i have to say my first couple days with the fujitsu snapscan s510m have been pretty impressive. i was worried that it might fit the bill or live up to my expectations, but so far it has been a champ! i guess before i start elaborating too much i should show off some geek pr0n – so here are some pics.
the fujitsu snapscan s510m arrives home!
the fujitsu snapscan s510m in the closed/off position…
the fujitsu snapscan s510m in the open/on position…
ok, so now back to the regular scheduled program…
tuesday afternoon i received the scanner from amazon, i get cracking and break it out. in my excitement i toss the instructions to the side, and pop the scanner on my desk. from there i load the driver cd and install the drivers, rather painlessly i might add. next i drop the power cord and plug in the usb. the scanner definitely looks mac-ish. white with a blue led on the scanner and one on the power cord. nice touch in my opinion, but i have always been a sucker for blue leds. from there i install the ocr application abby fine reader. as soon as i open the lid to the scanner my mac pro recognizes the scanner.
i go into the settings [right clicking on the dock icon] check out the configuration settings. i set the initial directory, file name format, set the scanner to simplex scanning, and tweak the pdf settings. in anticipation of the scanning event that is about to start, i break out a stack of paystubs ready and waiting to be scanned. i drop one in press the big scan button and zoom it sucks in and spits out extremely fast. i can see where people might get confused. this thing is fast, and if you are not expecting it to work this fast you may think something is wrong. about a second later the image appears in a preview screen. i then delete the scan and flip back to the settings, from there i spend about 10 mins playing with the different configurations.
when i am happy with my understanding of how this thing works, i pop in about 20 paystubs. like a kid in a candy store i again press the scan button, and it goes to work plowing though the paystubs with ease. if i had to guess they blew through in less than a minute. i look over at my canon flatbed scanner and chuckle. im in love with yet another piece of electronic hardware.
i then set out to scan as much as i possibly can, i grab my wifes pay stubs, some water bills, electric bills, and some misc documents about 10 minutes later – i’m done. during the 1st mad rush scanning blitz i did run into a couple of multiple page pulls, and one or two jams. but i also notice it seems to deal a lot with the type of paper and how the pages seem to be folded. for the bills that seemed to get sucked in two at a time, i just reduced the amount of bills and all was fine. for the jams, this seemed to be directly the result of the folds and creases in the paper. i ended up just placing my hand up against the sheets in the feeder as they scanned in while applying the slightest of pressure to the papers. this prevents the scanner from jamming. i also noticed if i stacked more pages in when this happened it also prevented the jams. i consider this a minor issue, that has only appeared in two different types of files i have scanned so far.
i didn’t do any speed test, because to me this thing is plenty fast. in just a few short sittings i have scanned 462 files (many being multiple page pdfs) with the resulting directory size of 50.4MB. not to shabby if you ask me.
for now, i am extremely happy with the purchase. i’ll play with this thing more over the next few days, and report back soon.
Matt is a Systems Development Director for a multinational franchise. Matt has lived and worked in Hawaii, Chicago, South Florida and currently resides outside of Atlanta. He enjoys his hobbies including Technology, Gadgets/EDC, Fountain Pens, Wetshaving, Clocks, Antiques & Coffee. He even roasts his own coffee weekly.
I bought the S510M ScanSnap yesterday. As far as I can tell, you cannot use Acrobat 8 to create a scanned document. Seems that Acrobat cannot recognize the scanner. sound right???
you are correct the scanner handles everything internal to its software. i sent in a rebate for readiris 11 pro that came with the scanner and that works well.
i scan everything through the snapscan software and then open acrobat when i need to edit the pdf.
hope that helps =)
Hi there guys
I bought this unit after reading the review and it works great, a big boost to my productivity and efficiency.
One question, after scanning I would like the pdf to open up on my screen (so I can check it). Do you know if this can be done? Right now I have to navigate to the file and open it. A bit of a pain.
Regards
Danny