Customer Reviews

Visioneer RoadWarrior Mobile 600 DPI USB Scanner (RW120-WU)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I looked closely at the NeatReceipts scanner before deciding on this one, but think made the right call.
I have been a Visioneer fan for some time, and I saw one of the Strobes used in my doctor's office and have been interested in one ever since.
The Strobes were overpriced so I never bought one, but broke down and got this one. I figured this was the low end of their line, since the documentation is for the RoadWarrior and the Strobe 100, but when I called Visioneer they told me this one has all the latest hardware in it and buying one of the other models would be a step backward. That made me feel better at least.

I should explain my decision: I used Quicken religiously and have always wanted a way to easily attach receipts to Quicken entries. (Older versions of Quicken had ways to, but they were all iffy and imperfect. Quicken 2007 does allow more direct scanning, although it, too, is pathetic but workable and does work with this scanner). I mention this because it seemed to me that the NeatReceipts scanner's claim to fame is that it reads the receipts and stores them and you can search by them. That's not ultimately what I need. My data is already sorted and I don't need to OCR the receipts--just store them for when I want to see them. Plus, buying this scanner got me PaperPort 11 (I have been using 9, refusing to upgrade due to cost) at no additional cost, which I do use extensively also. A two-for-one deal!

The scanner is actually quite nice. It may not be perfect, or a flatbed, but when I truly look at what I want one for, this is it. I've scanned over 200 receipts with it already and dozens of other documents. It's not as bulky or hard to place on my limited desk space as my old flatbed scanner (Visioneer 9320-USB). Plus, there's no "warm up" time which I always hated.

However, on the flip side, After the unit scans the document quite quickly, it pops up "Converting", which does take way too long for my taste. For a scan that takes say 10 seconds (for an 8.5x11), the conversion process takes 20-30. I THINK that time is dependent on what format you choose to scan to (i.e. Searchable PDFs take longer than PDFs), but I haven't found a format that just "pops" in to Paperport without conversion (I'll note here when you scan from Quicken 2007 into Quicken there is no conversion time--I like that!)

I have also scanned more than a few color photographs with this unit that have come out nicely. I was afraid this was mostly a B&W scanner, but it does well with color as well it seems.

As for difficulties feeding, I can say it is an art. I get more straight than crooked, and Paperport does do a good job straightening them for you, but it is annoying to have to start over. I wouldn't let that "quirk" of this hardware deter you from choosing this unit.

All in all, I am pleased with this purchase and would recommend it to others considering it.

I bought this scanner for my wife who originally just wanted something to scan in her recipe collection. I was torn between purchasing the RoadWarrior and the Pentax DS Mobile 600. I'm glad I bought this one. The software description of the Pentax is rather scant, so it's hard to compare, but I believe the RoadWarrior wins in terms of flexibility. After using it for a while, my wife wanted to scan in her business card collection. The included BizCard application worked great. She also found the need to scan and OCR documents into Word. No problem. Photos...piece of cake. It has handled every task that we have thrown at it.

Some have complained about the difficulty of getting the scanner to feed straight. We have largely solved that problem by increasing the paper pickup delay to the max setting (1.25 seconds). Also the auto-straightening software is sometimes confused when the original contains a diagonal edge, but that feature is easily turned off.

Cons: When I first installed the scanner, I could not get it to calibrate properly and the scans had light streaks. I called Visioneer tech support and they guided me through downloading and installing a fix from their web site. After that things worked great. The software is a bit clunky (too many mouse clicks to get to the setting you want to change), but you get used to it.

As far as hardware requirements go, my wife runs this on a mini-ITX system with a rather weak processor (1 GHz Via processor, 256 MB). The software performs well even in that environment.

One last piece of advice: when creating pdfs, use the Paperport desktop as the destination for the scan rather than Acrobat Reader. It is much easier to stack and unstack things there as well as do other forms of editing like annotation and cropping.

This scanner is a great little portable mobile scanning tool. The OneTouch software is wonderful; it scans directly to an application or a file (I use it for PDF's mainly) without ANY intervention. Simply inserting the paper starts the process and in seconds the document is on the PC. I've found the size, USB powered featurer and travel case wonderful for taking it alongside my laptop where it makes quick work of receipts. The scan speed is not as fast as desktop ADF but works well for portable use.

I tried the Neat Receipts solution but it was awfully slow, required very convoluted and large software components and much more complicated than this. Highly recommended for any mobile scanning use.

I Love this Scanner! It is extremely easy to use, simple and quite fast. It needs no external power, and only needs the USB port to work. Since it scans text as well as high resolution photo's, it is perfect for eliminating all of those stored papers, articles, recipes, etc. that I had lying around and could never find when I needed them.

I especially like the bundled software - notably PAPERPORT 11. I have been a paperport user for more than 5 years, and cannot live without it anymore. Instead of MS explorer, Paperport creates little bitmaps of each document and allows easy visual views of documents.

Another GREAT bundled software program is the business card scanner. Whenever I go to business trips or, conferences, or seminars - I now scan all of my business cards as well as my travel receipts. The fields automatically populate off of the card, which then get transferred to my outlook contacts. NEVER MISS ANOTHER BUSINESS LEAD!

Again - A PERFECT portable scanner that sits in my home desk drawer until I need it - as well as my suitcase when I travel.

Would make a great gift for any executive in your family......

It is a good product overall, I bought it thinking it was the full duplex model, but it's OK. The real problem was installing the "Nuance" software *it is the best part of using this scanner*, and it was almost impossible, because it kept telling me to close processes that I couldn't find or see with the TaskManager, *windows explorer, print spooler and another HP process, all of them I couldn't find to close*. I checked allover online searching for a solution and couldn't find any. In the end, by looking and searching, I read about a free Windows program named "procexp" (that you can download from Microsoft), and with the help of that program I could finally identify the processes that had to be terminated and could install the program. Bare in mind, that closing the Windows Explorer, meant to have to close the actual "windows desktop" kind of weird situation when installing software. A regular user couldn't have done it, it required a lot of reading hours in order to find a possible solution to this problem. I am aware that it can be an issolated issue regarding my system, but.... in the end it wasn't an easy ride.

Scans directly to PDF to open in Adobe Acrobat Reader. Scans photos well. I like that no AC power is needed, is USB powered. On the other hand, software is kind of buggy. At first, software install froze. Upon install, Paperport takes a long time to open. Once it does, works fine. Can scan both sides of page to one file.

The sheetfeed scanner is excellent for most uses. I use it in conjunction with a flatbed scanner for books and articles.
I scan all tax receipts and am not becoming less paper not yet paperless. this scanner helps me to get paper off my desk quickly after receiving it as I can scan with no effort.
I found the Presto BizCard 5 Software bundled with it took over the scanner and had to be removed. The scanning of the pages face down could be a security precaution for some applications, not in a home scanning environment. It would be easier to see what is being scanned when you are multitasking if the document was face up. Scanner integrates well with Paperport 11 Professional

I purchased this scanner so that I could begin digitizing all of my receipts into Quicken for my purchases. Thermal receipts are a severe challenge for this scanner. Especially if they are wrinkled or folded. It is a very cool scanner, except it does not have the proper rollers/adhesion to handle thermal paper. For me in my application, it was only worth two stars.

I also own a Xerox DocuMate 152 for my desktop PC, which is a full-duplex scanner with an auto document feeder. This unit is paired with my laptop and replaces one which had a 16-bit Cardbus interface which was not available on my new laptop. The Visioneer has Kodak Virtual ReScan (VRS) technology, which optimizes the contrast of your black & white scans, setting the threshold almost as perfectly as you would if you started in grayscale and tweaked the balance back to black & white...a real time-saver. I also like the notification area toolbar, where you can choose the behavior of the scanner when a sheet of paper is inserted; it can either do nothing and wait for you to launch software manually or begin scanning once its sensor is tripped. They have also included a novel cleaning feature which will draw in a fiber cleaning sheet and wipe it back and forth a few times before ejecting it, thus reducing the susceptibility of streaks if something gets dragged across the sensor. It's fast, seems to feed consistently and offers great scans. No complaints here (thus far).

My 1st RW120 got old and tired after 2+ years and 10,000 scans. I liked it well enough to order a new replacement. Uninstall/Install of drivers and Paperport went smoothly. Scan quality of the new unit was bad. My iPhone with $[...] PDF App does as well or better, as did my old tired RW120.

I looked for help on [...]. Nothing useful in the knowledge base. They listed a 900-number; I presume that costs $10/min so I didn't call it. The paper instructions mention a trouble-ticket filing site but not where to find it. I found no useful support on Visioneer's web-site.

I really wanted this RW120 to work. I spent 5 hours uninstall/installing, calibrate/re-calibrating, looking for help, then gave up with nothing to show for it. With no other recourse I clicked the Amazon Return link (for the 1st time ever) and found it easy to use. This was a Lose-Lose scenario. I lost my time; Visioneer got a poor review and a returned unit.

Some symptoms: poor or nonexistent brightness control, many black lines (or white lines) across the image, and often the paper feed would stall/sputter in mid-scan causing a very distorted image. The knowledge base had tips in case the scanner didn't scan - these did not apply. The scanner created an image 1st time, every time, but the images in Paperport were unacceptably bad.

My grade of 2-star reflects both my 1st and 2nd RW120 experience. The 1st RW120 gave quite good results initially. I'd rate it 4-star, only because the paper feed runs crooked easily (and I found that acceptable in such a small scanner). After a few months it forgot how to auto-expose scans; after that I often had to manually adjust brightness by trial-and-error. Scan quality remained pretty good, degrading gradually over 2 years to unacceptable. I rate it 3-star average for 2 years. The 2nd RW120 I rate 1-star. Average of 1st and 2nd RW120 is 2-star.