Tips To Learn How To Go Paperless | DocumentSnap Paperless Blog

Throughout the year, I am reminded that DocumentSnap has the best readers on the entire interwebs. I am extremely grateful and honoured[1] that many of you choose to support the site by purchasing going-paperless products through my links. For that, I thank you.

One unintended benefit is that I can run some reports and see what the most popular products are. I can’t see what you purchased, but I can see what products are sold in an anonymous, aggregate format.

Many people found last year’s list interesting, so here are the most paperless going-paperless products, eBooks, and DocumentSnap products that were purchased via my links in 2011.

Physical Products

The top 10 physical products for 2011 are:

1. Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300. For the second year in a row, this is the most popular scanner. It hits the sweet spot of price, speed, and scans duplex and has a great document feeder. My review here.
2. Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500. Fujitsu’s powerful Windows desktop scanner. It is fast, holds a bunch of paper, and people swear by it.
3. Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500M. The Mac version of the S1500.
4. Fujitsu ScanSnap S1100. Fujitsu’s new portable scanner that was released in 2011. My review here.
5. Fellowes W–11C Shredder. Fellowes’ 11-sheet cross-cut shredder.
6. Belkin F5L009 Network USB Hub. A network USB hub. Some people have reported good results using their scanner over the network with one of these.
7. Canon imageFORMULA P–150. Canon’s popular portable scanner with TWAIN support and Evernote integration.
8. Fellowes B–161C Shredder. Fellowes’ 16-sheet cross-cut shredder.
9. NeatDesk. Neat’s desktop scanner with receipt categorization software.
10. Doxie Go. The newest Doxie portable scanner that lets you scan without being plugged into a computer. My review here.

EBooks

The top 10 eBooks are:

1. Evernote®: The unofficial eBook to capturing everything and getting things done. Daniel Gold’s excellent (and recently updated) ebook about using Getting Things Done with Evernote. My review is here.
2. Evernote Essentials. If you want to master Evernote, this book by Brett Kelly is hard to beat. My review is here.
3. Take Control Of Your Paperless Office. An extremely comprehensive guide to going paperless by Joe Kissell. My review is here.
4. Take Control Of Getting Started With Devonthink 2. I point people to this guide when they ask me about Devonthink. Also by the ridiculously prolific Joe Kissell.
5. Take Control of Backup Up Your Mac. The name says it all. What do you know, it’s by Joe Kissell!
6. Take Control Of PDFPen 5. PDFPen is a great Mac application for working with PDFs, and this is a good guide if you want to master it. By Michael E. Cohen.
7. Take Control of TextExpander. I use TextExpander all day every day, and this guide will help you become a TextExpander ninja. Also by Michael E. Cohen.
8. It’s All Too Much. Not about going paperless specifically, but it is a great book by Peter Walsh about clutter in general and dealing with the emotional aspects.

DocumentSnap Products

2011 was the first year that I created some of my own products and courses. In case you are curious, here are the most popular ones:

1. The Unofficial ScanSnap Setup Guide – Mac. The Mac version of the guide won the top spot, but not by as much as I had expected.
2. Paperless Document Organization Guide – Specialist. As you can tell, this is by far the most popular version of the Paperless Document Organization Guide.
3. The Unofficial ScanSnap Setup Guide – Windows. The Windows version of the popular ScanSnap guide.
4. Paperless Document Organization Guide – Practitioner. The version of the Paperless Document Organization Guide without the videos or Paperless Action Plan recordings.
5. Paperless Action Plan. In October and November I ran a month long course all about going paperless. It was popular, so look for it to make a return soon.
6. Paperless Document Organization Guide – Master. The “premium” version of the Paperless Document Organization Guide that includes the recordings from the last Paperless Action Plan.
7. Going Paperless Jumpstart Teleseminar. In February, I did a call with a group of DocumentSnap readers to answer questions. The recording is available for purchase.
8. The Unofficial ScanSnap Setup Guide – Combo. Includes both the Mac and Windows versions, for you cross-platform folks.

Thank you again for supporting the site in 2011, and I hope you find this list as interesting as I did. This year, look for more content on a wider range of scanners, and more how-to information.

If you have any questions or thoughts about this list, head on down to the comment section.

(Photo by johnrawlinson)

Join the forum discussion on this post

For those of you that have been following DocumentSnap for a while, you may have noticed that this year has seen a slight shift in the way I try to help you go paperless.

In addition to the free blog, newsletter, and video content, I have released some targeted guides on specific topics that I have heard readers have had some trouble with.

I have had fantastic feedback on these guides, but I’ve always wished I could do more to help more of you actually get started on your paperless project.

With this in mind, I’m happy to announce that my final project for 2011 is now live: the Paperless Action Plan. This project is a four-week class that is focused specifically on helping you create an end-to-end, customized action plan for going paperless, as well as helping you sort out what you need to do to put your plan into action.

Learn more or register here.

This launch is strictly limited to 8 days only (aka, until October 12). After that, the registration will be closed.

What It Is

Great question. The Paperless Action Plan has four action-focused lessons over four weeks. I know that everyone learns differently, so each week we will have:

• A live teleclass with Q&A time where I cover the material.
• Downloadable PDFs with the important takeaways.
• Recorded MP3 files so you can listen (or re-listen) to the lessons at your convenience.
• Worksheets and handouts so you can put the lessons into action.

  There is also a special members-only forum where you can ask me and the other class members questions about your situation, so you can get the best strategy.

  At the end of the four weeks, you will have everything you need to put together your own paperless action plan, and know exactly what to do to accomplish it.

Who it Is For

You want to go paperless, but are not sure where to start. You are tired of looking all over the Internet for bits and pieces of information and would like to just have everything consolidated in one place. You need more help than just organizing your documents. You’ve read and read, but haven’t done much to get going.

How do you keep the physical paper in your life under control? How do you organize and keep everything safe? How do you stay on track? How do you convince the people around you that you’re not crazy for doing this?

Who It Is Not For

The Paperless Action Plan won’t review every single scanner, software, and backup option. We will share our experiences and recommendations if you want them, but this is not a review.

It is also not for you if you just want to buy it, download the materials, and not do anything with it. No guide or piece of software is going to “go paperless” for you. At the end of the day, you have to actually do the stuff outlined. If you are not at the place to be able to do that yet, this may not be for you.

That’s it! I have never done anything quite this audacious before, so it should be fun. Hopefully speak to you soon on the first call.

Here’s the link again if you are interested in learning more.

This post is going to be a bit different than my usual fare, which often focuses on the more technical aspects of going paperless.

I’ve been writing DocumentSnap since the summer of 2008, and have had the opportunity to communicate with a large and fantastic group of readers.

Many have gone paperless and want to optimize their workflow, but many have been struggling to get started. They know (sort of) what they want to do, but find the whole thing too overwhelming.

This has been bothering me for quite some time, but I couldn’t put my finger on why or what to do about it.

Everything crystallized at the beginning of June when I attended Chris Guillebeau’s World Domination Summit

At Leo Babauta’s Zen Habits meetup and at Pam Slim’s content map session, I realized that I needed to outline my thoughts in a post and figure out what it is that is holding people back.

(Look at me look at Leo!)

From my experience, the roadblock manifests itself in two ways:

1. Focusing on details that don’t really matter (yet)
2. Fear

In this post I aim to tackle both subjects and to convince you that at the end of the day, the only thing that matters is to start.

Don’t Sweat The Details

One of the great things about the Internet (and, more specifically sites like DocumentSnap) is that there is so much information out there. On almost any topic, you can find a metric ton of articles telling you how to do exactly what it is that you want to do.

On the surface this sounds great: the more information the better right?

It would be fantastic, if it were not for the type of issue that we are trying to solve by going paperless. More often than not, we are starting down this path because we already have a problem: our workspace is a disaster and we can’t find anything, we have 300 boxes of paper in our way, we need to downsize, the list goes on.

If we are already overwhelmed by the problem we are trying to solve, layering onto that an overwhelming number of solutions leads to shutting down.

Instead of looking at the big picture, we start to focus on the details. What should our folders be called? What is the perfect folder structure? Which is better, this software or that software? What on earth are tags? Ahhhh!

I am sure you can guess what comes next. By going crazy focusing on the details of our problem, we don’t actually do anything.

No Need To Apologize

The number one area that this paralysis occurs is around folder structure.

It is understandable why this is. Coming from a paper-based system, how you file things is absolutely critical. If you don’t know where you filed it, you’ll never find it again (unless you are like Eddie from Practically Efficient)

Before I continue, I want to stress that I am not at all against having a defined folder structure. Having a folder structure that means something to you can be very helpful.

I have received many emails that start with “I know I shouldn’t use folders but it is just the way my mind works…”. I couldn’t figure out where I picked up this reputation for being anti-folders, until I realized that a section title in my 4 Ways To Tame Your Documents ebook was “Forget Folders”. Oops.

The point I was trying to make in that section, bad title aside, is that with modern software we don’t need to go nuts creating a huge folder structure. This causes two problems: 1) It causes us to spend more time figuring out where to file a document, and 2) It causes the sort of detail-paralysis I referred to above. We spend so much time trying to come up with the perfect folder structure, we never actually start scanning.

Having said all that, if you like your folders, no need to apologize. Use whatever works for you.

Fear

Based on the emails that I receive, fear is a big issue with DocumentSnap readers.

If you are reading this and you can relate to a fear of getting started going paperless, I will first tell you that you are not alone.

Part of the reason that I started the Paperless Reader Stories feature is to share some of your fellow readers’ stories. They have overcome their fears and obstacles (or are in the process of doing so).

While everyone’s situation is different, there are two basic fears that people have when going paperless.

Fear Of Not Being Able To Find Things

The first fear that people have is that once they scan something, they won’t be able to find it again. If you’ve ever tried to hunt through your computer for a file that you know you saved, you’ll understand this fear.

Some basic strategies for getting around this fear are:

• Keep your document archive separate from the rest of your files. If you save it in Documents on the Mac or My Documents on Windows, create a folder underneath called ARCHIVE or File Cabinet or something and put your scanned documents in there.
• Make sure that your PDFs are searchable by turning on the OCR settings in your scanners’ software, or using a software package with OCR capabilities.
• Use a consistent naming convention for your files and stick to it.
• Use a folder structure that makes sense to you.

Fear Of Throwing Paper Away

This one is a biggie. It takes a lot of confidence to shred a document that until now you have religiously kept in your bulging file cabinet.

The simple solution to this fear is to trust your system, whatever it happens to be. As long as your documents are backed up in multiple locations and you have the ability to find them again, you should be good.

However, even that might not be enough for you. I especially see this with married couples where one spouse wants to go paperless and the other is afraid.

Sometimes no matter how bulletproof the system is, the fear of shredding documents is just too great.

If that sounds like you, what I recommend is that you still go through the scanning and indexing process as if you were going paperless, but then instead of shredding the paper, throw it in a box out of the way somewhere. This is where Eddie’s system might come in very handy.

This way, you have the benefits of a paperless workflow like searchability, backup, and lack of clutter, but you have the peace of mind of having the physical paper somewhere.

Starting

You’ve seen that focusing on the details and succumbing to our fears causes paralysis. This is not in any way unique to going paperless.

Lyle McDonald has a great article over at Body Recomposition on this topic as it pertains to fat loss:

Of more relevance, what often happens is that people get so overwhelmed at focusing on the details that they never act. They spend weeks looking for the perfect diet or training program (which doesn’t really exist in the first place, at best all programs have pros and cons and are, at most, best under a given set of circumstances) and lose time when they should simply be doing something.
Because, at the end of the day, assuming the training or diet isn’t completely and utterly moronic (and make no mistake, there are plenty of those out there) actually doing something is always better than talking about it for weeks on end.

Does this sound familiar? (I’m talking about going paperless now, not dieting!).

If it does, not to worry. There are some things you can do to just get started.

Ignore Complexity

A lot of information that you read online is complex. I am more guilty than anyone on this point.

I would post crazy Applescripts and Hazel workflows all day long if I could, because I am a geek and sadly, that is the sort of thing that I find fun. I also have a great group of enablers such as Michelle and Alex that read the site, so it just encourages me.

Of course, normal non-geeks read this stuff and become overwhelmed. All they want to do is make their life easier, and this crazy Canadian is talking about Source URLs and text expansion?

Here is a sample comment that I received recently. I’m not picking on Marti here, because he is saying what I suspect a lot of people think:

All of this is so confusing to me. I have been ready, willing and able to go paperless, but like bungee jumping for the first time, I can’t bring myself to do it out of fear. I read the 7 lessons, but there is so much talk of other apps: Hazel, Evernote, Snippet and others I can’t even remember. Where do I start and how do I learn to be at the level of all the users here?

Again, does this sound familiar?

The solution to this is to just ignore the complex stuff. That’s right, just ignore it. None of it is required to successfully go paperless. You can come back to it if you ever need it, but for now, just ignore it.

Just Start

To get started, this is all you need to do:

1. Get a decent scanner. I like the ScanSnap, but it is certainly not the only one on the market.
2. Create a very basic, very high level folder structure. When you find that it makes sense to you, create subfolders on an as-needed basis.
3. Set up your scanner to scan to an inbox folder. In the scanner settings, make sure that it is set to create a searchable PDF.
4. Once you scan, name the files appropriately and move them to the appropriate folders.

That’s it. Start with this for a week or two.

Iterate

Once you have been doing the basic scanning workflow for a while, if you find that there are things that you wish were a bit easier start writing them down.

• Do you wish there were ways to make renaming files faster?
• Do you see points that you wish you could automate?
• Do you think it’d be easier to just have everything in one software package vs. your native folders?
• Would you like to have access to your documents on the go?
• Could you make things faster to find?

On an as-needed basis, start looking into solutions to the points of improvement that you come up with. (Quick plug: the Paperless Document Organization Guide may help with this).

The point is to make the changes that you want to make when you want to make them, bit by bit. Maybe you’re happy with how things are now after your test, and that is awesome. Keep doing what you are doing.

The important thing is to start.

Does this resonate with you? What barriers do you have, or have you overcome? I’d love to hear your thoughts either in the comments or the forum.

(Photo by Armosa Studios)

Hello all,

As promised on the blog back in February, the first DocumentSnap product is now ready to go.

The Paperless Document Organization Guide helps answer the question “now that I’ve scanned my documents, what the heck do I do with them so that I can find them again?”

Learn more or pick it up here.

What It Is

Good question. The Guide starts with a 10,000+ word PDF with tips and strategies to help both Mac and Windows users figure out how to organize their electronic documents once they have been scanned. The guide covers folder and naming conventions and compares and contrasts the major paperless software packages for Mac and Windows, including “what’s not so good” and “who should buy it” for each one. It also covers tagging and how to secure your documents on your computer.

Since I know you are all sick of hearing from me, I have also done seven (and counting) audio interviews: four with DocumentSnap readers just like you that have gone paperless (or are well on their way) and three with professional organizers.

Finally, if you are like me you learn visually. I have recorded six (and counting) video screencasts showing how to do a number of going-paperless activities in Mac and Windows, as well as one that takes you through my workflow and how I do things.

Who It’s For

You have started down the path of going paperless and are stuck, or are not sure where to start. You have a scanner (or know which one you want to buy). You are tired of looking all over the Internet for bits and pieces of information and would like to just have everything consolidated in one place.

Should you use folders or software (or both?). Which software is the best for you? How do you keep your documents secure? These are the kinds of questions that we look at.

Who It’s Not For

This guide won’t tell you which scanner to buy or go through every single backup option. Those are very important, but not the focus of this guide.

No guide or piece of software is going to “go paperless” for you. At the end of the day, you have to actually do the stuff outlined. If you are not at the place to be able to do that yet, this may not be for you.

That’s it! I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed putting it together for you.

Here’s the link again if you are interested.

Based on emails I am getting and searches that I can see in the DocumentSnap logs, this question is gaining a bit of steam: “For portable scanners, what is the difference between the Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300 and the ScanSnap S1100?”, and then of course: “Which should I buy?”.

Since one of the most popular posts on DocumentSnap is the ScanSnap S1100 vs. S1300 comparison, I thought it would be a good time to do a similar thing for the S1300 and S1100.

By the way, if you are comparing them, I have done both a ScanSnap S1300 review and a ScanSnap S1100 review in the past, so it may be worth your while to read those too.

Speed

• S1100: Up to 8 pages per minute, single sided
• S1300: Up to 8 pages per minute, double sided

While both models are nominally 8 pages per minute (or as Fujitsu says for the S1100, 7.5 seconds per page), the S1300 has a big advantage because it is double sided. It would take the S1100 15 seconds to scan a double-sided sheet whereas the S1300 can do it in 7.5.

Capacity

• S1100: 1 sheet
• S1300: Maximum 10 sheets

Clearly the S1300 is the winner here since it can hold ten sheets of paper at a time, whereas the S1100 does not have a document feeder.

Size/Weight

• S1100: 10.74 in. x 1.87 in. x1.33 in. (273mm x 47.5mm x 34mm). .77 lb (350 g).
• S1300: 11.18 in. x 3.90 in. x 3.03 in. (284mm x 99mm x 77mm). 3.08 lb. (1.4kg).

If size and weight are a concern, the S1100 is a clear winner. It is both much smaller and much lighter than the S1300 (especially when you consider the power adapter described in the next section).

Power

• S1100: Powered by a single USB cable, which also acts as the interface to the computer. It does not use an AC adaptor
• S1300: Powered by an AC adaptor, or can be powered by a separate USB cable (meaning it needs two USB ports if you do not use AC)

There isn’t a winner here per se, but the S1100 is much more simple to connect; one USB port and that is it.

Operating System

Fujitsu calls both the S1300 and the S1100 “hybrid scanners”. They are designed to be used both on Windows and the Mac, and come with all the software for both.

Included Software

The ScanSnap S1100 includes the following software:

• ScanSnap Organizer (Windows only)
• CardMinder 4.1 (Windows only)
• ABBYY FineReader for ScanSnap (Windows and Mac)
• CardIris 3.6 (Mac only)
• Evernote
• ScanSnap Manager with the ability to scan to Evernote and Google Docs

The ScanSnap S1300 includes the following software:

• ScanSnap Organizer (Windows only)
• CardMinder 4.1 (Windows only)
• ABBYY FineReader for ScanSnap (Windows and Mac)
• CardIris 3.6 (Mac only)
• Update 1/25/2012: Fujitsu has released a software update that allows the S1300 to scan directly to Evernote and Google Docs.

Neither the S1300 or the S1100 come with Adobe Acrobat like their big cousins the ScanSnap S1500 and ScanSnap S1500M.

So Which Is Better?

I bet you know what I am going to say here: It depends!

If you have a medium-large and/or regular volume of paper, I strongly urge you to go for the ScanSnap S1300. The extra speed and paper capacity will save you lots of time.

If you have a need to be mobile, or if you do only a small amount of scanning, you can probably get away with the ScanSnap S1100.

If you have a large volume of paper, you will probably be better off with the ScanSnap S1500 or ScanSnap S1500M.

Fujitsu has been making the ScanSnap line of document scanners for quite some time, and they’ve finally made a truly portable version: the ScanSnap S1100.

Until now their most portable scanner has been the ScanSnap S1300, which while smaller than its desktop cousins the S1500 and S1500M, isn’t something you are just going to throw in your bag as you are heading out the door.

The S1100 is a “hybrid” scanner in that it works with both the Mac and PC. Fujitsu calls it an “ultra-portable” scanner and they are clearly targeting people who are on-the-go as well as people for whom desk (or cafe table) space is at a premium.

I was sent a review unit of the S1100 so I thought I’d break it down for the DocumentSnap readers.

Size

Ultra-portable is a pretty good description. This thing is small. I had my first indication of this when I received the box. I was pretty surprised how tiny the box was. Here it is in comparison to a shoebox. My first thought was “is assembly required?”. Thankfully, it was not.

Once I had it unpacked, the S1100 is 10.74 x 1.87 x 1.33 inches. That’s smaller than other similar scanners in its class. Weight wise, it is 12.3 ounces.

For people who are familiar with other ScanSnaps, here it is in comparison to the ScanSnap S1300:

The ScanSnap gets all of its power from one USB cord. No AC adaptor, no dual-USB cord like the S1300, just one cord. In fact, as you can see, it doesn’t even have a port for an AC adaptor:

Two-Way Paper Path

One of the knocks against other ScanSnaps is that paper can’t go through “flat”, but needs to go through the scanner’s “L-turn” (I have no idea what the technical term is there).

The S1100 solves this in a pretty clever way.

If you leave the top of the scanner closed, paper will be fed straight through like most portable scanners. You put the paper in the front, and it comes straight out the back. This is great if you are scanning photos, business cards, post cards, plastic cards (!), and extra-delicate paper.

If space is at a premium or if you are doing a lot of scanning (more on that in a minute), you can flip the top up. When you do that, you feed the paper in the front and it turns it up and flips it back to you. Very smart.

I found that for magazines articles, scanning using the turn-path (with the top flipped up) worked better than scanning it straight through. Maybe the paper is a bit too thin for the rollers that feed it through the back.

Multiple-Page Scanning

When you think about it, this scanner is a bit of a risk for Fujitsu. The ScanSnap brand has been built on “throw a stack of paper in, hit the button, and you have fast double-sided scanning in one pass”. The S1100 will take neither a stack of paper nor will scan double-sided in one pass.

My personal theory, with no evidence whatsoever, is that the company took their time introducing an ultra-portable scanner similar to the way that Apple took their time bringing copy & paste to the iPhone; they wanted to wait until they could figure out a “ScanSnap-y” way to do it.

If you have double sided documents or a stack of pages, the ScanSnap S1100 has what they are calling “Continuous Document Feeding”. Here’s how it works:

• You flip the top of the scanner up
• You put the first page in the front of the scanner, and you can feel it grab the paper a little bit
• You hit the scan button and it feeds the page through
• Since the top is up, it returns the paper to you
• If you want to scan the back of the paper, you just feed in the already-flipped page on the other side. You don’t need to hit anything
• If you want to scan the next page of the document, you just feed in the next page. You don’t need to hit anything
• When you’re done the document, just hit the Scan button again and it will then save and (if you desire) OCR the PDF

Pretty clever use of just one button if you ask me.

Speed

The ScanSnap S1100 scans a page in 7.5 seconds. If my math is right, which it usually is not, that makes it 8 pages per minute. That is obviously slower than the rest of the ScanSnap family, but it is faster than other ultra-portable scanners. You probably wouldn’t want to run your law office off a S1100, but that is not what it is for anyways.

Quality

I am pretty impressed at the scan quality of the S1100, to be honest. Since quality is pretty subjective, I scanned a few documents with both the S1100 and the S1300 for you to compare:

• Here is a magazine article scanned with the S1100
• Here is the same magazine article scanned with the S1300
• Here is a menu scanned with the S1100
• Here is the same menu scanned with the S1300

Installation

Installation is easy as always. You just pop in the DVD and it installs everything you need. Then you plug in the one USB cable and you are good to go.

I installed the software on my Mac which already had the S1300′s software installed and it recognized my old profiles. A nice touch.

Software

Here is the software that the S1100 comes with:

• ScanSnap Manager (Mac and Windows)
• ScanSnap Organizer 4.1 (Windows only)
• CardMinder 4.1 (Windows only)
• ABBYY FineReader for ScanSnap (Windows and Mac)
• CardIris 3.6 (Mac only)
• Evernote 3.5 (Windows) or 1.1 (Mac)

So, it comes with the scanning drivers for both platforms, PDF organization software for Windows, business card software for both platforms, and OCR software for both platforms.

By the way, it also comes with a printed manual. Not many devices come with those anymore!

Evernote Integration

You might have noticed that Evernote comes on the DVD. Why is that you might ask? Well, the ScanSnap S1100 now features “scan to the cloud” functionality and has support for scanning to Evernote.

Longtime DocumentSnap readers will know that it has been possible to integrate the ScanSnap with Evernote for quite some time, but now you don’t need to mess around with setting up profiles anymore. It’s built into the Quick Menu.

I tested it out and it works well. Throw in a document, hit scan, choose Evernote from the Quick Menu (or make your own profile if you’d like) and it will import it to your Evernote local client to be synced up.

Google Docs Integration

Evernote is not the only cloud service supported. The S1100 also has support for Google Docs built in to ScanSnap Manager. When you scan, it asks you for your Google Docs (Google Apps works too) credentials which you can save or not, and then it uploads as a PDF right into Google Docs.

Cleaning

You know how sometimes you scan a page that has some glue or something on it and you then need to clean the scanner? Like other ScanSnap models, the S1100 will open up so that you can clean the inside. That’s a pretty helpful feature since given the portable nature of this thing, I can see it being used in some pretty funky situations.

Bottom Line?

All in, I think the Fujitsu ScanSnap S1100 is a good choice if you need a fast portable scanner. As I said, you probably wouldn’t want to run your whole office on it (though you could!), but for light home use and particularly for travel use, it is a good mix of size, speed, and the normal ScanSnap touches.

For me, it wouldn’t replace my ScanSnap S1300 because I like having a document feeder and double-sided scanning, but if I traveled a lot I could see myself using it for sure.

Normally I would have a video showing all this stuff, but for a variety of technical reasons that has to wait for a few days. When I have one up, I will post it.

Availability

Apparently it is released today, but I don’t see it on any online sites yet. As soon as I see it on Amazon etc., I’ll let you know. The retail price is $199 USD.

Update: It is now on Amazon.

Are you going to get one? What are your thoughts about the ScanSnap going ultra-portable? Leave a comment and let us know your thoughts.

A very common request that I get here at DocumentSnap is to compare the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) capabilities of ABBYY FineReader with Adobe Acrobat. Why? Well, for starters, both of them come included with models the Fujitsu ScanSnap as well as other scanners.

I decided to do a quick test comparing the OCR of the two packages using the following criteria:

• OCR Speed
• Resulting File Size
• Accuracy

The Hardware

For a scanner I used my ScanSnap S1300.

I used two computers for the test:

• Windows: A new cheap Acer laptop with a Core i3 2.40 GHz processor and 4 GB RAM running Windows 7
• Mac: An old 2.5 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro with 4 GB RAM running Mac OS X Snow Leopard

The Software

Here are the packages I used:

• Windows: ABBYY FineReader For ScanSnap 4.1 (called from ScanSnap Manager) vs. Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro
• Mac: ABBYY FineReader For ScanSnap 4.1 (run standalone) vs. Adobe Acrobat 8 Pro

Yes, I realize that Adobe Acrobat X is out, but since I am not aware of any scanners that come bundled with it yet, I decided to stick with the versions that ship with the ScanSnap. I’ll update Acrobat X in a later post.

The Document

I scanned a magazine article for this test. It probably would have been better to do this with a bunch of different documents to compare, but hey.

In all cases except one, I scanned without OCR so that I could run it standalone later. Here’s some info on the document that I used:

• Pages: 2
• Scan Quality: 300dpi, Color
• Resulting File Size: 1.5 MB
• Columns: 2, with some images

Maybe I am blind, but I couldn’t figure out a way to run ABBYY FineReader for ScanSnap on Windows standalone. If you know how, please leave a message in the comments. In that test, I re-scanned with “Create Searchable PDF” checked in the ScanSnap Manager settings.

The Settings

I tried not to do too many fancy settings to keep things as “real-life” as possible. There were essentially three configurations:

ABBYY FineReader

I set Save Mode to “Text under page image” and Quality to High. These were the settings for the Mac ABBYY, and I believe it is what ScanSnap Manager on Windows uses as well.

Adobe Acrobat (Normal)

I set the output style to “Searchable Image (Exact)” because leaving it just as Searchable Image in my experience has caused some weird things to happen with the resulting PDF. I used these settings on both Windows and Mac.

Adobe Acrobat (With ClearScan)

In Acrobat 9 there is a setting called ClearScan. I used that as an additional test to see what the difference is.

Speed

Windows

• ABBYY Windows: 20.5 seconds
• Acrobat 9: 13.9 seconds
• Acrobat 9 With Clearscan: 17.6 seconds

Mac

• ABBYY Mac: 44.7 seconds
• Acrobat 8: 20.2 seconds

Winner: Acrobat!

Since they are different machines, you can’t directly compare the Windows and Mac times, but clearly in both cases Acrobat is faster.

File Size

The non-OCR’ed PDF was 1.5 MB.

Windows

• ABBYY Windows: 1.7 MB (+.2 MB)
• Acrobat 9: 1.5 MB (same)
• Acrobat 9 With ClearScan: 315 KB (-1.16 MB)

Mac

• ABBYY Mac: 1.4 MB (-.1 MB)
• Acrobat 8: 1.5 MB (same)

Winner: Acrobat 9 with ClearScan!

With an astonishing 1.16 MB reduction in file size after OCR, Acrobat 9 with ClearScan is the winner. Wow.

Accuracy

Here is a passage from the article:

Let’s see how each of the packages did:

ABBYY Windows

The spreadsheet has become the virtual “slide rule” for CMAs. It’s used for everything from preliminary strategic plans to financial statements. As with any familiar method, it finds its way into numerous situations where better alternatives are available, mostsignificantly in itswidespread use as a de facto reporting tool.
The appeal of the spreadsheet as the quickest way to get a report out is not hard to appreciate. “Excel is probably the most comfortable environment for a lot of financial professionals,” Alok Ajmera, vice-president, professional services withMississauga, Ont.-basedProphixSoftware, says. “There’s a very little learning curve, you can effectively do whatever you want with the data, and it works fairly well in smaller organizations.”
Periodic and complex reporting in processes like revenue management or cost management, however, is where the spreadsheet model really starts to break down.

Acrobat 9 Windows

T he spreadsheet has become the virtual “slide rule” for CMAs. It’s used for everything from preliminary su·ategic plans to financial statements. As with any farniliar method, it finds its way into numerous situations where better alternatives are available, most significantly in its widespread use as a de facto reporting tool.
The appeal of tlle spreadsheet as the quickest way to get a report out is not hard to appreciate. “Excel is probably tlle most comfortable environment for a lot of financial professionals,” AJok Ajmera, vice-president, professional services with Mississauga, Ont.-based Prophix Software, says. “There’s a very little learning curve, you can effectively do whatever you want witll tlle data, and it works fairly well in smaller organizations.”
Periodic and complex reporting in processes like revenue management or cost management, however, is where the spreadsheet model really starts to break down.

Acrobat 9 With ClearScan

The spreadsheet has become the virtual “slide rule” for CMAs. It’s used for everything from preliminary su·ategic plans to financial statements. As with any farniliar method, it finds its way into numerous situations where better alternatives are available, most significantly in its widespread use as a de facto reporting tool.
The appeal of tlle spreadsheet as the quickest way to get a report out is not hard to appreciate. “Excel is probably tlle most comfortable environment for a lot of financial professionals,” AJok Ajmera, vice-president, professional services with Mississauga, Ont.-based Prophix Software, says. “There’s a very little learning curve, you can effectively do whatever you want witll tlle data, and it works fairly well in smaller organizations.”
Periodic and complex reporting in processes like revenue management or cost management, however, is where the spreadsheet model really starts to break down.

ABBYY Mac

The spreadsheet has become the virtual “slide rule” for CiMAs. It’s used for everything from preliminary strategic plans to financial statements. As with any familiar method, it finds its way into numerous situations where better alternatives are available, most significantly in its widespread use as a de facto reporting tool.
The appeal of die spreadsheet as the quickest way to get a report out is not hard to appreciate. “Excel is probably the most comfortable environment for a lot of financial professionals,” Alok Ajmera, vice-president, professional sendees with Mississauga, Ont.-based Prophix Software, says. “There’s a very little learning curve, you can effectively do whatever you want with the data, and it works fairly well in smaller organizations.”
Periodic and complex reporting in processes like revenue management or cost management, however, is where the spreadsheet model really starts to break down.

Acrobat 8 Mac

T he spreadsheet has become the virtual “slide rule” for CMAs. It’s used for everything frorn preliminary strategic plans to financial statements. Aswith any familiar method, it finds its way into numerous situations where better alterna tives are available, most significantly in its widespread use as a de facto reporting tool.
T he appeal of the spreadsheet as the quickest
way to get a report out is not hard to appreciate.
“Excel is probably the most comfortable
environment for a lot of financial professionals,” avaJlaun:.:,JIIU:::’l;)It;IIIULauuy1111l::>WIUC::>PU:C1U uocd::>
a de facto reporting tool. T he appeal of the spreadsheet as the quickest
way to get a report out is not hard to appreciate. “Excel is probably me most comfortable environment for a lot of financial professionals,” AJok Ajmera, vice-president, professional services with Mississauga, Ont.-based Prophix Software, says. “T here’s a very little learning curve, you can effectively do whatever you want with the data, and it works fairly well in smaller organiza tions.”
Periodic and complex reporting in processes like revenue management or cost management, however, is where the spreadsheet model really starts to break down.

Winner: ABBYY FineReader for Mac looks the best to me. Acrobat 8 on the Mac is pretty terrible (in this example anyways).

Conclusion

Is there a “best” choice? It seems that in this example anyways, Adobe Acrobat 9 with ClearScan turned on gives fast results with good OCR while dramatically reducing the file size.

If you don’t really care about speed so much, FineReader produces good OCR results and for ScanSnap users, has the additional benefit of being integrated with ScanSnap Manager.

As with most things, the best software is the one that works the best for you. Have you found similar results? Any other tests of your own to share? Leave a note in the comments.

(Photo by Polina Sergeeva)

Since I have been posting about software quite a bit lately, I thought I’d back up and talk about something just as important: your physical environment.

You want to strike a balance between having things clean and uncluttered, and having things close by when you need them. It’s a tough line: how can you have it so that things are out of your way but not so inconvenient that it becomes a hassle to get something done?

A few months ago I totally re-did my home office and for me at least, I have come up with a decent solution and hopefully some of you might find it useful.

About My Office

My home office is in the basement and is affectionately known as “the dungeon” because it is cold and there is not a huge amount of natural light.

There is a TV in it (as you will see), but we don’t use it much as we don’t have cable (yes we are one of those freak families). I have a Mac Mini hooked up to the TV running Plex that we use as a media center. Sometimes during the day I will have music playing on it, or when there is a webcast (or a hockey game) I want to watch, I will put it on the TV and work from the sofa.

First, A Confession

Before I go through my new office, I have a confession to make.

Are you familiar with the old saying “the cobbler’s children have no shoes?”. Well, that was pretty much the situation for the first year of DocumentSnap.

I had gone through and eliminated my entire filing cabinet of non-critical paper, but my workspace itself was pretty much a disaster.

Longtime readers might remember that I started going paperless because I moved and I was annoyed at having to move my filing cabinet that was bursting at the seams with paper. I swore I would never do that again, so I bought a ScanSnap and the rest is history.

One unfortunate side effect of that move is I somehow lost the legs of my desk. So here I present to you the workspace that DocumentSnap.com was born on:

Is that a gong show or what?

There’s a big inbox with paper all over the place, cords everywhere, a scanner and an all-in-one fighting for space, and the desk is being held up by boxes. What a nightmare.

The Office Redesign

I knew I had to do something, so I decided to start completely from scratch. I downloaded a room planner from Ikea, got out my tape measure, and went to work.

I had a few goals:

• Everything I needed to work with on a daily basis needed to be right at hand
• Anything I wasn’t currently working with needed to be hidden away
• I have a thing for the color red so I wanted to have at least one red wall

You can see from my desk, mission accomplished:

All that is on there is my computer, monitor, phone, and some drink coasters. Occasionally I will have a notebook and some note paper but that is it. I try to be disciplined about keeping stuff off the desk.

Here is a wide shot of the workspace. Can you guess what my favorite movie is?

Hmm, I wonder what is inside that cabinet.

You can see there is a number of sections. I have a tray for holding miscellaneous computer stuff, my ScanSnap S1300, my all-in-one, and some hanging file folders.

The hanging folders are important. Any paper that comes into my office that needs to be dealt with goes in there. There is an “inbox” folder, a “WIP” folder for things I am working on, a “To Scan” folder, and a “To Pay” folder. That’s it.

You might notice that there is no filing cabinet near my desk. This is completely intentional. I do have one, but it is hidden in the closet.

It is extremely, extremely rare that any paper gets filed into there, and there is none at all in the bottom two drawers.

I have some more pictures of the home office that you can see in this Flickr workspace set.

Still To Do

So far I am loving the change, but there are still some things to do. For starters, as I mentioned, the light isn’t the greatest. I think I need to improve that.

Also, its a bit boring. I need some art or something on the walls, especially above my desk. If anyone has suggestions for cool things to put there, leave a comment.

I hope this gives you some ideas. I certainly drew a lot of inspiration from workspaces that I found online. If you have any suggestions for improvements or have other cool workspaces, feel free to drop a comment and let us all know.

I get asked this question quite a bit: “What is the difference between the Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300 and the ScanSnap S1500 series?”, and then the logical followup: “Which should I buy?”.

I decided to put together this blog post for me to point people to, so here is a rundown of the differences between the ScanSnap models.

Speed

• S1500/S1500M: Up to 20 pages per minute
• S1300: Up to 8 pages per minute

Clearly the S1500 series has the edge here. If you are doing a large amount of scanning, you will probably want to go with the S1500 or S1500M.

Capacity

• S1500/S1500M: Maximum 50 sheets
• S1300: Maximum 10 sheets

Again, the S1500 is a pretty clear winner. If you are regularly scanning more than 10 sheets at a time, you will probably want to pick up the S1500 or S1500M. Otherwise, the limited capacity of the S1300 is going to get pretty annoying.

Size/Weight

• S1500/S1500M: 11.5 x 6.3 x 6.2 in. (292 x 159 x 158 mm). 6.62 lb (3.0 kg).
• S1300: 11.18 in. x 3.90 in. x 3.03 in. (284mm x 99mm x 77mm). 3.08 lb. (1.4kg).

Both versions of the ScanSnap are compact, and I am not sure that this category has a “winner” per se, but the S1300 is quite a bit smaller and lighter than the S1500 series.

Operating System

The S1500 is designed for Microsoft Windows. However, it does include Mac OSX drivers and can be used to scan on a Mac. It does not include the extra software (including OCR software) for Mac.

The S1500M is designed for Mac OSX. However, it does include Windows drivers and can be used to scan on a PC. It does not include the extra software (including OCR software) for Windows.

Fujitsu is calling the S1300 their first “hybrid scanner”. It is designed to be used both on Windows and the Mac, and comes with all the software for both.

Included Software

The ScanSnap S1500 includes the following software:

• ScanSnap Organizer
• Adobe Acrobat 9 for Windows
• CardMinder 4.0
• ABBYY FineReader for ScanSnap

The ScanSnap S1500M includes the following software:

• Adobe Acrobat 8 for Mac
• CardIris 3.6
• ABBYY FineReader for ScanSnap

The ScanSnap S1300 includes the following software:

• ScanSnap Organizer (Windows only)
• CardMinder 4.1 (Windows only)
• ABBYY FineReader for ScanSnap (Windows and Mac)
• CardIris 3.6 (Mac only)

If you’re paying attention, you’ll notice right off the bat that the S1300 does not include Adobe Acrobat. That may or may not make the price difference worth it to you.

Mobility

While I wouldn’t call the S1500 or S1500M a big scanner, it is clearly not as mobile as the S1300.

Aside from size and weight, the ScanSnap S1300 has the ability to run off a USB port’s power, so you theoretically don’t even need to take your power adapter with you.

Color

Come on, don’t pretend that the look of your peripheral isn’t important.

The ScanSnap S1500 has a black and silver look, while the S1500M is a more Mac-y white and grey.

With the release of the hybrid S1300, Fujitsu decided to go with the S1500′s color scheme. Bye bye white!

Of course, there is always the lacquer option too.

Other Goodies

The ScanSnap S1500 and S1500M come with a carrier sheet, so you can more easily scan odd-sized paper.

So Which Is Better?

I bet you know what I am going to say here: It depends!

If you have a large and/or regular volume of paper, I strongly urge you to go for the ScanSnap S1500 or the ScanSnap S1500M. The extra speed and paper capacity will save you lots of time.

If you have a need to be mobile, or if you do only a small amount of scanning, you can probably get away with the ScanSnap S1300.

The right model of ScanSnap for you really depends on your needs. As Apu said to Mr. Burns, “Just look into your heart, and you will find the answer.”

I was fortunate enough to get my hands on a review copy of a Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300, so I thought I’d write up my initial impressions and show some of the new stuff that DocumentSnap readers might find interesting.

As of this writing I have only installed it on Mac OSX, but as I wrote in my initial ScanSnap S1300 announcement post, the S1300 is a “hybrid scanner” which just means it comes with everything you need both for Windows and Mac. Maybe later I’ll do a Windows review too.

Mobile Form Factor

I have to be honest, even though I am a longtime user of the ScanSnap S300M, I have never used it in a mobile situation. I like the mobile ScanSnaps because they take up such a small amount of space, and I personally don’t need the higher speed and capacity of the ScanSnap S1500 and S1500M.

You can see from this side by side shot that the size and shape of the S1300 is basically the same as the S300 series.

All that being said, the S1300 comes with mobile features such as USB power, so you can use it without having to plug into a wall outlet (though if you use it this way you need two USB ports – one for the data connection and one for power).

Installation

Installation was very easy. Just put in the CD, install the software, and then plug in the scanner. Fujitsu does a good job of making it extremely fast from unboxing to scanning.

One really nice surprise was that when I installed the S1300 software, it automatically upgraded all my profiles I had with the S300M. I was not expecting that at all!

Long Document Scanning

The ScanSnap S1300 lets you scan long receipts and documents (finally!), a subject in which I have complained about before. To do long document scanning, just put the document in and hold down the blue power key for 3 seconds. Once it starts blinking, its in long document mode. See the video below for a demo.

Auto Quality

If you have small documents, you can have it automatically detect them and up the quality. This was a feature introduced with the S1500 series and is now on the mobile scanners.

Searchable PDFs

One limitation that the S300M had is that it did not come with OCR software to make searchable PDFs. The S1300 comes with it built in for both Macs and PCs.

You can choose on a profile basis whether you want the document to be searchable, and (similar to the S1500 series), you can have it detect highlighted text on a document and save the PDF with searchable keywords. Pretty cool.

Speed And Capacity

Obviously, the S1300 is not going to be as fast as its cousins the S1500 and S1500M. If speed and capacity are your main criteria, you will want to go for the higher model. However, if 8 pages per minute (double sided don’t forget!) is OK for you, and you don’t need to hold more than 10 pages at the time, the Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300 is a great scanner in a very small and portable package.

Since I know some people like videos, here is a video where I show the ScanSnap S1300, some of its new features, and some of the software that comes with it.

Have you tried the ScanSnap S1300 yet? Let us know what you think in the comments.