Customer Reviews

Xerox DocuMate 510

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

The unit seems to do a pretty good job as a document scanner. The rating depends on the purpose for which you purchase this scanner.

Couple items to note:

1. The unit does not come with the PaperPort Pro 9 office as advertised by Amazon. It is bundled with the Deluxe 9 software which is a less costly product.

2. The flat bed scanning of photos is not up to my expectations. It is probably ok if you're scanning photos for commercial / non-artistic reasons. I do not believe that this takes the place of a 'decent' photo scanner. I had planned to compromise on getting shorted on the Pro 9 Office software and keep this scanner. However I decided that it was not worth it given the compromise that I would also have to accept in the photo scanning.

3. The ADF always pulls slightly to the left as the pages go through. I don't know if this is a typical problem on other ADFs or not.

4. The instructions for the software both hard copy and on the web site are not thorough. A lot of trial and error is required in order to better understand the scanner options.

5. I don't like the fact that the Deluxe 9 software provides the 'preview' scan in a small sub-window. The window is too small to get any valuable 'preview' info.

6. A positive item is that Xerox has spare parts available for the ADF and scanner which may need replacing. I don't believe that this is typical for other non-commercial consumer type units.

This Documate 510 scanner is sold under the Xerox brand but is made by Visioneer. You should not buy it because (1) it is a BAD, POORLY-MADE product (parts of the ADF wore out so badly after 8 months we couldn't use the scanner anymore), and (2) the CUSTOMER SERVICE is some of the WORST and MOST ARROGANT I have encountered in a long time. My company bought this item new from Amazon on 4/26/04; it was paid for with a credit card on the Amazon web site. As I said, by the end of October it had fallen apart to the extent the document feeder wouldn't work anymore. There is a 1- year warranty, so I called the customer service number to find out how to return it, and got Visioneer. I explained the problem and the rep said to fax a proof of purchase and they would issue an RMA. I faxed the shipping label from the original box from Amazon, showing all info (product, serial number, date of shipment,etc. I got a call the next day saying the rep's supervisor would not approve the return, that I needed something with the date of purchase on it. I said how about if I fax the credit card statement showing the purchase from Amazon, made one day before the shipping date on the shipping label. Nope, not good enough. I said we evidently had not saved the e-mail confirmation from 8 months ago, and it would be very hard to get a new receipt from Amazon, since there were at least 5 different people in the company (2 of whom are not even here anymore), each with a different Amazon user name, who use this credit card, and we could not see the purchase history on Amazon unless we had the username that placed the order. He still couldn't help, so I asked to talk to his supervisor, who could not talk at the moment but would call me back. Well, 24 hours later, no call, so I called back,and after 2 transfers and being on hold for 10 minutes and calling back in, I got the supervisor. He said there was nothing he could do. I said, do you think Amazon shipped us this without us paying for it, especially since we have the credit card statement showing the purchase date coinciding with the shipment date? Sorry, can't help you. I asked, what if we got it as a gift. Well,you'd need a gift receipt, etc.... I told him if we can find somebody that has the time we'll try to get a receipt otherwise we'll turn it over to our lawyer. I guess the new motto is "the customer is always wrong".

This scanner is absolutely terrible. I have a small home business and I want to go paperless. If you are in the middle of a scan job, say you are on the 30th page already, and something is wrong, there is no recovery feature so you have to start from scratch. In fact, tech support says you will get constant errors if you scan more than 20 pages at a time, yet the document feeder is supposed to hold 50 pages (?). You can scan and then merge multiple scans to become one, but that is not the point. The point is that out of 900 pages of scanning, i got about two dozen errors which requires me to shut off the machine, close the scanning program and start all over again. I returned the product and got another documate 510 because tech support said it must be faulty, but the second is exactly the same. This scanner is nothing but a pain in the rear. I am shipping the second one back in the morning.

After having so much trouble with HP scanners, I decided to try another company alltogether and go with Xerox. I needed a scanner capable of handling large amounts of paper 30-50 sheets at a time, was quick, and most importantly, worked. Unfortunately, 2 out of 3 doesn't cut it.

This scanner is very fast. It takes about 5 seconds to feed a sheet of paper. It can also handle a lot of paper at a time. Those are the only things it has going for it. If you notice from the picture, the auto document feeder is at a ridiculously sharp angle. It almost points straight up, which makes it awkward to load paper into it if you're sitting down and less than 6 feet tall. My employees that use this always have to stand up to insert the paper because it's easier that way. The feeder tray isn't very long either so you actually have to hold the paper and use your hand as a guide if you use more than a few sheets of legal-sized paper in it.

Without a doubt, the biggest problem with this scanner is that it is incompatible with Adobe Acrobat 6. It refuses to work with it. I don't know if this is Adobe or the scanner's fault but don't get this scanner if you want to use both. Acrobat 6 refuses to locate this scanner. I have a degree in computer science, spent about 6 hours searching for a fix on the Internet, and still couldn't resolve this. The only way to get around it is to either use a different version of Acrobat (I ended up having to pay $400 for Acrobat), or use the scanning software that comes with it. The scanning software included is okay, but is like most software in that it's bloated and has a lot of junk I didn't need. All I want is a simple TWAIN driver, which is not included. I don't need 50 mb of software and drivers, and four different programs to do simple image scanning.

Stay away from the Xerox Documate if you have an interest in scanning to PDF. It's not even made by Xerox, but by a company called Visioneer, who then sells it under the Xerox brand.

This scanner works, most of the time. I am moving toward the (still distant) paperless office, and this scanner has gotten me much closer. However, I can't recommend purchasing one because it has some maddening problems that just don't seem to be tractable.

The DocuMate 510 doesn't work at all with Windows Server 2003, because apparently corporations don't need to scan documents.

On Windows XP, it provides both TWAIN and WIA drivers. In my case, I can choose between the TWAIN driver, which inverts the colors of all black and white scans (the option to correct this simply doesn't work on my PC), and the WIA driver, which ignores the auto document feeder, forcing me to babysit the machine while it scans. I've worked around this in Microsoft Office Document Scanning with a greyscale scan that converts to black and white, but that slows it down from its rated 10ppm to about 3.

The Documate 510 software bundle includes (indeed, centers around) PaperPort 9 Deluxe, which allows scanning to PDF. Despite the "Deluxe" this product is crippleware, designed to entice you to buy the "real" version: PaperPort Pro. Except PaperPort Pro is now at version 10, which isn't really compatible with this scanner, due to the driver problems mentioned above (which are pervasive no matter what application is used, except the shipped version of PaperPort 9 Deluxe appears to have some kind of workaround).

I've tried several times to reinstall the drivers in the hopes of correcting some of these issues. Doing so requires on-the-spot "registration" every single time, including typing in the 20-character alphanumeric serial number from the back of the unit. As an added bonus, it requires you to enter your email address and subscribes you (with no indication that it is happening) to Xerox's marketing email list.

I believe this scanner is actually made by Visioneer, who sells or sold it under another name (4650?) and OEM'd to Xerox as the Documate 510. The "beauty" of OEMing a product made by someone else is that you can take it to market without a single person in your organization knowing how it works. This certainly appears to be Xerox's approach, as evidenced by the product's second-class citizen status on their website and their support personnel's inability to deviate from their call scripts.

So the Documate 510 does work, sort of. I have scanned quite a bit of material with it; my complaint is that the experience is inevitably much slower and far more frustrating than there is any need for it to be.

I am unconvinced that there are any superior alternatives in this price range, but as a result of my experiences, my office won't be buying any more scanners from either Xerox or Visioneer.

I have tried several permutations and combinations with this scanner. Here are some of the observations:
1) Image resolution is too bad for the file size it produces. I used an EPSON scanner before, and could get a much better B&W and color resolutions for a much shorter file size
2) All the images are titled towards one side. So, if you are scanning photographs, this is not the right scanner. A part of the picture will always need to be cut out if you try to straighten it up!
3) When trying to get a reasonable B&W resolution (300 dpi), scan speed is not as great as advertised.

Overall, I don't think this scanner is worth its price.

Touching on the strong points first I will start by saying that the scanner produces a good quality scan. The automatic document feeder is a great convenience for scanning small stacks of paper. OK that's about it. Now, for weak points. When doing any quality scanning it is extremely slow about it, when scanning in stacks of paper (far under the "max" paper feed count) it very frequently feeds the paper in wrong and jams, then many times when it jams, you clear the jam, and then try to start over, and it locks up the program. Then when you go through the whole "end program" fiasco, go back into the program and try to scan it will say "driver busy". So you have to turn it off, then back on. Turning it back on requires even more waiting as it goes through its startup routine. OK now you are back to scanning. Not sure how long though, the ADF seems to jam at its own no matter how perfect the paper you are feeding it is. Other than that, its OK. Id give about 10 bucks for it at a garage sale...maybe. Its certainly not suitable for heavy usage such as at the workplace or at a home office. Overall, its a pretty poor performer.

My company bought this scanner about a year and a half ago. We have 10 - 15 people who use it intermittently. It does not see heavy use. From the beginning we've had trouble with it jamming and feeding multiple pages. The cover to open it is very hard to snap open, and it won't recover from a jam without us turning off the scanner and rebooting the computer. I discovered that if I change the automatic document feeder pad assembly every 3 months or so, which I should not have to do, it helps the jamming and misfeed issue. Recently I went to order these pads, which were $20.00 apiece, and I couldn't find them on Xerox's website. When I called them they said this item was no longer being sold individually, but in a kit with cleaning solution and 2 pads. So what would have cost $40.00 - bad enough - now costs $100.00 !! As if we haven't spent enough money and frustration on this thing. I am going to do my best to get rid of this thing and buy one that works!

This scanner worked fine for me for a year, and now with later windows 2000 service patches, it has what appears to be USB problems. I've tried the latest driver available on several machines, and if they have windows 2000 with the newest patches, it will only work once or twice, then there is a driver error. I can do the normal windows recovery technicques of uninstalling & reinstalling, rebooting, trying different USB ports, etc. but short of re-imaging the machine, it won't recover. I am using this scanner with Adobe Acrobat 6 Pro with the latest service patches. I've researched and not found a new driver for this device for quite some time. Going to try to hack on a visioneer driver after reading some of the other reviews here.

DEC. 2008 UPDATE: I have bought 8 of them so far for various offices and have had zero problems with them.
DEC. 2006 UPDATE: I have bought 4 of these to date, without any hitches at all! Nice!!
The scanner does a fine job. There are many options to control file size and scan quality. The interface took a little getting used to, but after a couple of days I was a "whiz".

PLUSES:
I like the fact that it scans directly to PDF format. I especially like the "Scan Manager" that allows you to preview, reorder, and add pages to an ongoing scan. For example, if you finish scanning a document and want to add a forgotten page to the same file, you can do so in the Scan Manager. You can even re-order the forgotten page to its proper place in the PDF file. This feature would also be useful if you had a 200-page document to scan since the ADF cannot hold 200 pages at once. The machine also comes with a spare ADF "roller", which is supposed to need replacing after 20,000 documents.

I had some trouble with pages that had been stapled, but I was able to correct my problem by flat rolling the staple holes to make it feed properly. This was more user-error than the machine's fault. In fact, I scanned an unstapled 50 page document without a hitch.

I will buy this same machine as the demand for it grows at my office.