Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300i Sheetfed Scanner – 600 DPI Optical – 12-12 – USB

My previous scansnap had given about 15 years of solid service and was still going strong, but could not handle the latest OS on my Mac. Hence the need for an upgrade. I did not need a machine with the same level of functionality as the previous model (I don’t scan as much as i used to) and this seemed to fit the bill.

It seems less ‘solid’/’robust’ than the previous model (S510M), but is way cheaper and far more compact, which really helps.

The most important thing is that it scans perfectly, it was a breeze to set up and the software seems to be far more intelligent.

Overall seems to be excellent value for money.

Portátil rápido y fácil de usar

As I mentioned in the title, I hesitated to buy one of these. I thought about it off and on for months, and couldn’t quite pull the trigger on the price. It seemed expensive, and why would I want to pay that much for a simple scanner? Especially when I already had a flatbed scanner in my office that would work just fine? Eventually, however, I got tired of the limitations of the flatbed scanner, and wanted more! So I bought it, and I don’t regret it!

A lot of the product reviews on here have already touched on the majority of the features of the scanner. So I will just quickly go over them. The best reasons to buy this scanner, over a flatbed / other scanner? Here’s why:

– Automatic color detection
– Automatic size / crop detection
– Automatic duplex / simplex detection
– Automatic rotate detection
– Multiple page sizes in a single scan (again, all detected)
– Automatic OCR (Optical Character Recognition) after scanning
– Automatic key / tag detection and sorting
– FAST!

While it’s a scanner, and it scans (duh!), it’s the corresponding software that makes it amazing. The scanner is nicely compact, with two scan heads inside of it, to be able to scan both sides of the page at the same time. But it’s the fact that once it’s scanned, it’s run through some filters to automatically detect and perform all of the above functions. And best of all, it’s all done before you’ve gotten your next stack ready to scan! And even better, since it comes complete with a built in ADF (Automatic Document Feeder), you can scan a whole stack of pages, rather than one at a time through a different scanner. The manual states that the ADF can hold 10 pages (I think). But I was able to get about 18 pages stacked together for it. So, that means that in one shot, it could scan 36 pages (double sides of the 18 physical pages). Awesome!

Now, there is one slight negative that I’ve been wrestling with a bit. Unfortunately, the included software (ScanSnap Organizer) does not allow you to set up the organizer to point to a network file share. This may not be a huge deal for some, but it does limit some of the capabilities of a larger, networked company (or home). Many people prefer to have all of the files on a centralized network, so that they could collaborate with others, or access the files on a variety of devices. ScanSnap does not allow this. However, it does allow some workarounds, which include creating a shortcut to the network folder, etc. But they’re a bit kludgy, and don’t work perfectly. In addition, if the folders are saved on a network drive, and indexed on that computer, ScanSnap will be unable to find the files through it’s search utility, even those it states that it’s using Windows built in search utility. This doesn’t make sense, as you could click on Start -> (Search), if running Windows 7, and find the networked files that way using your search criteria. Yet from within ScanSnap Organizer, it doesn’t find these files using the same search string. Oh well.

Either way, despite some minor limitations, this thing is great! It works great, it’s fast, you can buy consumable materials for it (pick / pad) after using it for awhile instead of having to buy another scanner, and the included software leaves the files in a standard Windows directory format, so you’re never locked into having to stick with a proprietary format for the rest of the life of your files.

If you’re thinking about buying it, stop thinking – BUY IT! It’s well worth it, and your uncluttered office (and wife!) will thank you.