Showing posts with label receipt scanner. Show all posts
Showing posts with label receipt scanner. Show all posts

10/24/2012

Checkmate CMR430 POS MICR Check Reader RS232 RS485 Review

Checkmate CMR430 POS MICR Check Reader RS232 RS485
Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)
This is a very strange device. It comes with a power adapter and no place to plug the power adapter in. The instruction manual seems to imply there may be a cord (connector) and will be a sheet (that shows how to set it up), but no such connector cable was with it or sheet. The pin arrangement on the device seems at least to a certain degree, to be unique to the brand. If you want this particular device to work, you may end up buying a $50 cord. Even with that, how does it power up without a power port? I ended up getting a used Magtek from ebay and looking up the part numbers for the connector cable and power supply. It all came together and it can read checks.

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6/05/2012

NeatReceipts Mobile Tax Receipt Business Card Documents PC USB Scanner and Digital Filing System Review

NeatReceipts Mobile Tax Receipt Business Card Documents PC USB Scanner and Digital Filing System
Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)
If you are a business professional, stay as far away from Neat Receipts as possible. As someone who relies on the scanning of documents and receipts for tax purposes I can tell you that this product is terrible. It has a lot of bugs. I have used it on an a high powered computer with XP. This software invariably freezes up often when you convert documents and receipts to PDF. And if you are scanning documents for tax purposes, be prepared for a lot of headaches as you will have to go to task manager and end the program and then start it up again and then locate the last folder where you scanned the file. As if that weren't enough the whole scanning process is very slow when you convert to PDF. And it doesn't end there as you have to correct the database often as it reads the totals wrong very often. It will invariably add an extra digit or read the dollar sign as a digit. Then comes the most unforgivable fault. It charges you to update your software just so that you can use your hardware on a newer operating system such as Windows 7. This is the first company that I have ever encountered that charges just to patch your software to work with the current operating system. It's like Delta and United Airlines charging a hundred and fifty dollars fee just to make a change to your flight. When that happened I just simply ditched them and went with another airline. In that case it was less costly to just purchase another ticket from another airline to go back home. Rather than being a sucker and paying Neat Receipts this extortion fee I decided to purchase a new scanner from another company that DOES NOT CHARGE a fee just to patch the software. I also want to add that Neat Receipts did not respond to my e-mails in regards to the ridiculous price to purchase the software. I will never purchase another Neat Receipts product and hope that you will not make the same mistake that I made.

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2/16/2012

Certify Receipt Scanner with Certify Wallet Review

Certify Receipt Scanner with Certify Wallet
Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)
The Certify Receipt Scanner is a great solution for receipts. It interfaces with the Certify expense management product with one easy click. Once my receipt has been scanned, I can add it to an expense report and submit this to my boss online for review and approval.
When I received the scanner, I simply installed the software, plugged the scanner into my laptop, and started scanning receipts into Certify. Totally simple! Also, I am able to use the scanner with my other programs including Adobe Acrobat, the entire MS Office suite, as well as my various illustrator programs.

Certify is a complete expense management solution and this scanner is really simple and easy to use. If you are looking for a receipt scanner, this one is great.

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1/27/2012

Ambir Travelscan Pro 600 USB Sheetfed Scanner By Ambir Review

Ambir Travelscan Pro 600 USB Sheetfed Scanner By Ambir
Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)
Bot my first Travelscan Nov 2003 - I use is all the time and keep it right by my notebook computer. Still works good as the day I bot it.
- A few problems: It doesn't like staples. It requires cleaning if you try to scan dirty things or wet ballpoint pen ink. It can scratch photos (use the included sleeve to save your photos).
- Now I have an 2nd notebook computer and want the same convenience.
- If you wonder how to clean it, either follow manufacturer's directions or do what I do: Spray Windex on plain white sheet of paper as it's feeding into the scanner - thick paper works best 24+ lb.

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12/11/2011

NeatReceipts - Sheetfed scanner - Legal - 600 dpi - Hi-Speed USB Review

NeatReceipts - Sheetfed scanner - Legal - 600 dpi - Hi-Speed USB
Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)
I purchased the NeatReceipts scanner in order to help me get organized in preparation of my 2011 federal taxes. Within days of ordering it, I learned the current gov't administration is no longer allowing sales tax to be a federal deduction! Oh well, I'm still planning to use it to help me get organized.
Overall, I would rate the device a solid 4 out of 5 stars. It is easy to get started, easy to use, and is helpful when converting paper receipts and other documents into electronic media.
My two critiques of the device: 1. The feeding process is slower than I would like. Yes, I could have forked out an additional $200 dollars and got the desk version which is faster, but I did not want the bulk nor could I justify the additional $$. 2. The accuracy of the data captured and summed on the spreadsheet data base is off around 50% of the time (depending on the quality of the receipt being scanned). Dates are often incorrectly captured, tax and total dollar amounts, and many times, the vendor data is not captured at all.

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11/18/2011

Visioneer Strobe XP 300 Duplex Mobile Scanner PDF TWAIN (SXP3005D-WU) Review

Visioneer Strobe XP 300 Duplex Mobile Scanner PDF TWAIN (SXP3005D-WU)
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I am a 10 year user of the Visioneer Strobe line of scanners. When my first one died, I purchased the cool new XP100. It was cool, but didn't work very well at all and I went back to the strobe. Now it was time to get a new scanner -- the XP 300. Sound promising, but I found they removed all kinds of features and there is a flaw in the paper return mechanism that they know about, but keep shipping the product. Firt, the paper return. When you push it to the open position, it is supposed to return the paper to you, but instead, it just keeps feeding the paper out the back rather than back to you. Visioneer reports this is a known problem, but still promote this feature in their manuals and marketing. As for the drivers, when you use the One Touch 4.0 driver, it uses a very old version of the Adobe Acrobat conversion utility (v.1.2). The issue with this is that when Paperport picks up the scan, it thinks all scans come in at 150dpi and 24bit color. The problem is that unless the image is at least 200dpi, Paperport won't let you manipulate the image in page view mode (rotate individual pages, despeckle, straighten, etc.). Also, they removed the ability to set the delay to begin automatically scanning. The issue is that it begins to scan so fast that it misfeed the top couple of inches of the paper and causes distorted scans at the top. Further, it is extrememly hard (as on the XP100) to get a piece of paper lined up quickly. With the old Stobes, the paper path was conducive to quickly inserting paper, but with the XP300, you have to align it perfectly or the paper guides snag the paper.
All of this creates too much frustration for me. I was advised to downgrade to the XP200, which retains all of the features and functionality of yesteryear. They really took two steps backwards with this product. It is a shame!

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11/03/2011

IRIScan Executive 2 Review

IRIScan Executive 2
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IRIScan Executive 2 is a compact, portable, sheet fed, color scanner. IRIScan is USB powered, thus making it easy to use anywhere. The Mac version includes the OCR software Readiris Pro 11 for scanning text documents and photographs; and Cardiris 4 for scanning business cards..
I installed IRIScan on a Mac Book G4 running Mac OS X 10.5.2. Following the installation instructions I installed the Readiris Pro 11 software then plugged the IRIScan into a USB port. I next calibrated the scanner using the provided calibration sheet and was all set to begin. I chose a text document, fed it into the scanner and waited. The scanned result was a blank page I tried again, same result. I chose another document and once again it produced a blank page. The Quick Start Guide was of little use. I checked the settings and tried several more times but nothing happened. Because it was late in the evening I put it away and decided I would check it out another day.
My next experience began the same way, so I opened up the electronic 128 page User's Manual. I spent two hours reading the manual, which didn't have any troubleshooting information and no instructions relating to my problem, making minor changes in the settings, and trying to scan. Finally success! However, I don't really know what made the difference.
The first document I scanned had several inaccuracies in the final product. The User's Manual explains that there are so many fonts and styles and sometimes there are extra dots left on the page and the OCR has trouble interpreting the text, but there is a Learn button in the program that will allow it to learn the unrecognized font or letters.

I continued scanning several documents from different sources. They all scanned word-for-word perfect. One had a format discrepancy. A nice feature of this software is all documents can be saved to any text or word processing application and be edited and adjusted.
I was happy with the text scanning results and wanted to try photos. The photo scans were a complete failure. The black and white pictures were like negatives and the color photos were blotchy with lots of white space. I gave up on photos and decided to install the Cardiris software.
Cardiris installed quickly, I connected the IRIScan, opened the software and nothing. It would not work. It was then that I discovered an update for Cardiris which I quickly downloaded and installed. It connected with the IRIScan immediately and I was ready to try scanning business cards. What a great tool. The business cards are accurately scanned and can be saved in the Cardiris database, the contact information can also be added to your Address Book. The information can be sent to applications such as Microsoft Entourage, New Contact, Microsoft Excel and others. Cardiris was very accurate in reading the cards and inserting the information in the correct places in Address Book even when scanning a "busy" card.
I still wasn't able to scan photos, so during my next session with IRIScan I checked the website for information but there is no help for Mac posted. I finally decided to email support. I received a reply back in about two hours. They had me re-calibrate. Afterwards I tried scanning black & white photos, they weren't much better. Then I changed the setting from black & white to grayscale and tried again. This setting change corrected the problem with black & white photos and the resulting scans were great, but i still didn't have a solution for the color photos.
I emailed support again late at night and had an answer in the morning. This time they said to change one of the settings from Automatic to Custom. It worked! Now i can produce beautiful scanned copies of color photographs.
The software included with IRIScan is definitely not written for Mac OS X . I found the interface to be quite awkward and the supplied user information inadequate. However, the support response was quick and courteous.
You are able to save your text scans in many different editable files, PDF, word processing, text edit, email, etc. The Windows version of IRIScan includes a photo editing program which would have been useful in the Mac version. I had to crop my photos after saving them to get rid of the extra black background surrounding the picture.
The Windows version also includes a translation program that will automatically translate from one language to another. I was able to successfully scan in a German document but the translation feature does not exist in the Mac version.
The IRIScan is lightweight, small and portable with USB connection.. You are able to scan full page documents, business cards and photos with up to 600 DPI. Colors are bright and text is clear. The speed is slow.
Though my initial start up with IRIScan was frustrating I now can scan documents, photos, and business cards almost flawlessly. Because of its size and portability it is a good tool to take along wherever you may travel. If you are considering purchasing an IRIScan for a Mac you may want to look at the IRIScan Express 2. The additional price for the Executive 2 includes software that is for Windows only.

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9/23/2011

NeatReceipts 4 Plus USB Mobile Office Scanner and Digital Filing System Review

NeatReceipts 4 Plus USB Mobile Office Scanner and Digital Filing System
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I was very happy with this until one day it decided to stop working. And then there is no support, no responses to email support requests, no online help, no suggestions. I wonder how they stay in business.

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9/16/2011

CSSN A6 Duplex ID card Scanner Scanshell 800DXN Review

CSSN A6 Duplex ID card Scanner Scanshell 800DXN
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Useless. Says it comes with all this software... comes with a cardboard circle telling you to download software online. No instructions at ALL. Support website listed no longer exists. Tried to download software, requires a license key, which of course was not included... neither customer service nor tech support was able to provide me with one, so couldn't use almost any of the software. Neither attempted to be very helpful. Returned it unused out of sheer frustration the same day I got it. Who needs a $400 paperweight? AVOID CSSN

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8/15/2011

NeatReceipts Professional Mobile Receipt and Document Scanner and Software Combination Version 3.0 Review

NeatReceipts Professional Mobile Receipt and Document Scanner and Software Combination Version 3.0
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This thing is amazing. In an attempt to become organized I have been trying out new software and methods lately. After some research I decided to give this little gizmo a try. I figured if I hated it I could always return it. No such chance! I'm in love with this thing.
Anyway here it goes.... This thing slices, it dices, it does it all. It's so easy to learn that anyone can get the hang of it.
It has three sections. One for receipts, one for 'documents' and one for business cards. Each section lets me create folders. I created folders like 'Ty's Tax Write-offs' and 'Electronics' and 'Home Improvement' in the receipts section.
I click on a 'Folder' and place the receipt in the scanner and hit scan. It pulls the receipt through. It recognizes over 1500 major retailers like Best Buy, Target, etc. If it doesn't recognize it, you type in the business name. Here's a cool feature; the next time you scan a receipt from that company the thing recognizes the receipt and names it by the correct business.
It picks out the tax, the total amount on the receipt and then reads all the remaining text and it indexes it.
This means that if I bought my ipod and scanned it I can type in 'ipod' or 'apple' and it finds the correct receipt. It's awesome. I have started scanning in all of our receipts past and present. Before we visited our accountant I scanned in all of our tax write-offs and ran a report on numbers.
You can click on a particular receipt and it brings up a copy of it. You can print it, pdf it, etc.
You can search by category, business name, amounts, anything.
The documents section is handy too. I'm scanning in all our loan documents, home documents, legal documents, extended warranty information, etc.
The program is amazing and in my opinion that is really what you're paying for is the program. The scanner is pretty great too though. It pulls through receipts of any size and shape with little problem.
Essentially what you're getting is an amazing high tech filing cabinet for $200.
To those that gave it low ratings... it's technology. No it's not perfect, but it's pretty darned nice for the price. I scanned in probably 60 receipts in the first hour and I was just learning how to use it. I would have spent that much time just filing them in a filing cabinet. I had few problems and overall it recognized probably 85% of the vendors and prices correctly.

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NeatReceipts Version 3.0 is the easiest way for individuals and small businesses to manage expenses, prepare for taxes, create expense reports, and scan business cards. But it not all just for business--you can also use Neat Receipts for scrapbooking, archiving family recipes, and other family activities. NEAT Receipts is a portable scanner and software solution that accurately scans receipts, documents and business cards. Patented technology scans items and captures data from the printed documents, then automatically organizes into a database.
Organize Your Paper, Simplify Your Life
Maintain accurate records of all your expenses. Analyze your spending by vendor, date, project, client and more.

Take Pain Out of Tax Prep - IRS-accepted! Because your NEAT Receipts scans are IRS-accepted digital copies, you'll be incredibly organized for taxes. You can even export to TurboTax.

Create A Document DatabaseEasily manage documents for your business, home or both. Quickly find information with keyword search. Create PDF files or convert printed documents to editable text.

Digitize Your Business CardsGetting business cards into Outlook®, your PDA, or other contact management solution id a breeze. NEAT Receipts automatically extracts key data with stunning accuracy.

Automate Your Expense ReportsWith all your receipts in crisp, digital format, creating professional expense reports is fast and easy. The perfect tool for business travelers!

Exports data to Microsoft Outlook, Excel, Word, Money, Quickbooks, Quicken, TurboTax, TaxCut, csv, vCard, Plaxo, ACT!, HTML and more.

How NeatReciepts Works
NeatScan Technology Using advanced Optical Character Recognition, NeatScan technology (patent pending) extracts key information from your receipts, such as date, amount, payment method, expense category and vendor. If you scan in business cards, NeatScan automatically pulls out information like name, company, address, phone numbers, email address etc.
NeatScan actually learns to associate an expense category (such as meals or lodging) to a particular vendor (brands such as Starbucks or Hilton) so you don't have to type in the information each time. This ensures that your financial records are filed consistently and with minimal effort.
Each user of NeatReceipts Professional 3.0 receives the NeatReceipts scanner--a lightweight, portable, durable color scanner. Our software was designed with this scanner in mind and offers the following unmatched functionality:
Auto-sizes any scanned receipt or document.
Auto-crops and auto-rotates any scanned receipt or document.
Scan widthwise or lengthwise -- the image will appear upright in image viewer.
Powered by USB port, so no plug needed (it's truly portable!).
Scans quickly and easily without opening and closing scanner lid (flatbed).
Small, portable and lightweight. Perfect for the office, the home and the road!
What's New with NeatReceipts 3.0
Scan to PDF - In just a few easy steps, you can convert paper documents into PDF format.
Searchable PDF - Easily turns paper into searchable PDF files and allows you to edit text via copy / paste function.

Smart SortingTM - Allows users to scan multiple document types using batch-type processing and automatically organizes each document type.

Keyword Search - Search through receipts, business cards and documents for specific keywords that appear in scanned text.

Convert to Editable Text - Convert printed documents to text that you can edit.

Windows Vista Compatible - We are now fully compatible with Windows Vista.

What's in the Box Scanner, carrying case, stand


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8/11/2011

NeatReceipts 4 Plus USB Mobile Office Scanner and Digital Filing System for Windows XP, Vista and 7 PC Users, Includes Travel Case, NeatWorks Version 4.0, PDF Transformer Software and More - Export to Excel, Word, TurboTax and Quickbooks Review

NeatReceipts 4 Plus USB Mobile Office Scanner and Digital Filing System for Windows XP, Vista and 7 PC Users, Includes Travel Case, NeatWorks Version 4.0, PDF Transformer Software and More - Export to Excel, Word, TurboTax and Quickbooks
Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)
I loved the concept of scanning and storing my receipts, but I was skeptical and anxious that this scanner would truly suit my needs....I pictured it becoming another "toy" that didn't quite work out as hoped. To fuel my concern, there are some negative reviews of previous versions of the scanner including the fact that you have to edit some information (including Vendor name, amount, etc).
I bought it anyway and I am thrilled with how it's working. I have found the scans to be about 90% accurate. The editing, when necessary, is quick and easy.
I am sure that some "high tech" people will find some things to criticize how the software works and exports to various programs. However, I don't always know how what tax form to file certain receipts under anyway, so I don't get fancy --I just file all business receipts in a folder and will print out for my accountant. In other words, the basic functioning works great.
I'm terrible with receipts and paperwork, and this gives me a place to store everything and not lose it! This is a HUGE time saver for me and I am de-cluttering my life! I scan everything that I don't want to lose.
I love this product!

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8/05/2011

Neat Co. Neat Desk - Macintosh Review

Neat Co. Neat Desk - Macintosh
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I really really really wanted to like this scanner. I received the unit on Friday and had planned on spending Saturday scanning in all my documents and then relaxing on Sunday. I am sooooo disappointed with the quality of the scans and software when scanning in documents like car insurance or doctors statements that I am sending it back.
The main issue is that the manufacture's web site states that the scanner can scan grayscale and B/W documents in at a rate of 25 PPM. This is an outright lie on one level and a stretching of the truth on another level.
First let me start off with the truth stretching. The scanner is very fast while scanning in B/W images but it did not seam like it was 25 PPM fast so I timed it using a stop watch. I was able to scan in a page (two sides) in 6.4 seconds that's 10 PPM not 25! As Fujitsu rates their ScanSnap S1500M at 20 PPM whether you scan one or two sides, I assumed I would see the NeatDesk scanner do the same. Thinking that they (NeatCo) must have been playing with some slick marketing numbers when they came up with the 25 PPM rate I figured I would see the 10 PPM rate double to 20 if I only scanned one side of a page instead of two. I was very disappointed to see that the rate did not change between one or two sides. Normally I would think that 10 PPM is a very quick scan, which it is, but it is more than half as fast as advertised.
That was the truth stretching now onto the lie.
My main complaint is not the scan rate of B/W or grayscale scans. I would be very happy with a 10 PPM grayscale document scanner. The problem is that the scanner / software package does NOT scan in grayscale. The scanner DOES send the images to my iMac in GRAYSCALE and then the horrible software converts it to B/W. Yes you heard me right! They take a perfectly legible (8 bit, 256 levels of black) grayscale image and turn it into a very poor quality B/W (2 bit, 2 color) illegible image. I can't for the life of me understand why they would do such a thing.
If you are only interested in scanning in receipts, which by their nature are only black and white, then you might be happy with the software. Unfortunately about 95% of the stuff I wanted to scan is various types of documents / kids school work / insurance papers / medical records etc. If you have ever looked at these kinds of documents you will notice that most of them have shaded areas on the page that highlight important text. These shaded areas, along with the text, usually become unreadable when converted to B/W. Not only can I not able to read them the OCR can't detect them either. It makes me angry to see a scan show up on the screen that looks GREAT only to have it destroyed a few seconds later by the software as it converts it to black and white.

I contacted NeatCo about the ability to scan to grayscale. Their support person was very nice and polite; unfortunately she confirmed for me that the software does not support grayscale. Her response is at the end of the review.You may think that I should just scan in color. Unfortunately scanning in color is very slow. A color scan took 15 seconds for a single sided page and 27.5 seconds for a single 2-sided page (weird that color scans do double the time for 2 sides unlike the BW option). At this rate it puts color scans in at 2 PPM not the 8.5 reported on their web site. At 2 PPM it will take me several hundred hours to scan everything I need to scan.
The quality of color scans is very good if you are willing to wait 30 seconds for a single 2-sided scan.
Here are my timing results for the BW, color, 1 side and 2 sided document. All times are for a single sheet of paper.
Page Sides |Color Mode |Time to Scan|Total time to scan & OCR 1st page
1 |Color| 15 sec|52 sec
2 |color| 27 sec| 1:15 (m:sec)
1 |BW| 6.4 sec| 36 sec
2 |BW| 6.5 sec| 40 secJust for reference I have a late 2008 24'' iMac with 2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo and 4 gigs of ram. I have also updated the NeatDesk software to their latest version as of 10/30/2009 which is 2.1.9
I have taken some screen shots of the grayscale images before they are converted to BW and will try to post them to Amazon. In the screen shots you can see that the initial image looks very nice. If NeatCo fixes this issue the package might be worth a look.Here is the NeatCo response to my grayscale question.
Response (Campbell) - 10/29/2009 08:45 PM
Hi Chris,
There's no way to set to scan in a gray scale at this time. I will put in a feature request to our developers so they can include this capability in future releases.Question Reference #091029-000359
---------------------------------------------------------------
Product Level 1: NeatDesk for Mac
Date Created: 10/29/2009 08:45 PM
Last Updated: 10/29/2009 08:45 PM
Status: Solved


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You've got information trapped on paper. We've got the key. Because when your information is free, so are you free to store it, organize it, even edit and reuse it. Whatever works for you. NeatDesk for Mac is a desktop scanner and digital filing system that lets you scan and organize receipts, business cards and documents. Neat's patented technology identifies and extracts the important information and automatically organizes it for you. Transform receipts into expense reports, business cards into Address Book contacts, and create searchable PDF files from any document. You can even export information to PDF, Quicken and Excel. NeatDesk for Mac lets you manage the paper at home, at work and on the go.

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7/23/2011

Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300 Deluxe Bundle 600 DPI x 600 dpI Scanner (PA03603-B015) Review

Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300 Deluxe Bundle 600 DPI x 600 dpI Scanner (PA03603-B015)
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The S1300 is definitely expensive, and it may seem unnecessary given that there are a lot of multifunction printers out there. I have to say though, that the software for it is awesome and that it has been an *incredible* time saver.
To give you a little background, I use to have a multi-function HP printer that had a flat-bed scanner attached. It had the potential to be decent, but the software SUCKED.
Every time I loaded a page on to my old multi-function printer, it would first have to take a test scan, then I'd have to preview the scanned page, and only then could I scan the document for real.
Each scan took about 10 seconds... It was agonizingly slow. So 10 seconds for the preview, a minute or two to change some settings, and then 10 seconds for the actual scan. I'd have change the settings for each page too. It was a serious pain. To scan a 10 page document would take about half an hour. Once the scans were done, I'd have to occasionally touch some of the images up in photoshop. That could take even longer.
Also the HP software runs a lot of useless background processes that steal RAM even when your computer isn't scanning stuff. It noticeably slowed down my CPU.
I can't speak for all the different brands out there, perhaps it was just HP. But unless you have a document feeder on your multifunction printer, you are going to be scanning one page at a time, and its going to take a while to get through something as short as a 10 page document.
My other beef with multifunction printers is that they often don't function well as printers either. The ink for the inkjet kinds are expensive, and I've never owned an inkjet printer that lasted more than 3 years.
I've found that laser printers last a lot longer, and their toner is cheap, but to get a multi-function laser / scanner with a document feeder, you are looking at spending a LOT of money.
Anyway, this scanner on the other hand, chews through documents. I put the 10 page document in the scanner, and press the "SCAN" button. That's it. From the moment I press the "Scan" button, to the moment that I have a useable, scanned pdf, it takes about 90 seconds.
The Fujitsu software automatically boots up (I don't have to actually run the program at all) and as I scan the documents it asks me where to save the file. The files are automatically adjusted for contrast and brightness (its not perfect, but its pretty good) and are saved as pdfs.
Another really cool feature is that the Fujitsu software can automatically convert scanned images with text into SEARCHABLE documents, something completely outside of the capabilities of my old scanning software. I open up the Scansnap program, type in a couple key words, and very quickly find the documents that I'm looking for. The search functionality was in the end what convinced me to buy this scanner.
Because of this scanner I don't ever fax things anymore. Its quicker to scan and email documents now, which saves a lot of time, and also makes it much easier to keep track of my correspondence with people.
The only downside to this scanner is that it quite obviously can't scan images from a book per say, like a flat bed scanner can. It can only scan loose paper.
I haven't found that to be a major downside yet, as over the past several months I haven't actually needed to scan an image from a book. I can see how for certain people (someone writing a dissertation), a flatbed scanner would be essential.
The one other thing I would mention is that I don't think that the Rack2file deluxe bundle is worth it. A friend of mine has the S1500 and it doesn't really seem to add a lot of useful functionality. If you're good with computers, know how file paths work, and have your own system of organization, you don't really need it.

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7/19/2011

NeatReceipts Mobile Scanner and Digital Filing System Review

NeatReceipts Mobile Scanner and Digital Filing System
Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)
I upgraded from the Neat Receipts 3.0 scanner to the Neat Works 4.0 scanner package recently. I like the Neat Receipts 3.0 scanner, but the upgrade is really worth it.
For starters the quick scan center with the new version takes less system resources and it allows the user to enter receipts in batches, which is efficient. I was able to scan a pile of 277+ receipts in one night, while watching television. Pretty painless and easy to do without requiring a lot of attention, so you can make good use of downtime while you're watching TV / relaxing, etc.
The best part of this is not the physical scanner, it's the software. It allows me to look up previous receipts in a jiffy, and lets me shred / toss old receipts. The physical scanner is nice too though. It's definitely not photo quality, but that's not why I bought this package. The scanner works fairly well / quickly for most receipts, a bit better than the silver version even though they're supposedly the same hardware. I find with the older version the USB would fail to be recognized by Windows XP, but no such problems with the new version.
If you want to organize your receipts and keep good records, I highly recommend this package! It's the one of the few products that actually does what it claims to do. Excellent product.
Future improvement wishes would be speedier scans, but that is limited by the scanning technology and hardware specifications.
FYI - yes it will sometimes have difficulty scanning very light receipts, but that is to be expected with a scanner like this. If one expects photo quality scanner this is not the one to buy. A photo quality scanner will take too long to scan receipts. This scanner captures receipts information pretty well but it does not produce a photo replica of the receipt.
Also, the other reviewer mentioned problems with USB. Quite often that is a problem with Windows, especially on a Windows system that's been run for quite sometime and with a lot of other accessories installed. I installed this on 3 of my windows XP systems and they all worked fine. If I ever have a problem I would reinstall Windows as Windows tends to get cluttered with hardware profiles and have problems with USB devices.


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NeatReceipts works where you work - weighing in at less than a pound and powered by USB, NeatReceipts is the perfect tool at work, at home or on the go.NeatReceipts helps you free the information that's trapped in your documents, so you can organize, store, secure and activate it.Scan receipts for expense reports, digitize business cards, prep for taxes (IRS accepts NR scans in lieu of actual receipts!), manage documents.You can even export data, scan to PDF, use Smart Sorting to help organize your files, and convert your scans to editable text.

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7/18/2011

NeatDesk Desktop Scanner and Digital Filing System Review

NeatDesk Desktop Scanner and Digital Filing System
Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)
I purchased a NeatDesk scanner awhile ago to answer a growing need at home for more robust scanning. I'm one of those people that needs to have everything neatly filed away even though I will probably never see it again. I also religiously enter all my personal receipts and track my personal finances in detail. This seemed the perfect product to answer both needs.
I was used to the Fujitsu ScanSnap S510 that I have at work, but in addition to an arm they also wanted a leg. The price of the NeatDesk is substantially less (about 40% for what I paid), and the promotional material for the scanning software was really sexy. So I clicked buy.
After a few days, my conclusion is that although it could be an outstanding product with a couple of tweaks, it's just not ready for primetime. This may be the case of a small company working on tight margins with a product that got too big too fast. It remains to be seen whether or not they can keep up with their new-found popularity.
Here's the dirt:
Hardware:
Good Stuff
- Attractive design.
- You can click the hardware "Scan" button all day, but you don't have to file your scans until you want to.
Bad Stuff
- No adjustable paper guide. Unless you hold it as it's sucked in, every single document is crooked.
- Not enough paper support. Creased documents (like a bill) flop back and aren't grabbed properly.
- I found the slot for receipts and documents to not match any receipt or document I had... Nice slot for business cards though.
- The output tray is not attached to the scanner body. Huh?
- It came with the grim spectre of having to clean and calibrate your scanner. You don't have to clean or calibrate the ScanSnap, although the ScanSnap does include "consumables", so maybe it's a tie.
Software:
Good Stuff
- Recognizes dates, subtotal, sales tax, and credit card used. This alone almost makes the product an overall winner and definitely put it on top for scanning receipts.
- As mentioned above, you don't have to file away your scans until you want to.
- Extremely fast search.
- It's pretty--yeah, that's important.
Bad Stuff
- Always takes the scan from the front but from the sheet in the back, which may be more intuitive for the beginner, but also means that a stack of double-sided sheets will go into the software backwards (page 2, 1, 4, 3, etc.) so you'll have to sort your document before and after scanning. Maybe I just haven't figured this one out, but it does seem like they emphasis multiple single-page documents vs. one multiple-page document.
* UPDATE: I figured out that you have to put the document in face up and everything is scanned in from the last page to the front. Your physical document will come out sorted, and the software will reverse the order of the scanned pages for you so the electronic document is correct.
- Does not auto-rotate to fix crooked problem caused by not having adjustable paper guides.
- Does not do auto-color detection--it's either all black-and-white or all color and you must choose. Those "Scan" and "PDF" buttons on the front are great, but you have to go into the Quick Scan application to set up how everything will be scanned first, defeating the convenience.
- Viewing the documents that are in the library is difficult. Should have a simple hand-tool for dragging and allow multiple documents to be open at one time.
- Moving data around the library is laborious.
- Software installs SQL Server Express, which takes up system resources and at least for me causes the program to not want to start up (try again message a couple of times before starting). Sure the search results come back very quickly, but at what cost? As a developer, I actually already had SQL Server Express installed, but it went ahead and installed another instance... Not very nice.
- Lots of opportunities to categorize data, but searching for the categories is difficult. For example, to see what you marked for follow up click "Advanced Search", click "Looking at..." and select "Action Type", click "Selected in the List", click and check box that says "Follow Up". It's more work finding out what's marked "follow up" than to actually follow up.
- The heavy emphasis is on recording receipts for expenses that will be reimbursed by your employer or be tax deductible. So what happens when I have a pay stub for consulting work? I have to file it as a document where I can't tag it's dollar amount, can't tag it as 1099 income, and it can't be exported to Quicken. That's one of the main reasons I got the scanner.
- Categories for receipts are very limited. Need a split? You'll have to do it yourself when you get to Quicken if you can remember what the receipt was for. Sales tax is always exported as an over-generalized "State Tax".
How it Could (Easily) be Made Great
- Package in or sell another paper guide that is adjustable. You can use the same snap-in style that is used for the receipt/business card guide.
- Add one inch to the pull-out paper support.
- Update the software to take scans from the face down position first on double-sided scans. Take the scan from the face down position only in single-sided scans.
* UPDATE: Even though this way seems more intuitive to me, the way the software does it is okay (see update above).
- Add in auto-color detection and auto-rotate so that scans always come out right. If Neat Co can do awesome text-detection, they could do this.
Conclusion
Seems to be an innovative company so I'll keep it in anticipation of at least the software updates.

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Scanner,Neat Receipts Desk,USB 2.0

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