Tips To Learn How To Go Paperless | DocumentSnap Paperless Blog

Well, it’s official – the Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300 has been announced and much like Eddie Murphy, it is coming to America.

You might remember a while ago I saw it on Amazon Japan and posted about it. Well, now no need to wait for it to come to the US. It’s announced. I don’t see it on online stores yet, but I will update when I see it.

I will have a full review coming very soon, but lets get the important stuff out of the way:

• Yes, it is a replacement for the S300 and S300M. The 300 series is dead. Long live the 1300!
• Notice there is no 1300M. This is intentional – for the first time, Fujitsu is releasing what they call a “hybrid” – a device that includes everything for both Mac and PC.

Form Factor of S300 With Features Of S1500

The S1300 takes some of the features of the ScanSnap S1500 like:

• Long Documents: This is huge and you might recall me complaining about it before with the S300M. It will now scan receipts etc. up to 34 inches long
• Searchable Keywords: You can now mark with a highlighter and embed searchable keywords in a document
• Auto Quality: You can choose Auto for Image Quality and if you scan a small document, it will adjust automatically
• More Profiles: You can now set up 20 profiles instead of the previous limit of 12
• Searchable PDFs On The Mac: Yes!!!!!!!!!! This was the biggest limitation of the S300M. The ScanSnap S1300 will now make PDFs searchable out of the box.

Software Included

Fujitsu has included most of the software you’d expect with some extras for Mac users over the S300M. It doesn’t come with Acrobat like it’s big cousins the S1500 and S1500M.

PC and Mac:

• ABBYY FineReader for ScanSnap: Does OCR and makes PDFs searchable
• ScanSnap Manager: The main software for the scanner which controls the 1 button operation and enables all the profiles.

PC only:

• ScanSnap Organizer 4.1: Document manager
• CardMinder 4.1: Business card scanning/extraction
• Scan To Functions: Allows you to scan to a folder, email, printer, SharePoint, etc.

Mac only:

• Scan To Functions: Can scan to the usual stuff but also to iPhoto or iDisk
• CardIris 3.6: Business card scanning/extraction

Additional Specs

From a tech perspective, the S1300 is pretty similar to the 300 series.

It scans 8 pages per minute and will hold up to 10 pages, it has auto deskew/orientation, blank page detection, and can (of course) be powered by USB.

It is very very slightly bigger than the 300 series (11.18 x 3.9 x 3.03 in. for the S1300 vs. 11.18 x 3.74 x 3.03 in. for the S300) and is the same weight (3.08 lb.)

As I said, I will be posting my review very soon, but on paper anyways the Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300 looks like a great upgrade to the 300 series, especially for Mac users (adding searchable PDF is killer!).

What do you think? Anything you are particularly excited about or wish was there? Sound off in the comments.

As we posted earlier, Windows 7 support wasn’t quite there for ScanSnap when the new operating system was released.

Yesterday, Fujitsu sent out a bulletin that at least the updates for the ScanSnap S1500 and S300 have been released.

From the email:

The ScanSnap compatibility update for Windows 7 with ScanSnap S1500 and S300 is now posted! This update is for compatibility with select Windows 7 operating systems only. Proceed to the following site and go to the section labeled “ScanSnap/Organizer Service Packs” and locate the Windows 7 update for your model. Observe the download applicability notes and instructions for additional details related to installing the update.

The download page for the updates is here: http://www.fujitsu.com/us/services/computing/peripherals/scanners/support/downloads.html

One thing to note: You need to make sure you download both pieces. The ScanSnap Manager and ScanSnap Organizer updates.

What About The S510?

According to this support bulletin, the S510 update is due “end of December”. Not sure what the difference is, but there you go. I’ll update when it drops.

As always, let us know in the comments how your update goes.

Update: The Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300 has been released in the US! See this post for details.

OK, well, this is pretty hot. It looks like Fujitsu in Japan has a new ScanSnap cooking up called the ScanSnap S1300.

Basically, it looks like the love child of the ScanSnap S1500 and the S300, with the “M” versions as godparents.

Its compatible with Windows 7 and Mac OSX Snow Leopard out of the box. It has similar specs to the S300 – it’s 8 pages per minute and holds 10 sheets.

Not sure when it will be released in North America but it was released on November 21, 2009 in Japan. Here’s a link to it on Amazon Japan. The price over there is 25,901 Yen which is about $300 USD.

Details (in English anyways) are pretty scarce but here is a video (WMV unfortunately) that shows it in action. It’s in Japanese of course, but you will get the idea. Here’s Fujitsu Japan’s page about it too.

What do you think of the S1300? Obviously I’ll post more info as it becomes available.

Well, Microsoft’s latest version of Windows, Windows 7, gets released today. Similar to what we did with OSX Snow Leopard, I thought I’d make a post so that we can share our experiences using the Fujitsu ScanSnap with it.

I haven’t seen anything official from Fujitsu, but if I had to guess I would say that the ScanSnap S1500 will probably be OK, but the older models such as the S510 and S300 will require a bit more work to get working.   

Since I have neither Windows 7 nor a Windows ScanSnap, I am relying on Google and you guys here.

This post from SevenForums seems to have a workaround to get the older ScanSnaps working.

Hopefully the Windows 7 release goes a bit more smoothly than the Snow Leopard one did. If you have any experience getting your ScanSnap working with Windows 7, leave a comment and let us know. I’ll post any relevant updates here.

Update: Fujitsu has posted a support bulletin outlining what will be supported when. Basically:

• S1500: End of November 2009
• S300: End of November 2009
• S510: End of December 2009
• S500: End of December 2009 (but it will not support 64-bit OS)

If you want to be notified with updates, you can sign up here.

Yes, I do realize that this is the second ScanSnap Evernote post in a row. I just realized that I had somehow not blogged about this contest that Evernote is having in July where they are giving away 4 Fujitsu ScanSnap S300 scanners.

Here is how to enter from their blog post:

   * Follow @evernote and @ScanSnapIt on Twitter

   * Send a public Twitter message to @evernote containing the hashtag #evernote_scansnap

Tweet once per person per week to be entered into that week’s drawing.

The first draw has already been done on July 10, and you can view the awesomely high-tech draw below. There is still time to win the other scanners on the 17th, 24th, and 31st.

Good luck!

I personally don’t know a lot about the Alfresco Enterprise Content Management system, but I came across this video.

If you are familiar with Alfresco, this is a quick video that shows how they use the ScanSnap S300 to scan documents such as invoices and medical recoreds right into Alfresco.

Even if you don’t use Alfresco, it’s still a pretty cool demo of using the scanner to integrate with an existing business systems.

Do you use your scanner to automatically send documents into a system in your business?

In the past I have posted about how to use Japanese ScanSnap drivers, and have posted that the new Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500 and S1500M will be cross-platform, but what if you don’t want to mess around with foreign drivers or have an older ScanSnap scanner?

if you have access to a Windows XP CD, there is a free way that you can use your ScanSnap S510 or S300 on your Mac using VirtualBox. (This may even work with Linux too – I’ve never tried).

VirtualBox is a free open source program that will let you run Windows on your Mac. There’s no rebooting required like Boot Camp – you run Windows inside a window in your Mac. This is great not only for the ScanSnap but for any Windows program you may be stuck using.

There are two requirements to do this:

1. You need to have an Intel mac. No Powerbooks or Powermacs, sorry.
2. You need to have access to a Windows XP installation CD

Ready? Here’s how to do it:

1. Go to http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads and download VirtualBox for OSX hosts

2. Double-click on the downloaded VirtualBox .DMG file and open it up. Then double-click on the VirtualBox.mpkg installer

Follow through all the prompts and click Close when done.

3. In the Applications folder, double click on the VirtualBox application

4. Once VirtualBox starts up, click the New icon

5. Go through the steps of the Wizard. At first, give your new virtual machine a name (you can think of a virtual machine as your new Windows-inside-your-Mac). Give it as much memory as you want but don’t go below the recommendation. For this I stuck with the base 192 Megs but you may want to bump it up if you can.

6. If you are doing this for the first time, chose New for Hard Drive and when you go through the wizard you probably want to choose Dynamic Storage

7. You can leave the name of your new virtual disk as-is and give it whatever you think you need for hard drive space.

8. Hit Finish to end the new virtual disk creation wizard, then Next to choose your new disk, then Finish

9. You’ll now see that the Settings and Start menus are activated. Before we start, we want to enable USB. Click the Settings Icon and then the Ports menu. Click Enable USB Controller.

10. Click OK and then the Green Start arrow

11. You’re going to get a message about it auto-capturing your keyboard. All that is saying is that if you are “in Windows” and you do something like Alt-Tab, it will be doing the Alt-Tab in Windows and not in your Mac. If you don’t want that, just hold down the left Command key. Hit OK.

12. Now it’s time for the First Run Wizard. Pop in your Windows XP CD, choose where it is, and hit Next and Finish if it’s right.

13. Now we get the beautiful blue Windows install screens we know and love. Hit Enter to choose your new Unpartitioned Space and choose to format NTFS. Then let it run.

14. Create a Shared Folder so that your Mac can see documents that your Windows VM has scanned. Click the Shared Folders icon and then Add A Shared Folder.

15. Choose or create a folder and then click Make Permanent and hit OK

16. Before your new shared folder will work, in the top VirtualBox VM menu, choose Devices and then Install Guest Additions. Choose VBoxWindowsAdditions.exe and follow the prompts

17. Map that new folder to a drive letter, say in this example the Z drive. In Windows Explorer. go to My Network Places, Then Entire Network, then VirtualBox Shared Folders and you should see \\VBOXSVR\Scanned (or whatever you called your new folder). Right click on that and choose Map Network Drive and give it a drive letter.

18. Now it’s time to follow Fujitsu’s instructions for installing your Windows ScanSnap. Don’t plug in your ScanSnap yet but install the software on your Setup CD.

19. Plug in your ScanSnap and turn it on. You will likely find.. nothing happens. Your light on your ScanSnap may blink. You need to tell VirtualBox that you want to enable it first. Click on the Ports icon on the bottom of your VM and choose your scanner from the list of devices.

20. Scan away! Either scan to a folder or using ScanSnap Organizer. Either way, if you want your PDFs to be accessible by the Mac you will probably want to scan them to your drive that you created in step 17.

There we go. It’s really not as complex as this 20 step tutorial may make it sound, but if you give it a try let me know how it goes.

Update: It’s confirmed that the ScanSnap S1500 and S1500M include both drivers on the install CD. See this ScanSnap Cross-Platform post for more info.  The rest of this post relates to the S510 and s300 series.

According to commenter “rei” on this ScanSnap S1500 post, the next version of the Fujitsu ScanSnap is going to work on both Mac and Windows – the only difference between the S1500 and S1500M is the bundled software.

If that is the case, that will be tremendous, but that doesn’t help you if you have an older ScanSnap for Windows that you want to use on your shiny new Mac.

It is possible to do, but believe it or not you have to hunt down some Japanese drivers to do it.

Here is a roundup of some links that show you how it is done.

The Mac Lawyer has an excellent step by step guide. Make sure you read all the way down through the comments as there are updated links to the driver software there. While the ScanSnap model that Ben is referring to is the 5110EOX2, some commenters have noted that they have got it working with newer ScanSnaps like the S300.

A link in the comments of the Mac Lawyer post led me to the My Punchbowl Blog. Scroll down to #10 in the list for a discussion of how he got the S510 working on his new Mac.

The granddaddy of all cross-platform-ScanSnap information is this MacOSXHints forum thread. It is long and goes on for a wide time period, so you may want to start at the end and work backwards to go by the newest information.

So, while I wouldn’t say getting a Windows ScanSnap working on the Mac is easy, it is clearly do-able. Have you ever “crossed the aisle” and got your ScanSnap working cross-platform? Leave your war story in the comment.

The whole scanner-replacing-fax idea is certainly nothing new, but I enjoyed this article in Esquire by Barry Sonnenfeld, who is a TV producer and the director of Men In Black.

Instead of relying on faxes, he can now “efficiently harass writers from anywhere, at any time”:

My method of working is to scribble thoughts on the pages of all these various scripts and then send them back to the writers. The note they dread the most is a circled joke or a scratch through lines of dialogue with a huge “DB,” which means “do better.” I used to send these notes via fax, but thanks to the latest in digital technology, I no longer need a fax machine to do so (and just as important, the writers don’t have to be at a fax machine to receive them).

Sonnenfeld goes on to do a mini-review of the Fujitsu ScanSnap S510, its smaller cousin the S300, and the Xerox Travel Scanner 100.

His conclusion? For the travelling scanning mogul, the S300 is the way to go.

Often when there is a review or article about the Fujitsu ScanSnap, there are commenters saying that they already have a multifunction all-in-one or flatbed scanner, so why would they need to pay for something that just scans?

I’ve decided to outline some of the pros and cons of each.

Multifunction All-In-One/Flatbed

• Often cheaper – You can usually find a multifunction or flatbed scanner for much less money than a ScanSnap
• Can scan books/3D Objects – Since it’s flatbed, if you can put it on the scanner you can scan it. The ScanSnap can only scan flat things
• TWAIN compatible – Most of these scanners are TWAIN compatible, which the ScanSnap is not. This means you can initiate the scan from other applications
• Manual unless you have a document feeder type – Many flatbed scanners do not have a document feeder, or even if they do you have to manually flip the paper over to scan both sides.
• Flat – Because the ScanSnap’s paper path is not 100% straight, if you are scanning photos etc. it may be better to do it on a flatbed

Fujitsu ScanSnap

• Scans both pages at same time – Don’t underestimate the usefulness of this. When you have a lot of paper to go through, having to do just one pass and bring in both sides at once can be a huge time-saver
• Discards blank pages – When you are doing double-sided scanning, having it discard blank pages automatically is both a time and a space saver
• Handles different size paper – With some flatbed/multifunctions, in the rare case where they have a document feeder, you have to have all the paper the same size when you feed in a stack. The ScanSnap will handle a stack of different sized pages no problem.
• Smaller footprint – Depending on whether you get the desktop model like the S1500 or a portable one S300, it is 1/3 or more smaller than a flatbed
• Portable versions can power from USB – If you have the S300 or S300M, you can run it off the USB instead of plugging it into the wall. This can be handy if you need to be portable or want to scan somewhere where a plug isn’t handy
• Incredibly easy to use with 1 button – Again, don’t underestimate the usefulness here. If something is not simple you (or at least I) won’t do it on a regular basis. Throwing the paper in and hitting a button is as simple as it gets.

So which is better, a ScanSnap or an all-in-one?

Like most things, it depends on what you want to do with it. If you want to scan lots of books or photos, a flatbed is probably a better choice. Something like the Canon MX850 is probably good, because it at least has a document feeder for those times you do want to scan some paper.

However, if you are wanting to scan documents on a regular basis, my personal opinion is that a Fujitsu ScanSnap is the way to go. The speed, ease of use, and included software will make a big difference.

Have I forgotten any pros and cons for either? Leave a comment and let us know.