Not really ready for the office, March 27, 2009

By 

G. Ware Cornell Jr. “anotherlawyer” (Weston FL) – See all my reviews

  

  

  

I was looking for a scanner to allow me to bring my trusty ScanSnap S510M Instant PDF Sheet-Fed Scanner home from the office. A scanner offering 20ppm scanning with a 40 document auto-feeder and a name like Workforce seemed to fit the bill.

Unfortunately I will be using this scanner at home and keeping my Snapscan at the office. What happened?

Well the major thing that happened is the interface. A scanner may print at 20 pages per minute, but if you have to spend a couple of minutes getting it to start scanning (in spite of the zero warm up time) and a few more minutes post scanning getting it into the correct file, the pages per minute input is misleading. By contrast the Snapscan goes to work immediately and then offers you a default storage location or the opportunity to change quickly to another location.

The other feature I wanted was a flatbed scanner, missing with the Snapscan, and the GT-1500 definitely has one. However I realized this feature was more suited for home use where I have photos than the office where I am storing documents.

The ADF is another problem. It works fine with a stack of documents but is greatly resistant to just one page.

Now for the good stuff, the scan quality is excellent and the OCR program that is included performs reliably. I personally prefer IRIS ReadIris Pro 11.0 (Mac) but I cannot complain about the output quality.

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Great scanner, terrible support, December 2, 2008

By 

Michael Ware (Atlanta, Georgia) – See all my reviews

  

This scanner uses LEDs as a light source and so has zero warm-up time. The paper feeding system is very fast and and handles irregular sheets and ragged corners with no trouble. The scanner itself beats the HP 5550C I’ve been using.

Epson’s scanner interface is not to my taste but has presets for office and graphic professional scanning needs. What keeps it from getting highest marks is the abysmal customer service.

I couldn’t get the twain driver to work under Windows Vista. The WIA driver did work, but doesn’t support acquisition from the sheet feeder (which defeats the whole purpose of buying this scanner). Lack of sheet feeder support is a crippling blow to the usability of Paperport (which I have used for years). Epson should not be bundling software that their own product does not support.

I spent hours on the phone with three levels of Epson’s technical support to no avail. They tried to pawn me off on Nuance to get Paperport support (Nuance’s policy is that software bundled with hardware is supported by the manufacturer of the hardware!)

One of the technicians I spoke to did not even know that twain and WIA were different drivers. How can they possibly address my problem when they have such poor background in the product?

The answer of course, is that Epson’s support is provided by a call center in India or some such place and the support people are reading canned responses off a computer screen.

The level two technicians knew nothing more that the level one technicians. After a lengthy conversation with a level three technician I was promised a resolution and a return phone call, which as you might guess, never happened.

In the end, I was left to my own devices and discovered a workaround. Scan using the Epson interface (which does support the document feeder) and set its destination directory to the main Paperport directory.

Then open Paperport and manage your documents from there. Not as good as scanning directly from within Paperport, but it gets the job done.

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Fast, April 16, 2009

By 

John H. Gruver “brainactiv” (Moss Beach, CA USA) – See all my reviews

  

  

I opened it, inserted the CD into my Mac Quicksilver G4 Dual 1GHz, spent the next 6 minutes installing unbelievable amounts of software (been a while since I owned an Epson, I guess I forgot how much there is, though I believe my HP stuff is bloated too) and removing unbelievable amounts of green immobilizing tape. It’s light, as I expected. Connection was a cinch, and the software recognized immediately.

In the OFFICE MODE, it took one document, a stack of 12 of various types (B&W & Color text, picture, and text with pictures), and scanning was very fast – I didn’t measure it but less than 8-seconds per sheet. The scans themselves looked perfect. I tried scanning photographs, and as long as they were the same size and thickness, no problem. It “ate” a stack of various sized photos all at once (no damage, just couldn’t take one-at-a-time)

In the HOME MODE, I put various collections of photos on the flat bed and scanned them. Again, very fast… 5-seconds or so. I did run into a glitch, but it was my error. I attempted to scan three old photos and correct their Color & Back Lighting. The scan froze every try. I then remembered, ALWAYS REPAIR DISK PERMISSIONS AFTER INSTALLING NEW SOFTWARE!!! Once that was complete, scans fast and correction is good.

I will now start scanning all of our photos…

This is the best flatbed scanner I’ve used…

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