Short Version: Tax season is upon us, friends, and wouldn’t those 1099s and W2s floating hither and yon would be much more accessible if they were nestled deep inside a searchable PDF? Sure. That’s why Fujitsu invented the $295 ScanSnap S1300.
Features:
USB-powered
3.1 pounds
Automatic paper and de-skew detection
MSRP of $295
Pros:
Very small and light
Quick scans
Lot’s of good scanning software
Cons:
Some problems with text recognition
Mac software is a little wonky
Review:
The ScanSnap S1300 is supposed to be a mobile scanner. While I’m dubious that many of us need a portable scanner, the device is small enough to fit in a briefcase and is quite light – about 3 pounds. It is USB-powered — it requires two ports (one for power and one for data) however, which is a pain – and the top is collapsible for portability.
There is one button – Scan – and that’s it. You install the software, press the button, and rock out with single- or double-sided scanning. The scanner can grab eight double-sided pages per minute and it can hold card as well as standard stock. It scans a maximum of 600DPI in color and 1,200 dpi in grayscale.
Once a document is scanned Fujitsu’s ScanSnap service kicks in and asks you what you want to do – scan to file, to email, to Word, to Excel, or to CardIris, the card scanning service. This is where things get hairy.
I tested the scanning features using a standard spreadsheet I made in Excel and printed twice.
One I essentially ruined with a magic marker and the other I simply signed. I scanned both back in into Word and Excel.
As you see, all of the text scanned perfectly, except for where I adulterated it. While it’s obvious that a ruined page won’t scan correctly, I wanted to give it a bit of a challenge.
I then scanned them both into Word and Excel. The results are fairly heartening. The unadulterated version came out great in both Word and Excel and larger scanning jobs a I ran earlier also worked fine. The adulterated version – well, not so much. Obviously this is drastic example, but its food for thought if you’re planning in scanning handwritten notes.
Bottom Line
I’ve yet to become completely paper-free in my record-keeping but this would definitely be a step in the right direction. For quick jobs as well as spreadsheet and document storage this portable scanner did a more than adequate job.
Product Page: Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300
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