Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 195
 This little scanner is awesome! March 29, 2009
BookMan (Rancho Santa Margarita, CA)
220 out of 222 found this review helpful
My old HP scanner (actually, it wasn't that old) died a few months ago and it was time for me to get a new one. I accidently came across the predecessor to the ScanScap S1500 (the S510) last week while I was having my taxes done and was amazed at the speed and compactness of it. My tax person also gave it glowing reviews. As I wasn't aware that Fujitsu manufactured scanners, I thought I'd do a little research which led me to reviews of the S510 here on Amazon. Rather amazingly, I was very surprised to find that the S510 had so many extraordinarily high reviews (something that I don't believe I come across too often, especially with items such as scanners). One of those reviews mentioned that a new model (this one - the S1500) had just been released by Fujitsu. After some more research (it wasn't yet listed on Amazon), I found that this scanner was available and that it had many new features. As it turns out, I was the "first kid on my block" to acquire one and I'm glad I did! This machine is incredible!
The speed is absolutely blinding - an incredible 20 pages per minute but, because it scans both sides of a page at the same time, double sided documents scan at 40 PAGES PER MINUTE! Wow! As with previous models, this scanner is very small and appears to be well built: it's quite heavy for its small size and fits very nicely on my small computer desk. The scanning quality is equally spectacular - it scans up to 600 dpi in color, grayscale, and black and white and mine came with a good assortment of software (Adobe Acrobat 9, Rack2-Filer, and ABBYY FineReader). It scans documents beautifully! While I've been too busy scanning the billions of pieces of paper that have cluttered my life for years (this scanner will actually do that quickly and efficiently - something I've always just dreamed would be possible), I haven't yet tried to scan photos; I suspect that this scanner will do a good job but that another type of scanner would probably do better for archival purposes).
The only problems I've had were with Acrobat (I already have Acrobat 9 Pro on my computer) - I found that importing previously scanned documents into Rack2-filer were always listed in reverse order (ugh!) and Fujitsu tech support replicated the problem. They suggested, however, that I completely uninstall (not just repair) Acrobat and reinstall it. That did the job. BTW, I received great tech support from Fujitsu.
One interesting thing is that this scanner does not come with TWAIN drivers. Because of this, it is not possible to use it to the same extent as other scanners. Just the same, my reason for getting this scanner was to create .pdf files and this scanner does it like no other.
Overall, I'm thrilled with the Fujitsu S1500 - there is no question that it is the best one I've had (and I've had many) and is well worth the money (the S1500 is also the most expensive scanner I've ever purchased). I would recommend this to anyone who needs to scan documents.
Fast, good quality, and most importantly, it just works. May 7, 2009
N. Schweitzer (Tempe, AZ United States)
111 out of 112 found this review helpful
I have never had a dedicated document scanner before. In the past, I used the Auto-document feeder on my all-in-one printer/scanner/fax machines to scan documents into adobe acrobat. That meant for each batch of papers, I needed to set the color/resolution/paper size/quality settings and then work through Acrobat in order to save each file. It worked, but it was slow going.
Then I bought this new scansnap 1500, based on the ratings of the earlier model (the scansnap 510). I installed only the main program to my computer (the software also includes OCR programs, organizational programs, and acrobat 9, which I already have). I hooked up the scanner and stuck in a stack of old notes I took from some college courses--some notes were in color, some were b&w, some on two sides, some on one side, and some of the pages were upside down. I hit the only button on the machine (SCAN), and to my sheer amazement, it started flying through the stack of notes without any additional prompts or effort. It then automatically saved my file as a pdf--all of the pages were in order, color pages were in color, b&w pages were in b&w, etc. The only issue I noticed was that if there were any marks whatsoever on the back side of my note papers, it included those blank pages in the file.
I repeated this process with any papers I could get my hands on. I even tried sticking in papers of varying sizes, and it sped through them all without a problem. I am officially hooked. (In a moment of either stupidity or genius, I sliced the spine off of an old book and scanned that in too.)
I did notice a few things that are worth mentioning specifically: 1) This scanner is much smaller than it looks. I was expecting something the size of a inkjet printer, but it is actually about the size of a loaf of bread. 2) You have to place the papers GENTLY into the scanner or it will jam. If I push the papers in too far, it pulls through several pages at a time and the software warns you to start over. 3) I am running the software on Windows 7 RC1, so I can tell you that, at least in my case, it will work on Win7.
Night and day compared to other scanners July 12, 2009
Benedict J. Jackson (Portland, OR USA)
23 out of 23 found this review helpful
The first evening we owned it we scanned about 2000 pages of old bills, receipts, insurance and tax information. It handled all kinds of papers from receipts to carbon forms to magazine pages to paper in one stack. For the most part it will take any mix of sizes and type of paper, but it is sometimes easier to scan separately and use the drag-and-drop PDF editor to combine the pages together.
The included OCR software is very easy to use, OCRs and coverts the PDFs in the background. The resulting PDFs are images of the original page with real text underneath, permitting searches and cut'n'paste.
The output tray is one of the few weaknesses of the hardware. Sheets emerging from the scanner tend to catch previous pages and push them, sometimes completely off the tray, but almost always into a fairly unruly pile. It's worse if the documents are of mixed sizes.
It really cannot handle photos at all. I'm not sure what causes it, but the results on a glossy photograph are unusuable. Far below the quality of other documents, with large color smears and other artifacts. The feed mechanism is not gentle enough for pictures, either, so you'd want to use the included carrier sheet for any photos you really cared about, which defeats the document feeder aspect of the scanner.
The software has flashes of brilliance and moments of stupidity. The business card app does an amazing job of extracting data from all kinds of odd business card layouts... but it can't handle inverse text (white on a dark background) at all. The multi-feed detection and the dialog that helps you recover is very nice, but the paper jam popup is different and uninformative. You can continue scanning from almost any condition with the one blue button on the unit, but if you want to do anything unusual (like simplex scanning) you have to navigate to the tiny systray icon and pick it from the right-click menu. It does a great job of eliminating blank pages and it can even split stacks of pages into many documents, but it *can't* split them up by original input sheets (unless you set it to leave in blank pages and split into 2-page documents). No one can be using the computer connected to the scanner because it steals focus at the beginning, end and for any error condition.
Overall I'm extremely happy with it and expect it to eliminate many filing cabinets worth of old documents. In the first week after I bought mine, two other people bought S1500s on my recommendation. If they weren't quite so expensive I'd probably give them to everyone I know as Christmas gifts!
ScanSnap S1500 is a MUST-HAVE for everyone! May 28, 2009
Rebecca Diamante (New Orleans)
27 out of 29 found this review helpful
Scansnap S1500 Clr 600DPI USB 2.0 A3 50PG Adf Document Scan
This product is an upgrade from the ScanSnap S510 and now works with either Macs or PC's without any additional software needed. Better yet, it is also compatible with Windows 32-bit or 64-bit operating systems. If you're unfamiliar with the differences just know that this is a very good thing!
The scanner software includes Adobe Acrobat 9.0 Standard (license for two computers). It also ships with Scansnap Manager and Organizer that are excellent options for organized filing. If you are strictly a Mac user then purchase S1500M which, at the date of this writing, ships with Adobe 8 Professional.
Most importantly, the scanning ability is effortless. Watch a video from Fujitsu for more details. I absolutely recommend this product!
Love the Scanner....one little thing to mention. July 6, 2009
Desmond (California)
17 out of 17 found this review helpful
Love the Scanner and agree with the other comments. However, there is one little thing you may come across. When scanning paperwork that has straight lines, a box, etc on it you'll notice that when scanned, there will be some slight waves in the lines. Spoke to Fujitsu and this is a known issue. I'm told the previous model did this too.
This minor detail by no means takes away from how awesome this scanner is but wanted folks to know about it in case they're experiencing it too.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 195
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