ScanSnap Is a Snap!!!!
♫ Snap, what a happy sound
Snap is the happiest sound I’ve found
You may clap, rap, tap, slap but
Snap… makes the world go round…♫
Lyrics and music by Moosebutter.
Continuing with the theme of technology that just works, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the Fujitsu ScanSnap iX500.
This little scanner punches way above its weight. In fact in the years that I have been talking about scanners and going paperless, no one has ever said that they have regretted purchasing one of the ScanSnap line of scanners. They have been a hit with every size firm, with every practice area and every type of lawyer right across North America. Why? They do their job simply, quietly, quickly and very efficiently.
What do they do? Here are the specs:
- 50 page automatic sheet feeder
- full duplex scan
- 25 pages per minute in full colour, faster in B&W
- works with Windows and Mac computers (I use mine with my MacBook Pro)
- works with Android and iOS mobile devices and tablets
- comes bundled with Adobe Acrobat Standard (for Windows PCs only, regrettably for us Mac users) as well as other bundled software
- comes with a ‘carrier sheet’ – a dual layer clear plastic sheet that allows you to scan loose papers and receipts
- can be set to OCR (optical character recognition) files automatically
- detects colour, greyscale and black & white
- you can create a PDF, text-searchable PDF or JPEG file
- using Wi-Fi, you can scan directly to a personal computer, iPhone, iPad or Android device
- if you wish, you can scan directly to your existing Evernote, Dropbox, Google Docs, SugarSync and Salesforce accounts
The ScanSnap iX500 comes with a set of bundled software:
- ScanSnap Manager (Windows and Mac)
- ScanSnap Organizer (Windows)
- ABBYY FineReader for ScanSnap (Windows and Mac)
- Adobe Acrobat X standard (Windows)
- PFU CardMinder (Windows and Mac)
- Rack2-Filer Smart and Magic Desktop (Windows) – Available only with iX500 Deluxe
- ScanSnap Folder (Windows)
- Scan to SharePoint (Windows)
- Scan to Mobile (Windows and Mac)
Full specifications can be found here and system requirements here.
I have a ScanSnap at home and love it. It has allowed me to take my paper files and digitalize them and eliminate the need for paper files. I also upload my documents into Dropbox and this allows me to have a full cloud-copy as well as a local copy of all my documents. Have a hard drive failure? No worries…get a new PC or Windows, link it to your Dropbox account and ZIP…your documents are now dowloaded on your local computer. I know ..I experienced this. Everything in my Dropbox account was quickly and easily recovered notwithstanding the HD crash (unfortunately I found out to my regret that my photos..that I thought were backed up in iCloud ..were not. Now all my photos are backed up in Dropbox). For important documents and folders, I use third party encryption that creates encrypted volumes within Dropbox for security.
In my world, Snap makes the world go round.
–David J. Bilinsky, Vancouver, BC.
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