I see that this subject has been mentioned many times here in the forums. I have just discovered DEVON and thought it would be perfect for what I need.
Then I discovered that my HP AIO scanner will only work with about 5 clicks to get it to scan, and won’t remember the settings.
I long for the days of the PaperPort for the Mac. Is there any such small compact page scanner out there that works on a Mac? I have about 10,000 pages of stuff to enter and the ideal situation would be the ability to just feed the scanner and have it dropped into DEVON for classification.
I was one of the early adopters of a PaperPort and liked it. But as time went one, PaperPort became less and less Mac-friendly and the quality seemed to drop.
Fujitsu’s ScanSnap for Mac fits your description, for me. It’s surprisingly compact on one’s desk, but is fast and works well with DTPO. I’ve already scanned thousands of pages. Fujitsu has replacements for parts that may wear out over time – some at the 50,000 page mark.
There are some compact portable scanners available, that resemble the original portable PaperPort. I think Canon, for one, makes them. But they will be slow, one page at a time; that can be acceptable for travel, of course. It would take a really long time to run 10,000 pages through one.
Yeah, we adopted the PaperPort in our office too. Had 3 of them. Then Visioneer decided to hose the Mac market and we were left with 3 units that quit working when the Mac OS was upgraded and their drivers weren’t.
So is the SnapScan a “feed and go” thing, or does it require multiple clicks to get it “setup” each time to start scanning into DEVON?
I also noticed on the Fujitsu spec page it says “TWAIN or ISIS™ applications cannot be used directly.” So do we run into the same issue when using the SnapScan software like with the HP?"
ScanSnap is probably the easiest scanner with a paper feeder to set up with DTPO.
Then all I have to do whenever I need to scan something is press the 'Scan" button on the ScanSnap. Then the paper in the feeder (up to 50 pages, one-sided or two-sided) is scanned and OCR’d and saved as a new PDF into the database.
Once in a while the paper feeder may jam. It’s easy to remove and reinsert the pages that haven’t yet been scanned (the software keeps track of how many pages have been scanned and has a ‘Continue’ button to resume).
I bought my ScanSnap because it does work so well with DTPO, and because it’s gotten consistently high reviews.
I’ve also got a CanoScan LIDE 500F that I use for bound material, and that also works well for me, although it requires manual changes of the material to be scanned and is slower.
Sigh. Sing it, brother. I have two of them in the garage in the “post on eBay someday” pile.
The Fujitsu ScanSnap is what the Visioneer PaperPort would have grown up to be had Visioneer not been run by idiots. I bought one for the office, gave it to my admin, bought another for my office, then bought a third for my home with my own money. It’s that good.
I purchased one of these when they first came out. They’re great. Never a problem for me. I do have several questions though.
I just purchased DTPO for the OCR and email import functions…and can I say AWESOME. I decided to check on ScanSnap driver updates because I have the original drivers and was hoping for a Universal binary update. There is a driver update I downloaded from the Fujitsu website…but it doesn’t specifically mention it’s a Universal binary…does anybody know?
Will installing the driver disable the “link” between DTPO and ScanSnap that was established when I installed DTPO?
Does the new driver allow me to uninstall the useless piece of software Adobe Reader (useless IMHO)? I tried uninstalling it once before, and ScanSnap quit working until I reinstalled it. Maybe I just missed a “tweak.” I never use it though, and wouldn’t mind taking it off my HD.
I’ve downloaded at least one new ScanSnap Manager update since getting my ScanSnap some months ago. I don’t know whether or not it’s Universal Binary, but it works well on my MacBook Pro.
You certainly don’t need to keep Adobe Reader. Perhaps it had been set as default in ScanSnap Manager’s Settings. But you may find Acrobat 7 Standard, which came with your ScanSnap, useful if you need to split long PDFs into segments, and reassemble them after scanning/OCRing the segments into DTPO. (IRIS set a 50-page limit on document sizes, under our license for the OCR engine in DTPO.)
I would also advise trashing the Adobe PDF plugin in (I think) Internet Plugins inside your user library. You don’t need it anyway with OS X 10.4.x – and it can cause problems with WebKit.
As I didn’t have Adobe Reader installed, I decided to check where it would be placed when installed.
More work than I expected.
I downloaded the current version Adobe Reader 8. Strange experience. It’s a multistage download process. And although I’ve got a fast broadband connection, the download took place at a third to a fourth of the speed I normally experience from other sites.
Finally got it installed. The Adobe Reader plugin is in YourBootVolume > Library > Internet Plug-ins/.
Out of curiosity I’ll leave the plugin in place for a while to see whether or not it conflicts with WebKit, as did earlier versions of the plugin. Hope I don’t regret my curiosity.
If you want a smaller travel scanner, buy the DocketPORT 465 (single-sided) or the 485 (double-sided) from Syscan. They just came out with a Bluetooth version. Both the 485 and Bluetooth are waaay more expensive than the 465, so if you just want something to haul around for occasional use, get the 465. DTPO recognizes it.
I’ve heard such great things about the Scansnap S500M that I am going to buy one too. Just for convenience, and scanning stuff while I’m procrastinating on the phone. I have a Fujitsu with Scantango software, but it’s a flatbed and an auto-feed and it’s way too big to have on my desk.
Does anyone know, however, if the Scansnap works with Adobe Acrobat Pro 8? It comes with Acrobat 7, but who cares. The new Acrobat is a whole new ballgame with amazing usability features, and finally task-oriented in approach. Plus its eye-candy.
I don’t know, but I saw a post on the MacInTouch Scanners forum that raises doubt. According to that poster, Acrobat 8 didn’t directly recognize PDFs produced by ScanSnap. The poster called Adobe and was told that the ScanSnap driver would have to be updated. Then he called Fujitsu and talked to a support guy who was totally clueless that ScanSnap had a Mac model. The Fujitsu guy gave him directions to download the latest, greatest ScanSnap driver, which turned out to be a .exe file (for Windows).
So I’ll stick with Acrobat 7 Standard (free with the ScanSnap) and my previous copy of Acrobat Pro 7 for a while.
Just for the record, one thing I do know about tech support for Scansnap Mac is ALWAYS USE THE LIVE CHAT online to get answers. They can answer Mac questions.
Fujitsu has always had its head up its cheeks about Mac support. They’re in for a rude awakening as the general public flocks to the Mac OS instead of enduring what’s on the horizon from Vista. I’m talking specifically about Small Business owners (Scansnap types) who will not be able to afford the upgrade of just about everything in order to run Vista, as well as the licensing issue which can wipe out your right to use the computer if it gets corrupted. Let’s see that happen at 2 AM on a Sunday morning when the project is due Monday.
Give it nine months.
With the cost of a new 64-bit WIN computer, upgraded software, new Vista, cheaper to buy a Mac and get best of both worlds.
BTW, I’ll check with Fujitsu about the new drivers.
A subsequent post by another person noted that a newer version of the ScanSnap Manager might work (I’m using that version). But I’ve seen no confirmation that one can send ScanSnap output directly to Acrobat 8.
I’m quite sure, however, that Acrobat 8 can open PDFs that were scanned and saved to the Finder. Otherwise, Adobe would have a real problem.
In my experience OCR by DTPO’s OCR engine is faster and more accurate than OCR in Acrobat 7. Haven’t tried OCR in Acrobat 8.
As to that exchange you cited on the Fujitsu chat, yeah, I remember that when it first came out and laughed myself. Then someone (MacFixit? macosxhints?) got some other guy and there were all sorts of links to Japanese sites and English workarounds. I saved them somewhere.
I suspect the upgrading of docs to Acro 8 is going to be a batch process. My Acro 7s dont automatically open in 8 even though I specified a global change.
I also FINALLY understand the difference between PDF/X ,and PDF/A with the “a” and “b” versions. And know now that for all future versions I want to save in PDF/A-1a.
Here’s the distinction:
PDF/X is the standard for high-end printing, digital advertising, etc. It requires that all fonts are embedded and all graphics are CMYK. It is now an ISO standard.
PDF/A-1a and PDF/A-1b are for archiving. Adobe says that these files will be readable for “hundreds of years.” That’s a direct quote from the Adobe engineer in charge of developing this standard. Fonts are embedded of course, but you cannot have any security on the file (it will remove it) and there’s one other thing I can’t remember.
The difference between PDF/A-1a and PDF/A-1b is:
PDF/A-1a: accessible (advanced)
PDF/A-1b: basic
I didn’t say to only use DTPO’S OCR. But I did run some tests with a couple of image-only PDFs using both DTPO and Acrobat 7 (Standard and Pro), and DTPO’s OCR engine was faster and more accurate on both test PDFs.
Sounds good. But I hope Acrobat hasn’t unleashed a Tower of Babel problem of compatibility problems with versions of PDF (which has been sort of a universal standard for a few years). If so, we’ll eventually adjust to it – as in the case of Microsoft’s new Word format – but there may be hassles for a time.
I have a lot of paper at home which I do not use very often and which I would like to "convert "to pdf, so this thread here is an interesting read.
It seems that the Fujitsu ScanSnap S500 is quite a good choice, does anyone of you know where’s the difference between the Windows model S500 and the Mac compatible model S500 M?
Ok, the colour of the housing, for sure, but the technical specs (speed, resolution) seem to be the same.
I’m asking as we have a PC and my PowerBook at home and it would be interesting to know if the S500 M could also be used with a PC and if the S500 could also be used with my PowerBook.
It seems that the bundled software is only delivered for one Operating System, but I suppose that I could download the drivers and use the 500 on my PowerBook?
Are there any restrictions then? For example, if I already had DT Pro Office (with built-in OCR) it could be interesting to take the S500 to have OCR on our PC too…
You can only use the S500 on a Mac with Scantango software at the moment. Scantango created the proprietary drivers. Fujitsu says that the S500M is not TWAIN or ISIS compliant.
