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[dcwebman]

Since it seems like a few people here, including myself, are trying to go paperless, I thought I'd throw in my experience with a recent purchase. The biggest thing to go paperless is to get rid of the paper which means scanning them. I already have an all-in-one printer that scans okay, but the software that came with it really is bad, especially when trying to create PDF files. I then tried some other software like Paperport and even Adobe Acrobat. Paperport came closest to wanting to work sometimes because it could use its own drivers but Acrobat insisted on using the all-in-one's software so I really was back in the same problem I started with. I did end up purchasing Vuescan which works great with photos but not really perfect with PDFs, most likely a limitation of the all-in-one.

After much research, I finally decided to just bite the bullet and get a Fujitsu ScanSnap S510 scanner. It's a sheet-feed only scanner but I do have the all-in-one for other things to scan if needed. The S510 is not cheap but it comes with a copy of Adobe Acrobat 8 Standard so if you subtract the cost of that, it's not too bad. Plus I realized that this device was going to get most of the use. And it's so compact too!

It scans directly to PDF files and does duplex at the same time if needed. If you choose to not OCR the PDF, after it comes out of the scanner it's done immediately. Amazing. It scans at 18 pages per minute which is pretty much how fast a regular big copy machine works. Now when I need to scan a bill or something that comes in, it's just a few minutes of time to do so and no longer is that pile of paper sitting there waiting to be scanned for when I get the time. Like I said, it wasn't cheap but to make the job easier, I think it's already paid for itself for me. I have a lot of jobs in mind for it already like scanning certain articles from boxes of magazines I've been carrying around for years. How sweet it will be when I want to search for an article and I just do a simple search among the PDF files.

You can see some demos of it in action on the web such as: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tTn8v6zmwM

[JimH]

Thanks for writing about it.  Did you try MC for scanning or for organizing the PDF files?  Just wondering what we'd need to do to help solve the problem.

Here's the scanner:
http://www.amazon.com/ScanSnap-S510M-Instant-Sheet-Fed-Scanner/dp/B000WJCX18

[newsposter]

VueScan (http://www.hamrick.com/vsm.html) is by far the best scanner software out there.  Using this you can toss out the mfgrs OEM software and get faster, better results.

It even 'supports' older scanners that the mfgrs have 'abandoned' for XP and Vista.

[dcwebman]

Thanks for writing about it.  Did you try MC for scanning or for organizing the PDF files?  Just wondering what we'd need to do to help solve the problem.

Here's the scanner:
http://www.amazon.com/ScanSnap-S510M-Instant-Sheet-Fed-Scanner/dp/B000WJCX18

That's actually the Mac version. The Windows version is black and is model number S510. It's also cheapest on NewEgg.

No, I didn't try MC for scanning. I didn't think it had support for PDF files and that's my primary purpose for the scanner. Same thing for organizing with being able to see thumbnails of the document, modify them, etc. I did just try it for the first time scanning jpg's with MC and it did work fine, although still used the terrible scanner software.

[JimH]

This one?
http://www.amazon.com/Fujitsu-Scansnap-Color-Image-Scanner/dp/B000RUOW66/ref=pd_bxgy_e_text_b

[dcwebman]

This one?
http://www.amazon.com/Fujitsu-Scansnap-Color-Image-Scanner/dp/B000RUOW66/ref=pd_bxgy_e_text_b

Yes. Cheaper here though plus there's a mail-in rebate.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16838115034