I bought this scanner almost two years ago after moving house and having to deal with three large metal filing cabinets full of paper (about 30 linear feet of packed hanging files). After nearly breaking my back transporting them to a storage facility, I swore that I would never do it again: I would digitize everything.

My main requirements of a scanner were (1) it must be able to feed more than one page at a time, (2) it must scan in duplex and, (3) it won’t cost me a fortune. I did my research and the Fujitsu ScanSnap S510 pretty popped to the top of a very short list.

All I can say is WOW! This little workhorse of a scanner has been everything I could hope for and more. I put the entire contents of those filing cabinets through it (probably 20,000+ sheets of paper) and have since then scanned and stored every piece paper that has come across my desk and several shelves of books whose pages I liberated from their bindings (probably another 10,000 sheets). The scanner paid for itself in no time with just the storage fees I saved on those files.

Given the load I’ve put on this cute little scanner, I’ve expected it to die on me at almost any moment. If so, I would happily have shelled out another $500 for a new one without hesitation. But this little guy just keeps on scanning day after day without complaint.

The only slightly negative thing I can say about it is that even though it does a fairly good job of scanning photographs, it doesn’t really match up against a flat-bed photo scanner for quality.

If you quickly want to digitize a lot of photographs and quality isn’t of paramount importance, then the S500 will do a fine job. But, if you want to get the best possible scans of your old photographs and don’t mind spending the time needed to do so, then I suggest you get yourself a good flatbed photo scanner – I’ve been using an Epson 3490 for well over a year with no complaints.

All I can say is that this little scanner is amazing. It works at the speed I need and the software is as simple as I like. I am a semi-geek, but I like user simple software. The less buttons I press, the happier I am. I have to do too much of that at work, so at home, I wanted something simpler.

I had tried the Plustek SmartOffice PS282 Duplex Scanner, which has the same body type, but the quality and the software was terrible. The speed was slow, even at their simplest, and the quality of the PDFs were not acceptable. It could not even get the colors right on photos, whereas the ScanSnap does excellent copies. It cost me an extra $100, but if it lasts me long enough to digitize my library of books and files, then, it was well worth it. I told HP to move over because so far, all of their equipment, from scanners to PCs have left me dissappointed.

If you need a simple to use, and fast scanning capabilites, then this is the scanner for you.

I save every piece of paper that comes in the mail or crosses my desk. I have phone bills dating back to when I first got a phone line, and that was quite some years ago — we won’t go into exactly how many. With the stacks and boxes of paper accumulating, and the filing cabinets overflowing, I decided that the only way out was to scan things to PDF and shred them.

I quickly learned that scanning double-sided, multi-page bank statements using a cheap flatbed scanner was going to relegate me to paper purgatory for the rest of my life.

When I found the ScanSnap, I was overjoyed. Not only does it scan both sides of each page in one pass, not only does it have a multi-sheet feeder that rarely misfires, not only does it scan documents into PDF format, but it makes the PDFs searchable, thanks to an excellent OCR software package that comes with the scanner.

Pros:

– Lightning fast scanning (pages go through the scanner very quickly)

– OCR software is great

– Save as PDF, import into Word or PowerPoint with the click of your mouse

– Compact design means it takes up very little space on your desk

– Very easy to clear jams or misfeeds when they occur

Cons:

– Sometimes mis-feeds when processing a large stack of paper

– Cannot handle different-size sheets within the same batch

– Post-processing is slow (your mileage will vary depending on your computer, but it takes the software on my computer a good 20 minutes to post-process a 15-page scan before I can save it to PDF)

Overall, this scanner is a truly remarkable piece of technology and I highly recommend it to everyone who wants to go paperless.