Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500M Instant PDF Sheet-Fed Scanner for the Macintosh

by Fujitsu

• Compact, easy to use "one touch" scanning
• A4 duplex compact color scanner
• Excellent image quality
• One button searchable PDF creation
• Intelligent paper feed detection

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

The ScanSnap S1500M provides Mac users an effective way to greatly reduce paper clutter, storage space, and security risk associated with unmanaged paperwork at home or office. Even better, documents canned by ScanSnap take on a higher level of accessibility and usefulness once liberated into the digital realm. Find out how others are freeing up time, space and even money.

Greatly reduce paper clutter and scan up to 20 pages per minute. View larger

Seamlessly scan and save your files to the cloud

The ScanSnap S1500M for Mac scans up to 20 pages per minute in color, grayscale, or black & white at an uncompromising 300 dpi resolution. Stack up to 50 pages into the automatic document feeder (ADF) and press the "SCAN" button to scan both sides of each page in a single pass. The S1500M automatically recognizes the size of each document, detects and corrects for skew, and shows images in their proper orientation with blank pages removed.

Intelligent Paper-Feed Detection

ScanSnap S1500M for Mac is equipped with a multi-feed detection sensor that can be turned on to help you avoid losing images. What's more, an interactive interface allows users to easily and quickly bypass intentional double-feeds such as a taped-receipt on an expense report or even a sticky note.

The ScanSnap S1500M comes with Cardiris business card software for Mac

Intelligent features make scanning hassle-free and a breeze. View larger

Fast Scanning

Simply load a stack of documents into the automatic document feeder and press the "Scan" button. Capable of holding up to 50 pages in the feeder, ScanSnap S1500M scans both sides simultaneously at a speed of up to 20 pages per minute.

ScanSnap Carrier Sheets

The included carrier sheet allows ScanSnap S1500M the flexibility to digitize large double-letter size documents (A3/B4), photographs, as well as magazine and newspaper clippings. Carrier sheets can be scanned in succession or mixed in with paper documents.

Scanning to the Cloud

The ScanSnap S1500M provides users direct scanning to Evernote and Google Docs, as well as Salesforce CRM and SharePoint Online (for Windows). It also brings two additional cloud syncing functions: Scan to SugarSync and Scan to Salesforce Chatter. Now you can seamlessly scan and save your scanned files to the cloud for fast and easy accessibility from just about anywhere.

Intelligent Features for Nearly Effortless Scanning

The ScanSnap S1500M features a powerful set of automated image processing functions including Auto skew correction, Auto orientation, and Auto color detection. These intelligent features work behind the scenes to help ensure scanned content looks great without effort.

Generate Editable Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint Files

Need to make a quick alteration, enhance productivity by scanning paperwork with machine-print back into an editable version with the included ABBYY FineReader for ScanSnap software for PC and Mac.

Useful Scanning Software Included

The ScanSnap S1500M comes with the tools you need to get the most out of your ScanSnap. Included in the package are several useful applications that work with Mac and PC:

Cardiris V3.6 (Mac)--With Cardiris business card OCR software for Mac adding and managing contact information is a breeze. Scanned business card info can be edited and then exported to Address Book, Entourage, AppleWorks, vCard and other contact management systems.

ABBYY FineReader for ScanSnap (Mac and PC)--This popular OCR (optical character recognition) software lets you scan documents with machine print directly to Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

Adobe Acrobat 9 Professional--Create and reliably share PDF documents. Combine files from multiple applications in a single PDF file. Easily create fillable PDF forms to collect data electronically. And apply basic document security features.

Scan to Mobile--With the free ScanSnap Connect app, you can link ScanSnap to an iPad or iPhone for viewing on the go.

Technical Specifications

• Interface: USB 2.0
• Scanner Type: ADF (Automatic Document Feeder), duplex color scanning
• Scanning Modes: Color / Grayscale / Monochrome / Automatic Detection
• Image Sensor: CCD (Charge coupled device) x 2
• Light Source: White cold cathode discharge lamp
• Optical Resolution: 600 dpi x 2
• Scanning Speeds: 5-20 sheets per minute (depending on quality selected)
• Document Sizes: A4, A5, A6, B5, B6, Business Card, Letter, Legal and Custom sizes with carrier sheet
• Paper Chute Capacity: Maximum 50 sheets (Letter size at 20 lb or 80 g/m2)
• Dimensions: 11.5" x 6.3" x 6.2" (292 x 159 x 158mm)
• Weight: 6.62 lb (3.0 kg)

Product Description

Included items 1 USB cable (2.0),1 ScanSnap CarrierSheet,1 Safety Precautions,1 AC adapter,1 Adobe Pro 9,1 Set-up DVD-ROM ,1 AC cable and 1 Getting Started.System & Software Requirements: Mac OS X 10.4, Mac OS X 10.5.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

345 of 348 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Great tool for the paperless office April 10, 2009

By Giovanni Bertani

Great tool. What a scanner should be. This is another world from the speed and software efficiency you have in the average scanner and All In One Printers. So I am happy to have both a AIO device and this great tool for document management.

My use:
Now all the invoices and in general, all my printed documents are converted into searchable pdf into an easy to access archive.

I can recover from a fax or a printed document and edit it in word or excel tables or iWork and save a lot of time retyping

Business cards are archived in a short time and included in my address book and so also on my iPhone.

PLUS
A single, easy to use, application manages the very fast scanning and efficient OCR conversion of printed documents outputting directly in searchable PDF, Word, Excel, email attachment, address book and VCF contacts. Also business card OCR is quiet effective and the limit is due to strange character and graphics and you can find on some more creative cards.

Compared to what you find in the AIO devices and average scanners, paper handling is superior and errors are avoided. In the case of skipped pages (Happens rarely) a sensor warns you and show you which page is missing.

CONS
Only shortcoming is that Acrobat Pro is included in version 8.0 and not the last 9.0 but I suppose that this will change soon.

290 of 294 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Paper eater April 27, 2009

By Donald H. Mcclelland

But I mean this in a good way. The ScanSnap S1500M gobbles up piles of paper at an amazing rate. One-side or two-side scanning takes the same time. I have put just about every type of paper through it, often of mixed sizes and types (e.g., legal and letter size, 3x5 cards, newspaper and magazine clippings, unfolded brochures). A carrier sheet is available for crumpled, folded, or extremely thin paper. I've only had one paper jam (an odd-shaped, somewhat crumpled page that I ran without using the carrier sheet). Clearing jams is trivially easy because of the almost straight-through paper path. I am amazed by the quality of the scans. Photos sometimes look better than the originals. It small and almost silent. The software is easy to use. I have seldom, if ever, had a computer peripheral that I was as happy with.

366 of 375 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Super-fast but overpriced, with glitchy software & awful documentation December 31, 2010

By E. Goldberg

I got my ScanSnap 2 weeks ago and have now scanned about 7,000 pages of docs. Although I feel it's a flawed product, I think it's still the best available that I've found.

GOOD:
* The hardware is really good at what it does: wicked fast, solid quality scanning. I can easily tear through 300-500 pages an evening.

* The hardware workflow deals efficiently with common problems, most notably, reliably detecting & helping you correct when a page misfeeds.

* It folds up into a small footprint on your desk.

NOT GOOD:
* Hardware build quality feels really cheap for a $450 device. Most notably, the paper feed gears are all plastic. Mine already broke in just the first 10 days requiring complete replacement of the scanner.

* It's marketed as allowing up to 50 pages in the sheet feeder, my experience is that it typically can't feed paper unless you go down to 15-20. When I try with more, it makes a horrible noise and jams up. (I'm pretty sure this is what broke the plastic gear.)

Finally, the mediocre software. Speaking as a usability engineer who has also worked in the Mac OS team at Apple, the software interface is remarkably disappointing, especially for a Mac OS app. Saddeningly, most of the kinds of problems I see are ones that could have been cumulatively fixed in just a few man-weeks of a good designer & engineer's time. Here's just a smattering:

* After the first two pages that you scan, the window focus returns to the scan progress dialog. In other words, if you start a scan and go do something else (like surfing the web), the first time you press the space bar or return key, your scan job is aborted without undo, since you've pushed the "Stop" button unwittingly.

* File names can't be saved if you use characters prohibited on Windows (but not Mac). Worse, when you enter the name and it gives you an error (which gives factually incorrect criteria for what characters you can and can't type -- it keeps telling me I can't enter characters that I know I didn't), you lose the entire file name you chose and have to re-create it from scratch.

* The user interface text was clearly written by a non-native English speaker lacking usability or user assistance experience. Buttons and labels frequently even fail to conform to Apple's own naming guidelines. Even though the concepts behind the software are simple, it's often necessary to read the user manual to understand what different functions actually do, because the text labels are so poorly crafted, and rarely relate to the user task at hand. The error messages sometimes are just unbelievable -- I've worked on the design and creation of consumer software for 16 years and I've *never* seen anything this sloppy.

* There's so much low-hanging fruit that could make the software great: why can't it automatically propose a file name based on the first few words of a scan? Why can't the OCR take place in the background, so that you can get your scanning done and do the conversion overnight? (etc)

The documentation is also unbelievably bad: it's not task-oriented, there's factual mistakes where they copied and pasted out-of-date content from the prior model that doesn't apply to the S1500M, it buries the most critical things you need to know in tangents, and is written for an era in which users read a multi-hundred page document from back to back. If I were still teaching undergraduate technical communication, I would use it with my students for comic relief.

All that said, this scanner has enabled me to reclaim my closet and I'm very grateful for it. But it's far from a perfect product, and the flaws are ones that companies have no excuse for perpetuating at this price point, or in this era. Hopefully in 5 years there will be competitors that build fast scanners with reliable quality and well-crafted software -- but this ain't it.