Fujitsu ScanSnap PA03603-B005 S1300 Instant PDF Sh

14,000 scans and still going strong
I bought this to convert my home office to a paperless office. 14,000 scans later, and I still love this scanner. Fast, portable, high-quality scanner. If I have any complaint, it would be that it sometimes has trouble keeping sheets fed straight if I don’t sit it on the feeder cleanly and adjust the paper guides to the right width. This isn’t often – I’m talking like maybe 3 times per 100 scans, usually when I am trying to rush through a whole stack of mail to scan and not being careful to place the documents and adjust the paper guides, and in most cases the software straightens it out for me anyhow. The software is flexible and effective, I set up profiles for home office scanning, home office – multipart scanning (for more than 10 sheets in a single document), and some profiles for higher res stuff for photos or intricate diagrams or color scans. It’s one click to switch between these. The one-button scanning works reliably. I use the ScanSnap Manager software to do OCR in batches afterwards rather than as I scan, so I can capture the scans faster. I capture a page in about 5-6 seconds with “better” quality settings – you can get faster or slower with different settings but “better” gives me the confidence that I’m capturing enough detail while keeping reasonable file sizes. The scanner fits nicely into my Evernote workflow, too (it can automatically feed to evernote, though I choose not to so that I can do the batch OCR beforehand). If I were to do it all over again, I -might- buy the bigger model just to get through the initial scanning of my home office faster (I did it over two months or so), but really this little scanner was up for the task and I have no complaints! Now that I’m just doing little bits of scanning each week to keep caught up, it’s absolutely perfect for that job. One last caution – be careful to not feed in anything with sticky glue or adhesive on it – it will get caught in the rollers. I had to do a thorough cleaning after accidentally doing that (luckily the front panel folds open and provided easy access to the rollers). Also, don’t feed priceless drawings or photos into this or any sheet-feed scanner. It can and will crinkle up a document from time to time, especially if it already had wrinkles or tears in it. This scanner is definitely for everyday, home office type stuff – get a flatbed scanner for photography work or priceless items.

Awesome scanner….paperless here I come
Ok, I am a pretty critical person by nature and I work in IT, so I’m trained to find faults (and fix them). I bought this scanner as a Xmas preset for my house (ok, for myself), and I love it. The setup is easy, software works great and the best part is that everything is scanned into PDF, not some custom format that only that software understands.The scanning is fast and thorough. It is a bit faster when you use the electrical plus versus the 2 x USB connectors (just something to know). It works with both types of setups though.I setup a dedicated folder to act as a the repository for all of the scans. Then I setup multiple virtual file cabinets off that root. For instance, I have cabinets for Financial, Household and Receipts & Packing Slips. I scan the statement, letter, bill or receipt in and it goes to the root. I then rename it with a single click and name it for the store/item, date and ammount (if there is one). (i.e. Kohl’s 2011-12-30 126.38) It automatically adds the PDF to the end for association. Then you drag the PDF image to the folder that you have created. (Note, you can have any number of sub-folders under the cabinets for orgainzation)Also, I did have trouble getting my default windows search to find the items that were OCR’d. It would find file names, but not content within. I had to install a full version of Adobe Acrobat (Acrobat X) and then switch the search option to use Adobe to utilize the full search feature. Once that was done, I was truly impressed. I searched for the word “slippers” and it found the itemized receipt from Macy’s on which we had purchased slippers. You have no idea how difficult it has been to try and organize receipts to where we can find something later on. This will solve that problem (and some). Now, after the receipt is scanned, I file it under the month it was purchased. Now I can search for a receipt, figure out the date, then search a small section of receipts to find what I need. Wow. After a year or two, I’ll just shred everything as it ages. Goodbye stacks of miscellaneous receipts!The second (and more difficult portion) was determining how to back this stuff up securely. If I’m going to shred account statements after scanning them in, I have to make sure it’s backed up and that it’s secure. I settled on a two step process. First, I backup the scansnap folder that has all the scans using a free tool (Fbackup) to a second machine that is on my home network. (You could back it up to a folder on your one machine too). This backup is compressed and encrypted with a complex password of my choosing. Then, I use an online backup tool from SOS online backup. This program takes my backup file and automatically copies it up to their cloud-based storage. This is also encypted and password protected (with a different complex password). Now, I have my stuff in a digital, searchable, standard PDF format, and it’s backed up locally and on the cloud with double-password security. I love it!Be careful of some of the other online video reviews of people just scanning directly to Evernote or other online storage options. If your password is compromised, that person will have full access to EVERYTHING you scan in. If you go this route, please do not scan in bank statements or anything else with an account number. It’s not worth the trouble when something goes bad. I did setup Evernote and got it working with the Scansnap, so I know it works. However, I like having the standard PDF format in a folder structure you can just browse through and I wanted an extra layer of security on my confidential stuff.If you are looking for a good, fast, compact scanner, this one is it. I couldn’t be happier with it and the overall solution.