Scanner recommendations

[Kerry F]

I need to get a scanner.  Just a simple scanner, nothing fancy, but decent.  I can't decide whether to get a combo copier and scanner and printer or just a plain scanner for sending in documents to agencies.  I don't need high speed either.  But definitely ease of use.  Any suggestions?  Would like to keep the price under $150 if I just get a plain scanner.  But it would be nice to have a little copier, too.  But you can scan something into your computer and then print it out, right?

[Marge Teilhaber (TILE hobber)]

I can't tell you how much I adore this machine.  I scan everything, including exhibits.  And the PDF it creates is searchable, so if there's reading from a document, I'm all set.   Enjoy the machine, Quyen!

[Kerry F]

Well, I guess I would still be concerned with Fujitsu's service as it has been very poor the last two years on my on-site service I paid for.  Very poor more than once.  Has anyone had to have their ScanSnap serviced for anything?

[Marge Teilhaber (TILE hobber)]

I called tech support and got through quickly and got good info.  The help files are good, too.  

Here's the number I called.  Maybe call them to pick their brain:  ScanSnap tech support 800-626-4686

[Michele Becker]

I saw this one at Newegg

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?SID=TK6SSIK-EeK0UfJvjwbR...

I haven't had the opportunity to play with a scanner like this before and I have a question.  If you scan to Pdf and make the document searchable, it seems to me that method limits what you can do with Pdf.  I read somewhere of the problem sometimes of 1's changing to i's.  Were this to happen the Pdf is still useful for researching spellings but you'd never want to allow an attorney to access this exhibit scan since it has likely changed some things about the exhibit.

Am I thinking incorrectly on this?

Can you on a single pass get both a searchable Pdf and dumb Pdf?

[Marge Teilhaber (TILE hobber)]

If you scan a clear document on the ScanSnap, you get an excellent quality searchable PDF.    But if the document is blurry and crap to begin with, you get a lot of those 1's changing to i's and other assorted useless stuff.  In ScanSnap manager, you can change the "image quality."  The choices are (1) automatic resolution, (2) normal (color/gray: 150 dpi;  B&W: 300 dpi), (3) better  (color/gray: 200 dpi;  B&W: 300 400), and (4) best ( (color/gray: 300 dpi;  B&W: 600 dpi).

Mine is set to normal and I haven't futzed with the better and best settings yet.  My results have been great using normal.

I recently bought PDF Converter Professional 8.1 and have been working with Jim Barker and SearchMaster.  He's adding very interesting PDF features to SM as in combining multiple PDFs and making an index, but that's also limited to the quality of whatever PDF we have at our disposal.

But back to your comment, Michele, all we can work with is whatever exhibits we're given, whether hard copy or electronic, and hope for the best as to the OCR result.  Having the ability to search a PDF for spellings and quotes is huge.  

Don't know what you mean by "but you'd never want to allow an attorney to access this exhibit scan since it has likely changed some things about the exhibit."  This isn't our problem.   Garbage in garbage out!

You say this:  "Can you on a single pass get both a searchable Pdf and dumb Pdf?"  The quality is either good or bad, depending on the image quality of the document.

[Michele Becker]

I'm envisioning landing a large case where you handle all the exhibits and offer to scan and host the exhibits somewhere that attorneys have access to them.  The firm I contract through offers that service now.

I was just pondering whether if you made the exhibit searchable, whether there is a risk in the actual text changing in the scanned exhibit.  It's great for our purposes to have a searchable pdf but I'm guessing you wouldn't want to grant access to those scans and pass them off as representing the actual exhibit (due to the possibility of text changing it is turned into a searchable pdf).  

[Amanda Leigh]

The downside to a ScanSnap is that it is not TWAIN, if that is important for you (http://scansnaptest.fcpa.fujitsu.com/tips-tricks/162-why-doesnt-sca...).  

If you have Min-U-Script or want to get Min-U-Script, it must have a TWAIN scanner for its scanning function.  Don't know if same holds true for E-Tran and Visionary.  

[Ann Medis]

Kerry, I, too, had major issues with a late 2007/2008 Fuji laptop and found their technical service to be abysmal.  And that's being kind.  But last year I tempted fate and bought the ScanSnap after reading great reviews from several sites.  My $100 all-in-one was problem after problem after problem. 

I can't tell you how much I love the ScanSnap.  It's fast and it's a workhorse.  I don't need a copier anymore.  I just scan the document and print it.  It does cost more than you wanted to spend, and that's a serious consideration.  But I think you'll get years and years out of this scanner, and over time it will end up costing less than the cheaper models.