Customer Reviews

Fujitsu fi-6130 Duplex Scanner (PA03540-B055)

5 star:		(45)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Having used scanners from Canon, Xerox, Lanier, Visioneer and Epson, I have a good base from which to compare this scanner. It is excellent! The feed mechanism on this scanner is superior to all prior scanners I have used, including other scanners in this price range. This unit has multiple rollers located in the base and cover that spin at different speeds to pull only one sheet at a time. In other scanners, folded paper - like documents received in an envelop - will double/multi feed. I have not had a single double feed with this unit. I am using it with File Center Pro software to convert more than 1,600 legal files to paperless .pdf format. I was so impressed with this unit that I now have 4 of them in the office, each going at least 8 hours per day with virtually no jams or double feeds. It's worth the money for an office setting where you don't have time for jams and double feeds.

This has been a frustrating experience. I have owned the Fujitsu Scansnap S510 for years and have been pleased with it except for the constant misfeeds. I found I could get an acceptable function on the S510 if I monitored it and just refed the missed sheets. I bought the Fujitsu fi-6130 because I needed a more reliable and more industrial strength model for the large volume of old and new files I needed to archive. This scanner is definitely faster than a new S1500M which I also purchased.
Now the problem is the setup. It comes with a jumbo of disjointed and overlapping software without any real guidance on what to do. The included ScanALL software is not at all like the elegant and now more appreciated proprietary fujitsu Scansnap Manager which works only on the Scansnap line of fujitsu scanners. The first batch I fed it with 1 legal size page and 6 letter size copies kept jamming on the legal page. It was not automatically recognized as a mixed size batch. I called tech support and they told me to tweak the settings to legal sz with end of page sensor on. Same issue with color and B&W copies in same batch. You have to decide to do B&W and lose the color on the one letterhead or scan the whole batch as color, needlessly ballooning your file size. I gave up and just scan in B&W. The Scansnap just did the mixed copy sizes and the mixed color/B&W and paused to allow you to name and store the file where you wanted it. The fi-6130 under Adobe Acrobat just scans in every doc as untitled1 and I have to rename it before saving it. It is either that or lose control of how you name the file.
Fujitsu tech support tells me all the former Scansnap users are disappointed with the software on the twain compliant scanners like the fi-6130. Just isn't the same thing. To sum it up, the two redemptive qualities of this scanner are faster speed and more reliable paper handling. Otherwise I like the Scansnap line better in the look and feel and operation.

This is a great scanner, but the real magic lies in the Kofax VRS capture-preparation software bundled with the product. (Kofax VRS is an image enhancement tool to improve the quality of your scans.) I bought a Fujitsu 5120c several years ago when I decided to go paperless. It has run flawlessly for three years and is still going strong, albeit on a computer running WinXP x32. When I decided to buy another scanner for use at home, I chose this model as the successor to the 5120c.

I recently bought a new laptop with Win7 x64 pre-installed. Fujitsu has kept their drivers and software up-to-date and both run under the 64-bit OS. The problem lies with Kofax. While Kofax VRS is the single best reason to buy the scanner, it does not work under Win7 x64. The Kofax website will not tell you this fact, but the installation program announces that Kofax has not been certified to run on Win7 x64 and advises that you are installing at your own risk. No amount of fiddling could get Kofax to communicate with Acrobat under Win7 x64. [I saw a post somewhere indicating that the Fujitsu ISIS driver will allow Kofax to communicate with Acrobat under Win7 x64, but was not able to make that solution work myself.]

My preferred method of operation is to scan to PDF files via Acrobat with the Kofax TWAIN driver. That method has proved simple, direct, and accurate in the past. Under Win7 x64 I get an error message that "Acrobat cannot communicate to [sic] this device [the Kofax driver]". Kofax support options are non-existent for OEM licensees. You are on your own when you buy a bundled copy of Kofax.

Things got so bad I considered downgrading the OS to either Win7 x32 or WinXP x32, but the manufacturer of my new laptop (Dell) foreclosed that option (another sorry story). I finally hit upon the idea of creating a virtual machine running WinXP x32 and installing Kofax on the virtual machine. (I used VirtualBox because it was free; VMware would also work, although it is expensive.) This solution worked quite well. I am now able to scan to PDF with the Kofax TWAIN driver. I have cloned the VM and saved it as a "virtual appliance" which can be moved to different computers, giving me the added benefit of being able to scan from the VM while running Linux as the host OS.

Kofax must account for at least half the purchase price of this scanner, if not more. The full retail version of Kofax costs over of $1,000. The steps required to get this scanner working with Kofax under anything but WinXP x32 are complex, time-consuming, and not for those of restless temperament.

Microsoft and its OEM co-conspirators have rammed a 64-bit OS down the throats of customers. Developers of niche market applications like Kofax have not been able to keep up. When Kofax is able to write native 64-bit code that will run on Win7 x64, this scanner will again become out-of-the-box friendly. I highly recommend this product used with WinXP x32. If you are running any other OS, you can still enjoy the magic of Kofax, but it will require a lot of work.

UPDATE 10/18/2010: The VM solution was neither as fast nor as stable as I had hoped. I finally gave up and purchased another computer (this time a white-box assembled locally) and installed Win7 x32. I can report that all software installed correctly and the scanner is runs great. I'm able to do everything I did with the 5120c under WinXP, only faster and with slightly better results. Final evaluation: The hardware gets five stars, the documentation gets one star (really poor translations from the Chinese, if you are understood what I mean to say by this). Kofax gets five stars for output, one star for support, and zero stars for not telling customers that their product does not work under Win7 x64. This has been an expensive education with a lot of down-time for a mission-critical application.

After researching my available choices, I purchased this scanner in order to digitize my awfully big collection of magazines. I have a very good paper cutter I purchased on eBay that allows me to cut a half inch off the side of the magazines removing the binding and any of the associated binding glues or staples. Getting this clean cut is necessary to do high volume scan feeds of magazines. I scan everything directly into Adobe Acrobat. I already had Acrobat Pro, but this scanner comes with Acrobat Standard which is all you need to do beautiful, fully rendered high quality color scans into PDF.

This Fujitsu scanner has a very small footprint compared to my lumbering Brother multi-function machine which has the ability to do auto-feeds for scanning as well, but don't let the size deceive you because this performs at a much higher level than any cheaper consumer scanner.

I looked for an alternative to the Brother because I need to scan about 2000 magazines and with a duplex feeder it would take me years the Brother is that slow. But this Fujitsu is a champ! It scans on both sides of the page at the same time so none of that laborious back feeding you see with a duplex feeder is necessary.

It zips through in a few seconds, recognizes both sides in a few seconds and then its on to the next page. It feeds about a dozen color double-sided magazine pages a minute which is 24 pages. A whole magazine therefore feeds in 3-5 minutes. I scan them at 400 DPI which results in crisp color images and very readable text.

After it feeds, I let the OCR program run so my text is searchable. This character recognition process is optional, but I consider it very important for my future digital archives which I will be able to then index and search. This OCR process takes three times longer than the actual scanning. Altogether, the scans and then the optical recognition of a 100-128 page color magazine may take 15-20 minutes. With a regular auto-feed scanner, it would take 3 hours and it would not be done as well. When scanning into PDF, remember to use Acrobat's PDF Optimization procedure which condenses the file size of the PDF by 40-70% without any noticeable loss in quality.

I am very impressed with the efficiency of this scanner and I am very happy it is enabling me to put two decades worth of archival material into high quality PDFs. I will no longer have to lug 20 boxes of magazines with me when I move. They will all be archived on a few DVDs. I'd say this scanner is worth every penny I paid for it. I did not see anything comparable. If you want to do anything like what I'm doing with PDFs, I'd encourage you to get this scanner. It's a workhorse. In the first two weeks, I've scanned 100 magazines flawlessly.

The front paper exit tray folds up nicely, but back paper guide snaps and stays on. It does not fold neatly like the front exit tray. Comes with several programs, but two are Trial-ware only. The main scanning software is not documented well. No pop-up help when selecting options. You have to read the electronic manual to know what all the options mean. Ultrasonic double paper feed detection feature works, but not helpful. It will detect and stop scanning when there is a double feed, but will not back paper out and try feeding again. Instead, you have to manually clear the jam and start the scan over again. Overall, this is a very good scanner, but given the choice to buy again, I would buy the Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500 instead. That scanner is a little slower, but has most of the same features for half the price!

Fujitsu Fi6130 Document Scanner with Automatic Document Feeder.

I don't normally review products but rather rely heavily on the reviews posted on Amazon, perhaps it is time to give something back.

I purchased this scanner not by choice. I was happy with my previous Fujitsu 4120 which I purchased about five years ago. It had served reliably. I upgraded to a Mac running Windows 7. Unfortunately there was no 64 bit driver available for the old scanner, a little peeved, I made the purchase.

It was well worth it. A very significant upgrade with substantial improvements in paper handling, reliability and OCR speed.

I didn't automatically purchase a fujitsu, but rather did my research, considering Kodak, Canon, Visioneer, Epson and Panasonic scanners. I looked at the cheaper fujitsu options but know that having a Twain compatible driver a descent processing chip within machine would be worth the extra money. I had hoped to purchase something mac compatible but the reviews suggested the few mac compatible scanners available performed fairly slowly and not up to par with the available windows options.

I chose the fujitsu because of both twain and ISIS driver availability, making scanning an easy option from multiple programs, the automatic document feeder making document processing a breeze, the duplex capability and the included software, both Kofax VRS and Adobe Acrobat Standard 9.0

The unit arrived well packaged in excellent condition. Out of the box, it is solid, small with a very small desktop footprint. Despite its small size, it weighs 15 lbs and is very stable. The design blends without being intrusive. The buttons on the front panel are self explanatory. The automatic document feeder and exit chute collapse into the unit making storage a little tidier.

Set up is easy, plug it in, install drivers on the include CD rom. ( I updated to 64 bit drivers after a very short time, available on the fujitsu website.) Connect with USB cable. Done.

I installed Kofax for document management and the included Acrobat 9.0 standard. I was scanning within a few minutes.

Man, was I impressed.

Even in 32 bit mode, this machine is fast. Documents literally spit out of the feeder. With a 64 bit driver, the feed rate is even faster. That is scanning is duplex mode. The paper path is straight, improving the feed. A small tip to make the process smoother, remove the exit feed shute and place a bin where the documents exit. The documents accumulate neatly after scanning rather than populate an ever increasing pile on the floor.

The automatic document feeder works very smoothly, I have just processed over 650 pages without any misfeeds. The capacity is excellent, around 50 sheets. The ultrasonic feed detection for misfeeds seems valuable. To date I have had very few misfeeds and the few that I have had have related to operator error, twisted sheets of paper, inadvertently inserted rather than any fault of the machine. They were rapidly detected by the document feeder before scanning screeched to a halt. The document feeder is a big functional improvement on my previous fujitsu scanner.

Having Twain and ISIS compatible drivers is a big deal, I have been scanning from within photoshop. I considered some of the cheaper options without Twain drivers and am very glad that I paid the extra money for a twain compatible device. It allows a lot more compatiblity regarding the program you scan from. You are not reliant on only occasionally updated manufacturer written software to run the device.

Typically I run the device using VM ware in Windows 7. It processes documents including OCR in the background, while I continue to work away on the mac.

Overall I am very impressed. I don't have any criticisms, cheaper is always good, but the extra money for Twain drivers and a reliable document feeder was well worth it.

The Fujitsu Fi-6130 scanner lives up to its advertising. It is fast, comes with industry standard drivers (Twain & ISIS) and has a very small footprint. Why an office would pick anything less is beyond me. To pay less and buy a scanner that runs on NON-standard drivers (I.E proprietary) does not make sense to me. Computers change and so do their operating systems (OS). To use standard drivers goes to being able to change your software to match your computer & its OS. Else you are having to buy a new scanner because it may no longer work with the newer computer &/or OS. Secondly the software packages by the big boys -Abbey Fine Reader, Omni Page Pro, Iris, all use the standard Twain or ISIS drivers. As time marches on and running a near paperless office advances so will software.
Buying a scanner that has proprietary drivers with scanner aware software that is written for their scanner seems to be short lived. With this scanner you get industry leading Kofax VRS (Virtual re-scan), you get the universal Abbey Fine Read (not proprietary Fujitsu driver version of Abbey you get with the Fujitsu s510 or the s1500 scanner - meaning you can not run that version of Abbey on other non-Fujitsu scanners) because the Fi-6130 comes with both the TWAIN and ISIS drivers.
So this scanner has a longer life span as it would NOT be outdated by computer or OS changes in your office. You also have the ability to change software that your scanner uses because it comes with industry standard drivers. For home perhaps $850 for this scanner is too much. For office/business which in large part to be successful you must adapt and keep up with changes of all kinds, this is the scanner to get. Fast, small footprint, fairly quiet, easy to use, paper jams (though I have had only 1) are easy to correct. With the drivers I can pick any scanner software package I desire to better manage my digital documents. This Fujitsu FI-6130 is the least expensive scanner that comes with the TWAIN & ISIS drivers and it comes with the gold benchmark standard Kofax VRS. I run it on a Tablet PC with 1gHz processor and 1 gb memory, running Windows XP without problems or delays. I highly recommend this scanner for any office or business.

The ADF technology in this product is amazing. It can separate a paper stack of the thinnest sheets, and scan them all one by one at incredible speed. All you hear is "whoosh whoosh" as each sheet goes through the ADF. Will not double-feed as long as the ultrasonic double-feed detection is enabled. I do not believe any other ADF scanner can compete.

But I had more difficulties getting started with this scanner than with any other I ever had.

Initially Windows would not recognize it as a USB device, possibly because it draws too much amperage from the USB port. I had to try several different USB ports until I found one that worked. I have not had this problem with the Fujitsu ScanSnap scanners.

Then the scanning software that came with it would pop up a generic error message, and refuse to scan. After some detective work, I figured out that the Fujitsu scanning software was attempting to use the drivers from an old Cannon scanner instead of its own Fujitsu drivers. I was surprised that the Fujitsu QA did not test this software on PCs with other scanner drivers. So I had to uninstall the drivers for the Cannon scanner to get the Fujitsu scanning software to work.

The scanning software itself was not very "user-friendly". It had lots of buttons and menu items titled "Settings" and "Setting" and "Configure", all mixed together in a messy UI with little indication of how one differentiated from the other.

Once I got it to scan, the scanning progress window kept stealing keyboard focus each time a new sheet was scanned. This prevented me, for example, from typing emails while the scanner was scanning a stack of papers. I can't believe nobody at Fujitsu noticed this little annoyance. I had to download a separate utility from Microsoft called "TweakUI", and tweak my Windows Registry with it to disallow applications on my PC from stealing keyboard focus from other applications.

Finally I got the scanner to scan, and started scanning lots of documents with it. By now I was pretty impressed with the scanner, thinking that it's not so bad. ...even though there was still that awkward pause between when I directed its software to scan, and when it would actually start scanning.

Then after a few weeks, I started noticing a streak running along the length of everything it scanned. It turned out to be a simple crack it developed on the scanning element glass.

I pondered repairing it at home, but did not want to risk voiding the warranty on this pricey little gem, and it was less than 30 days, so I could still return it. In any case, I could not find the appropriate spare parts on the Fujitsu website. So with significant disappointment, I shipped it back to Amazon.

Amazon refunded the money.

Amazing ADF technology, but hope Fujitsu can improve on the rest of its implementation.

I read all of the reviews before purchasing and noted that some people had difficulty in using it. My scanner using Adobe Acrobat 9.0 performed flawlessly from the beginning. The included software did not seem to confer any advantage (other than cluttering up my hard drive) over using Acrobat. One has to check and see in Adobe whether or not the scanner is set for front sides only or both sides in any format such as B&W, grayscale or color. Once that is done it is fast, nearly jam proof, and very accurate. In short it has been an answer to my problem of what to do with all the paper I have accumulated.
The only time it has jammed is after I placed paper in the ADF the wrong way. Jams were very easy to clear. As of this time I have scanned several thousands of documents and wonder how I ever got along without it. I am surprised at how stable it is despite the small footprint. I also appreciate the quietness of its operation.

This is a great scanner. The sheet feeder holds about 75 sheets, and you never have to worry about over-stuffing: it will warn you if there are too many sheets. Staples aren't a real problem either - this thing is tough enough to suck in staples and disfigure your pages, but the staples won't hurt the scanner. Just pop open the case, remove staple, smooth out the pages, and hit retry - scans like a charm.

For speed, this is a great. At 300dpi double-sided, I couldn't pull staples from manuscripts fast enough to keep up with this thing. I also had some materials in Arabic to scan - once you go up to 600dpi, it's slow enough that you have to wait a bit. 1200dpi - you may as well go make some coffee while it scans your 50 sheets. But this is all for B&W with no text conversion - once you add in grayscale or color, the scanner slows down significantly. With Adobe Acrobat, I recommend skipping the OCR text recognition completely - you can always OCR the PDF later, and it will take for freakin' ever to finish your scans if it's doing OCR in between each document.

Now then, this is a heavy-duty scanner. It took me about an hour to set it up and figure it all out. I'm using Windows 7, and I couldn't get all the Fujitsu programs to load correctly. Doesn't seem to matter - Adobe Acrobat 9 loaded just fine, all the drivers loaded all right, and then I was scanning away. Something to watch out for - after your computer goes to sleep, it might recognize the scanner when it wakes up. Just unplug and replug the USB cable. If Adobe doesn't see the scanner, then go to Scan Documents -> Configure Presets and make sure you've selected the Fujitsu scanner.

Once you're good-to-go, you can scan all day. I bought this to archive short stories that have been workshopped for my MFA - at 300dpi B&W, I can read all the text crystal-clear, and all the comments are legible, and I filled up a whole file box with scanned manuscripts with maybe six hours of scanning. (Be careful - if you have several days of scanning, this can become fun and addictive. It's like shredding paper - once you start, you don't want to stop).

For smaller print, you'll want 600 or 1200dpi. 900dpi doesn't seem to work for some reason - I guess the scanner isn't set for it. I have some workbooks in Arabic to scan, and Arabic text is smaller 12pt and the dots can easily be blurred (not to mention the workbooks themselves were copies of copies). For the good copies, 600dpi worked fine. For the poor copies, 1200dpi preserved the copy of a copy pretty much perfectly. As in I can still barely read it, but it's no worse than what I had to start with.

I don't use the color settings much, but they are amazing. If you scan a yellow legal pad with your handwriting, it's like your soul appears like magic on the computer screen. You should try it - it's really cool. Much cooler than B&W scans, but much slower with much, much larger file sizes.

As for file size - you can scan a few hundred B&W 300dpi into about 2MB. Very nice and small. Grayscale or color might push it to 15MB or 30MB, so it's a huge difference. It you're just archiving, B&W is quick, dependable, and readable.

That just about does it. Be careful of staples: they won't hurt the scanner, but the scanner will hurt your paper before realizing there's a jam.