I have an old Fujitsu 510M for letters and papers which somehow continues to work fine with their software and a high-end Epson flatbed for photography.
But for books I use Scanner Pro on the iPhone. It’s great.
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It’s not obvious, but it’s there in Notes and it’s not hard to get to especially since I have Notes on my Home dock.
It would be nice to extend this ability to Mail and Messages and maybe even Pages the File App. Messages and Mail tend to be the apps I use when I need to scan something. Notes actually embeds the scan into a Note document which may or may not be a problem, but you can share just the scan.
I have an app called Scanner Pro that can scan and then email or text the recent scan. It can also do OCR. I used this for receipts for work, but the app is now obsolete since both features are now built into iOS 15 on the newer phones.
Scanning works best on the Mac with Preview (and the iPhone), so I’ll scan on my Mac if I have the chance.
We really need Preview on the iPhone and iPad.
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You might also find Qroma useful.
Kevin
The iOS Dropbox app also has a built-in document scanner that’s pretty nice: it lets you set the corner points of a document and adjusts for skew, combines multiple pages into a PDF, etc. And since the final document is stored on your dropbox, it’s immediately available on your other devices.
If you need help scanning with your phone there’s an interesting cardboard box contraption on Amazon:
I have not used or bought it, so I can’t necessarily recommend it, but it’s inexpensive and if you scan a lot with your phone, it could be handy. (I had the old version in my “save for later,” but this new version costs a few extra dollars and apparently includes LED lighting which sounds well worth it.)
You could also rig up your own if you can find a cardboard box and are crafty.
I’ve had the iX1500 for a few years now. Fujitsu sent it to me to review, but once I started messing with it, I realized I had no good frame of reference and by the time I had enough experience to comment on it it was too late. Oops.
Anyway, I can’t comment on the iX1600, but I’ve been fairly happy with the iX1500. The main problems I’ve had with it:
- The software sometimes just doesn’t see the scanner (I’m using a Wi-Fi connection). That’s gotten better with recent software updates, but it’s really frustrating when it happens.
- I sometimes get streaks on scans, which means I need to clean the rollers, which is tedious.
- You have to remember to put the pages in backwards. In other words, facing the machine.
It’s great for working through large piles of documents, but not so great with photos, as the streaking is much more evident. Granted, it’s a document scanner and not a photo scanner, but I don’t really have room for both.
The only problem I’ve had with the iOS scanner in notes is that is there very difficult to get the documents out of notes into a form, such as PDF, that is good on the desktop. If you want to use Notes as a primary source of scan documents, it will work probably work OK but if you have a combination like I do with a desktop scanner as well as the iOS notes app, it can be difficult .
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I believe documents are scanned into Notes as PDFs which you can then drag out of Notes on macOS. You can also scan a PDF directly into the Files app.
That’s why I bought that non reflective glass pane. It greatly improves the scan. Most of the time when I need to scan something, the iPhone does nice work. I don’t know if it’s good enough for photos, but for sending a tax form to someone, it works just fine. And probably does just a good job as an All-in-One printer. A dedicated flatbed scanner may do a better job, but the cost/benefit ratio just isn’t high enough for me to get one.
I’ve been using Scansnaps for 15+ years and recommend them highly. Started with FI-5110EOXM and now currently ix500.
Additionally, I have helped a number of people with Brother and Xerox scanners as well as PC Scansnap users.
Count me as a big fan of the Scansnap but the other brands seems good to me, too.
I am a one trick pony when it comes to scanning. I just want to hit a button and have a PDF scan go to a folder. I don’t use Scanscan home organizer or anything other than scan. Basically, I use the barest of functionality, so judge my reply accordingly.
Me too. I’ve had two Fujitsu ScanSnap’s (wired S1500M, and now wireless or wired ix1500) because I want to chuck a load of paper docs in the doc scanner, and simply hit a button on the machine to have the scan open in some PDF software; OCR it; file it.
Even though most of my paperwork arrives digitally now, a fair amount still comes in paper form (things like Terms & Conditions booklets, manuals not available digitally, odd things here and there) and so it’s quick and easy to still use a dedicated doc scanner and a decent naming and filing system. Then it’s done with and I can move on to more important things without spending ages fiddling around scanning. Although I think the iPhone/iPad scanning things mentioned above may work for many people, too.
Naming schemes and filing system are important if you want to archive and find things quickly in future.
As mainly an Apple user, I just use iCloud Drive to store all non-media docs now (Time Machine backed up), with my file naming scheme for docs being something like this (last 4-digits of ac’s in case you end up having more than one with the same organisation, makes them easily identifiable in future years when archived):
2022.02.15.Tue - Joe Bank - ac 1234 - statement - 2022.01.pdf
2021.03.20.Sat - Thames Water - ac 3579 - statement - 2021-2022.pdf
I prefer the spacing with dashes seen above to be more easily human readable. But others may prefer underscores with/without dots/day, which are apparently more user-friendly across OS’s:
20220215_Joe_Bank_ac_1234_statement_2022_01.pdf
If it’s a something over time, I use a folder with dashes for the period it ran for naming, like this:
2018-2022 - Joe Bank - ac 1234 – a bank ac open between 2018 and 2022.
2021.02-10 - work - project name – a project that ran between Feb and Oct 2021.
One trick is to move the unnamed.pdf to the folder it’s being filed into first, copy a previous file name in that folder, then paste+edit the name on to the unnamed file – avoids screw-ups and tedious typing. ;-)
Really, there’s no right or wrong answers here – someone will no doubt see flaws in my methodology above (I honestly welcome comments!). Just think about your longterm usage and archiving, then set your own logical scheme rules and try to stick with them so things don’t end-up all over the place.
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Coming late but after reading this thread I’ve actually improved my setup in the last two weeks, thanks to some TidbitsTalk inspiration.
I’m still using a Scansnap S510M. I have been using it with an old MBA 2013 laptop running El Capitan (10.11). This setup allowed all the software that came with the scanner to run, mainly the following:
- Scanscap v22L16
- ABBYY Finereader 4 for Scansnap
I was using this setup to scan paper documents for record keeping. Process was to scan, OCR, and save as PDF. At times I was just letting the software name them (with date/time stamps), generally now I name the document in the format “YYYY-MM-DD Institution.pdf”. The software auto prompts for the rename after OCR finishes.
All files are saved into one destination folder, though I could easily split that up as needed. Spotlight searching built into macOS is excellent at finding any document I need, even if generically named, the OCR/search has never failed when I needed to find something. Honestly, it’s amazing when I’ve really tried to push it.
After reading this thread a few weeks ago, and some mention of virtualized macOS on a different thread, I decided to test a new setup. I’m now using a VM clone of the MBA in VMware Fusion 12 (free for personal use, though Parallels should work as well) and the Scansnap has been working perfectly with my (fairly beefy) 2017 iMac running Monterey. [If anyone is interested in the steps to setup/clone, leave a comment. It’s not hard but not exactly straight forward either].
Plan is to test it for another week before wiping the MBA and having one less piece of old apple gear around. I’ll probably test the same VM process with a 2015 MBP I was maintaining a Mojave partition on for the last version of Lightroom Classic that didn’t require a subscription.
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Reading this thread I didn’t find anyone directly answering your original question: “Is Fujitsu never to be trusted again?”
I’ve used my S1500M heavily over 10 of the last 12 years (think I have that time span correct). Because of the 64-bit shuffle and Fujitsu’s initial response to it, I had to mothball the scanner for two of those years. I have both Brother and Eason AIO machines as well as Scanner Pro on my iPhone, so I wasn’t lacking for scanners. I also wasn’t planning to take advantage of Fujitsu’s completely ungenerous consolation offer of $100 or so off the list price of a new ScanSnap.
The interesting thing is that the company reversed course, rewrote the drivers to include their older machines, and reached out to let users know of their new-found compatibility with 64-bit MacOS. This is in contrast to companies like Logitech and Netgear that purchase interesting technologies outside their wheelhouse, gussy them up for a short-term splash, and then abandon them.
I’d trust Fujitsu to keep supporting a new ScanSnap for some time to come, even though I’m still feeling a bit let-down after the temporary decommissioning. They’ve demonstrated they will dig in and get something done when it’s needed, even if there is absolutely no financial incentive for them to do so.
Actually there is a financial incentive for Fujitsu, just one that is not not seen by the short term greedy – future sales.
Having supported ScanSnap users through Home 
and back to Manager 
, I trust them in the long term (Barring hostile takeover). The transition through OS X and macOS versions has been consistently successful. On my 2018 Mac Mini, for example, the reliability of WiFi connections has improved to “it just works, if you give a minute or two to find itself”.
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Fujitsu is certainly a bit eccentric, IMO. When they abandoned the ScanSnap I had (model ?), which was part of my weekly bill paying workflow, I looked at alternatives, but ended up biting the bullet and getting a new S1300i. Of course, a couple months later they did their famous reversal, but it was too late for me.
They also clearly don’t value their English-speaking customers enough to localize their app and docs into language a native speaker would use (or maybe they’re just oblivious). The language is understandable, but in places pretty awkward and gives the app an unpolished feel.
And finally, they are unbelievably persistent in their prompts to use their cloud service, register the app, install their OCR software (no thanks, I have my own), etc. I turned off most of the processes that get launched behind the scenes (there are at least four), but I still get that annoying “Please register ScanSnap!” notification every time I use it.
OTOH, the product is completely dependable, fast, and accurate. Week after week, year after year. So for me, the response to the OP is “Yes. Just get the Fujitsu.” But if you’re as picky as me, you may need to hold your nose at times.
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That part sounds a little weird. I never saw those again after the new ScanSnap software was installed. That’s held true through multiple updates.
When you run the ScanSnap Manager software, you should be able to launch the “ScanSnap Support Tool.” It has a tool that runs a “check privileges” routine. See if that fixes you up.
Hmmm. I don’t have an application named “ScanSnap Manager.” I have “ScanSnap Home,” but it has no option such as you describe.
But I have ScanSnap boxed in pretty tight, and maybe it’s just not happy with the size of that box. What I mean is, I do not have a ScanSnap account at Fujitsu, I have not “registered” the software, and I do not use either their Cloud service, or their OCR software. FWIW, I looked (with LaunchControl) at the Global Agents ScanSnap installs. I see I have only turned off two of the four:
That might be it. ScanSnap sits in the auxiliary (right side) menu bar for me, and appears as an icon in the App Switcher. I believe that’s what is associated with ScanSnap Manager. The main purpose of that software is to provide all the pipelines that route your scan, run text recognition on it, and convert it into different formats like PDF, TIFF, or JPEG.
It sounds like you’re not using your ScanSnap that way, which is fine, but that may also be why you’re getting registration nags.
- The iX1600 wifi connection is more reliable than that of the iX1500. Open the scanner and insert the document and also launch ScanSnap Manager if it is not already running. Connection to the scanner reliably happens with time varying from near instantaneous to tens of seconds.
- I have yet to experience streaky scans on either model.
- Envision the stack on the output tray where the first page must face down to have the second page in order behind it. That may help remembering.
Two years of estate paperwork as well as personal receipts and other documents have made me a believer. I don’t have the patience to have used a flatbed scanner for the hundreds of pages scanned. Quick scans of photos for family members or record purposes are good enough. We still use a flatbed scanner for high resolution scanning of family archive photos .
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That’s good to hear. I had to scan something yesterday and it took a lot of fiddling to get the ScanSnap software to see the scanner.
Fujitsu and VueScan here.
Both have their quirks, but the results are good.