Dedicated Scanner Help

[pp05]

I'm looking into buying a dedicated scanner to help cut the clutter on my desk. I'll only be scanning black & white business documents mostly.

So far I've come across two decent looking models that aren't too pricey. Scansnap s1500 and Epson Workforce Pro GT-S50.

Does anyone use either of the above? any pros/cons... any other models I should be aware of...

[Saracen]

Not used either of those. You might want to take a look at HP's Scanjet 5590. That, I can recommend, as I have and use one at home.

It's colour (I'd think just about all scanners are, there days), but of course, you can set if for mono. It also has an ADF (Auto Doc Feeder) with IIRC a 50-sheet capacity, and it does manual or auto duplex scanning. I don't know if you need to scan both sides, but if you do, that auto-duplex is worth it's weight in gold.

I use it for document archiving, and while it's office use it's home-office so not really heavy use. But in about 5 years, it's yet to be less than 100% reliable. Price = about £330-350. from a quick look, which is a quite a bit more than I paid, and quite a bit more than the £250-£275 it was last time I looked, a year or so back.

I do a lot of scanning, hence having several film scanners, several flatbeds, including an A3 flatbed, and even a couple of portable, single-sheet scanners. The scan quality on that HP isn't up to to the best of the flatbeds, but for an office document scanner, it isn't actually that far off.

[pp05]

Thanks Saracen.

I have that same usage in mind but for business as well. The documents will mostly be v black & white but with business use their will be receipts which will have double-sided writing. Can the HP know when it's single-sided and not scan blank side or do you have to specify it prior to scanning?

how does it handle creased/folded paper? I am thinking here often I have receipts which I have to fold or creases will start to appear the longer they are in my pocket until I get back to the office.. can it handle that well?

Does it come with the usual HP bloatware or just specific software & driver to use the device?

Lastly how do the scans look when you have had to print them off? Do they come out okay?

[GoNz0]

<<epson engineer.

those little S50's are very fast, the faulty ones i see seem to stop feeding for no reason i have found,

the GT-1500 on the other hands a very good scanner for a few quid more, every time i go to one of those the customers opened part of the ADF thats not listed as a user serviceable part to try and remove a jam and failed to clip it back in right, after i point out they shouldn't have opened that and clicked the guide back into place its worked ok again

also you get 16 hour (basically next working day) service on the epson range where one of us pops up to take a fix or swap it.

and every scanner can handle damaged paper, that why you can lift the lid up and place it direct on the bed

[Saracen]

....

I have that same usage in mind but for business as well. The documents will mostly be v black & white but with business use their will be receipts which will have double-sided writing. Can the HP know when it's single-sided and not scan blank side or do you have to specify it prior to scanning?....

It knows .... 'cos it's psychic.

Seriously though, I'm not quite sure how it possibly could know, unless you tell it, prior to scanning.

You can, obviously, set up various profiles, and scan simplex or scan duplex. Or you can set it at scan time. You can also scan to document, picture, email, etc, and there are several programmable front-panel buttons.

....

how does it handle creased/folded paper? I am thinking here often I have receipts which I have to fold or creases will start to appear the longer they are in my pocket until I get back to the office.. can it handle that well? ....

I've had a few documents with some creasing, and it's coped, but once or twice I've had to unjam something that it didn't like. My advice would be to decrease as much as possible before scanning, or to manually scan anything too badly creased on the flat-bed, not using the ADF.

....

Does it come with the usual HP bloatware or just specific software & driver to use the device?

Lastly how do the scans look when you have had to print them off? Do they come out okay?

There is HP software, but I don't honestly remember what I installed, as I use it as a scanner, and document management is a separate app.

....

Lastly how do the scans look when you have had to print them off? Do they come out okay?

Well, it's partly a function of the scan settings. It's a 2400dpi 48-bit scanner, so it's capable of extremely good results. Probably better than the average printer. Of course, the higher the scan quality, the slower the scan, and the larger the file sizes, so you'll probably experiment a bit and cut scan settings until you feel the quality has dropped too low. But even at 100dpi, I get prints about as good as a basic photocopy, and I've never yet had either a client reject a document (like an expenses invoice) based on scan quality .... or even HMRC, for that matter.

[peterb]

Probably a bit overkill for your needs, but I use a Brother MFC 8860. It is a printer, scanner (and fax) with network connection, so it will scan to a PC over the network (as pdf or jpeg or bitmap) or scan to email as pdf or jpg (it has its own smtp client) You can get them without FAX if that is no use. Being a printer it also acts as a copier. Does double sided scanning through a multiple sheet feeder.

[pp05]

It knows .... 'cos it's psychic.

Seriously though, I'm not quite sure how it possibly could know, unless you tell it, prior to scanning.

I had read with the ScanSnap model it scans duplex but will get rid of blank sides.

[snootyjim]

Has anyone come across a scanner that will scan to a shared folder on the network?

I looked a little while ago and everything seemed to be USB, or scan via network that required software to function.

[pp05]

Probably a bit overkill for your needs, but I use a Brother MFC 8860. It is a printer, scanner (and fax) with network connection, so it will scan to a PC over the network (as pdf or jpeg or bitmap) or scan to email as pdf or jpg (it has its own smtp client) You can get them without FAX if that is no use. Being a printer it also acts as a copier. Does double sided scanning through a multiple sheet feeder.

That thing is a beast.

I did initially have something like that in mind to replace all-in-one as HP MFC was going for 150 @ pcw but I am not sure I print enough to justify laser since I have a dedicated fax machine. Plus dedicated scanners take up less space on the desk since the ADF is vertical. That is something else I've got to think about. If scanner footprint small I can have it on my desk and then I can get a small mono laser to pair with it. Ease of use is important as I may not be only one using it and the others don't like tech in general.

[peterb]

It is pretty easy to use! To scan, just place the sheet in the feeder and press scan. The menu on the machine takes you through the rest. I take your point about the laser printer, although it could replace your other laser, and of course being networked it is available to anyone on the network. (It is a duplex printer btw, but only monochrome)

[pp05]

It is pretty easy to use! To scan, just place the sheet in the feeder and press scan. The menu on the machine takes you through the rest. I take your point about the laser printer, although it could replace your other laser, and of course being networked it is available to anyone on the network. (It is a duplex printer btw, but only monochrome)

That particular model is discontinued and certified to work with XP.

Say you have 50 sheets to scan. You place them onto the feeder and hit scan, do you get 50 different pdfs/images or do they come under one file? Is it a case of specifying every sheet is to be a single file/1 file?

Also printing the off the scans, it's a laser so it should it be pretty good?

[peterb]

Yes, the nearest replacement is to 8080DN

http://www.printerbase.co.uk/acatalo...mfc-8880dn.php

I bought mine from there. Mine is working quite happily with Windiws 7, and also prints from my Linux machine through CUPS.

As for scanning, if you load multiple pages in the scanner, it produces a multi-page document. Manually scanning single pages at a time on the flatbed is also possible.

Printing from the scans is good, depending on the resolution of the scan. Using as a document (or diagram) copier also gives excellent results, although there will be some drop off in very fine detail.

[Saracen]

....

Say you have 50 sheets to scan. You place them onto the feeder and hit scan, do you get 50 different pdfs/images or do they come under one file? Is it a case of specifying every sheet is to be a single file/1 file?

....

ON the HP I mentioned, it depends how you set the options. One option is for multiple scans to end up in one file. Another option is a file per page scanned. To switch, you check or uncheck a single box.

When you press the "scan to file" button, a dialog appears on-screen, as Peter mentioned a couple of posts back. You set the options and start the scan process, and you can scan a series of docs wit the ADF, then add a page or two manually, then reload the ADF.

If you'd selected one file for multiple scans, it only writes the final file (PDF, or whatever) when you say "finished", or save or whatever the actual button is labelled.

But before that, you have a temporary document in the scanner software, and you can rotate, flip, crop, change settings (i.e. colour/mono), etc, or add, or delete pages, and then when you say "finish", it applies all that and produces the final file(s).

You can also set naming conventions, so a a series of files could be labelled "client1-xxxx" and you'll get client1-xxx1, client1-xxxx2, etc.

And so on. All that type of thing is done from the scanner software, which is a kind of hybrid between a driver and a scanner control app.