ v3.0, ScanSnap Organizer v3.0
Guide Review - Fujitsu ScanSnap S500 Sheetfed Scanner
The ScanSnap S500 will certainly make life easier if you have to scan many documents. As always, read the setup instructions. It is important to install the software first before connecting the scanner to your laptop.The software sets up painlessly and while you might think you will not need all the software included; I recommend installing each program.
Once the software is installed and you are connected to your laptop, you are ready to start scanning. If you happen to have a pile of business cards that you have accumulated over time, you can quickly scan and get them organized. As you get yourself into the habit of scanning new business cards, you will find it much easier to keep your contacts organized.
I do a lot of scanning, mostly double-sided pages and using the ScanSnap S500 has saved a great deal of time and made organizing documents much easier.
Scanning documents – whether color or B&W it couldn’t get any easier. Even if the pages are double-sided, you get great quality scans. Before you start your scans, set up your folders on your laptop where you want to save the scans, go into ScanSnap Manager and adjust the settings. For the majority of scans using Normal mode will be quite adequate. If you have items that have a lot of detail that needs to saved, then Excellent will be the best mode.
While it is a minor detraction that you can’t scan images into TWAIN compliant programs directly, you can scan images into Adobe Acrobat and then save the image and open it in a graphics program with minimal fuss.
This scanner is fast, even scanning the maximum number of pages, it can handle (50 sheets) and scanning in duplex mode takes only a few minutes. This scanner is capable of 18 pages per minute.
I also recommend purchasing the optional carrying case, you can fit a few small mobile accessories in it.