Customer Reviews
Love this scanner 
2008-07-04
I just love this scanner, I have had several and this one is so easy to work I am not very tech-savy, but it doesn't matter with this scanner
excellent scanner 
2008-07-01
After having this for one week, I've scanned all my documents into pdf. With the help of the management software "yep" we've gotten rid of all our boxes of files. Well worth the investment. From binders of double sided settlement paperwork to stacks of receipts, this scanner handles them all. Worth every penny!
A simple and excellent scanning solution for the MAC 2008-06-15
I love the Fujitsu ScanSnap S520M. I previously bought the PC version of the Fujitsu ScanSnap, but since I switched over to the Mac, I decided to get the Mac Version of this scanner as well. The bundle comes with Adobe Acrobat, which is worth the purchase price of the scanner alone. With this scanner, you can scan straight to PDF in seconds. This type of scanner is more efficient than the flatbed scanners that you find in those all-in-one multifunction printers. The only downside to the ScanSnap is that it is not able to scan thick objects (i.e. textbooks, passports, etc.), unless you rip out the pages and feed them through the scanner. For those types of documents, users should use a flatbed scanner.
If you ever thought about going "paperless" the ScanSnap S510M is a great way to go. Just make sure you have your backup drives (external hard drive, additional internal hard drives, etc.) and software (i.e. Apple's Time Machine) so that you don't shoot yourself in the foot when your primary data gets corrupted/deleted.
Its Fast! 2008-06-11
This has been perfect for scanning all my paperwork. I've tried other desktop scanners, but they take forever to scan. The ScanSnap scans so fast that you think something went wrong. I can just save the scans as PDFs right to my Documents folder for archiving. Perfect!
Pretty good sheet scanner 2008-06-11
I bought this so I could send faxes from home. I know, you can get fax machines for much less, but I didn't want to mess with shared lines or installing a separate line. The image quality on scanned sheets is great, it automatically saves the file as a pdf and it integrated perfectly with my MacBook Pro. The files work fine with my online fax service and the pdf format makes file handling simple for emails, file sharing, etc. It's a little challenging to get the paper to feed straight for the scan (especially a multi-page scan), but that's the only (minor) issue I've had with this unit.
Works as advertised, not perfect but nearly 2008-07-23
This is a really nicely made product. The white color complements my Mac and I had no trouble setting it up out of the box and getting it running in about 10 minutes. It is quiet, very fast and had only about one or two misfeeds in three or four hundred pages of documents. Scan quality on the slowest is superb and excellent on all others. It is happiest with about 25 pages in the feeder but will go up to 50. The software interface could be better or faster in use but gets the job done and offers you enough options to be flexible and useful in naming scans and so on. The inclusion of the Acrobat Pro software is a nice bonus. Also the covers can fold top and bottom to enclose the unit when not in use which helps to keep dust out. I turned a four drawer chest of papers into a 4GB thumb drive with this baby! I would have given it 4.5 stars if possible - the only ding is the software (at least for Mac). Highly recommended!
Order this and craigslist the filing cabinets 2008-07-12
I can only repeat what others have said: I love this thing. I looked at several other sheet-fed scanners from HP and others. Nothing seems to do what this does. It is very simple, very well designed, a very fast. My advice is to download the updated software on the support site - scanning profiles is a nice feature. I'm a grad student who is overloaded with research and documents - this made it very simple to create pdfs and use spotlight to search for them when I need them.
flexibility plus 2008-07-05
Previously used a Dell 3115 flat scanner that was always a problem..The fujitsu installed easily on my iMac and was terrific to scan all of my travel related documents to California and China...Having everything on my Airbook rather than large paper files in my briefcase is the way to go..feeder works well although it can feed crooked every once in a while..thicker documents feed well too...love this pdf performer!
Awesome for Mac 2008-07-05
I have owned at least a dozen scanners over 20 years including all-in-ones, flatbed, dedicated film, etc... This is far and away the best that I have used. Paper jams only if you overload it. Even though the feeder is relatively small it is easy to keep loading it as sheets go through. I have put in stacks of paper with everything from legal to 3x4 photos in the same batch without a problem (make sure the option to handle random paper sizes is on). I can also load in 20 pictures and scan them strait into iPhoto in under 2 minutes. Fujitsu sells replacement pick-up pads and rollers to keep the feeder working perfectly, you need to replace these every year or so for about $30 but to keep this this running as well as it does it's a terrific deal.
Since when has a scanner put a smile on your face? 2008-07-04
Recently I was looking at a jumbled pile of paid bills and other paper detritus around the house and trembled in fear at the thought of digging through everything and organizing it all into file folders. The stacks of paper. The folder tabs. The stickers. The filing boxes. The whole reason my pile 'o' crap was sitting there was precisely because I didn't want to deal with it -- though I knew I needed to keep the files just in case.
I'd heard of people digitizing everything and they sounded happy. And I'm a gadget kind of guy. So I figured, "let's do this thing" and I bought this scanner. I own a really nice Canon flatbed scanner, but using that for scanning bills or other documents is way, way too cumbersome. I've also owned one of the little packable receipt scanners, but they only scan one side at a time and were slow and made poor quality scans. But I'd heard good things about the Fujitsu ScanSnap line. Very good things.
What a great little product! It does exactly what it's supposed to do -- scan both sides of documents really fast and store them on your computer however you like. The included OCR software will even embed the (recognizable) text into the PDF document itself. Combine that with Mac OS X's "Spotlight" system-wide search and you can find the tiniest bit of text in any of the documents you scan -- now and anytime in the future. Amazing.
This is NOT a photo scanner. Yes, you CAN scan photos with it, but that's not the purpose -- the scan quality is not great for that. But for document capture and storage, nothing in my experience beats it (for an average consumer).
The only thing I don't like is the high price. But in the end, I'm going to wipe out my paper files and -- so long as I do off-site backups -- I'll still have all the documents around for as long as I want or need.
Okay, one more minor gripe: I'd prefer to have one "master" scanning application that does all the scanning, OCR and storage work in a single interface, rather than the collection of 4 bundled applications. But they do work together pretty well, so it's okay. Just feels a little bloated on the software side.
The upshot is that I'm now enjoying scanning my documents. I'm especially geeked to do the document shredding afterwards! I've never had a computer peripheral that made me smile like this, with the possible exception of the iPhone.
Great stuff. If you're into scanning your docs, this is the scanner to get, even with the high price.
