Fujitsu ScanSnap S300

Two years ago I wrote about the Paperless Home personal project. Using very simple and cheap scanner I started scanning every important piece of mail (or other documents) coming in paper form and converting them to the digital format. I continue organizing my personal documents this way, getting rid of almost any piece of paper as soon as it arrives and finds its way to my secure FDE drive.

The end result is great. Whenever I have a need to get one of these documents it is a quick file search away and my physical cabinet for storing papers is almost empty now (well... may be not, but it is not filling up anymore). On the other hand, the process of scanning the papers has been fairly labor intensive. The scanner I used to use (an old Canon flatbed) was slow and the software was limited. Things like scanning double sided, multi page documents were taking long time and I could imagine not many people being patient and having enough perseverance to keep this process running every time something arrives in paper form.

So recently I have decided to upgrade the machinery. For a long time I have been tempted by the Fujitsu ScanSnap S500 / S510, especially after reading all the reviews on Amazon. What was holding me back was the price and the fact the S500 was a monochrome machine. So it was not a long decision after I learned there is a new kid on the block - the S300. Smaller than the S500, capable of scanning in color and (how I like it!) can be powered directly from the USB port, eliminating an extra power brick.

I am using the S300 for three weeks now and have to admit it exceeds my expectations in every aspect. The software is flawless. Sits somewhere in the background. I open the scanner, put one or more (yes, it has an automatic document feeder) pages in (like in a fax machine) and press the button. After just a few seconds a PDF file lands in one of the folders on the hard drive. There is an automatic empty page detection and the S300 scans both pages of a paper simultaneously. It even automatically rotates the pages to be landscape or portrait. With OCR in the background, the PDF scans are fully searchable by the operating system (I use Windows Vista, but can imagine this works on Mac OS the same way).

Put simply - the S300 is one of those technology marvels, that deliver. Both hardware and software stand out on the general landscape of problems you normally expect buying any computer - related device or application. I can highly recommend the S300 to anyone looking for a personal or small office document scanner. You won't find anything better on the market.