- Snapscan S1500m Software
- Scansnap S1500m Driver Download
- Fujitsu Scansnap S1500 Drivers Mac
- Scansnap S1500m Software Download
Desktop scanners can be important tools for processing and organizing information, and Fujitsu’s ScanSnap S1500M has been one of the most popular desktop scanners for the Mac for quite some time. The ScanSnap S1500M (Fujitsu, $418.99, Amazon.com) is both powerful and functional, and should give the competition a run for their money.
View and Download Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500 installation & troubleshooting manual online. ScanSnap S1500 scanner pdf manual download. Also for: Scansnap s1500m, Scansnap s1300, Scansnap s1100. ScanSnap S1500 / S1500M Compatibility Status With macOS High Sierra v10.13. Compatibility of ScanSnap S1500/S1500M applications with macOS High Sierra is described in the following table. ScanSnap Manager. It is supported, but please be sure to read Compatibility Information prior to use. ABBYY FineReader for ScanSnap™. Fujitsu ScanSnap iX500 Scanner for PC and Mac (PA03656-B005) The perfect productivity tool, use this sheet-fed scanner for PC and Mac to quickly digitize stacks of documents into searchable PDF files at the touch of a button. The ScanSnap iX500 provides users an effective way to greatly reduce paper clutter, storage space, and security risk associated with unmanaged paperwork at home or office. The ScanSnap S1500M provides Mac users an effective way to greatly reduce paper clutter, storage space, and security risk associated with unmanaged paperwork at home or office. Even better, documents canned by ScanSnap take on a higher level of accessibility and usefulness once liberated into the digital realm.
Snapscan S1500m Software
Overview
Having previously reviewed the NeatDesk for Mac, the main aspect of the S1500M that stood out to me was how different it seemed than the NeatDesk. The ScanSnap is aimed more towards the professional audience. As such, the unit sports a much more industrial look, keeping the appearance of a more traditional office appliance, especially when unfolded.
The ScanSnap S1500M also includes powerful software that helps it become a fantastic productivity tool, and even includes a copy of Adobe Acrobat Professional 8 for Mac to help you make adjustments to any PDF documents that you might create using the ScanSnap.
Initial Thoughts
Fujitsu’s ScanSnap struck me at once as being a very serious device. It has a small desk-sized form factor, but folds out and expands to reveal a full-sized paper trays for both both incoming and outgoing documents. The operation of the device is also somewhat unique – instead of having an on/off switch in the back, the machine is turned on by unfolding the top cover, revealing a bright blue rectangular light, which, in addition to serving as a power indicator, also serves as the unit’s scan button.
The ScanSnap was simple to set up, and did not require calibration, unlike the NeatDesk. Simply installing the included software and checking for updates was all that was necessary to get the device up and running. The ScanSnap’s simple out-of-box configuration will be adequate for the majority of users. Alternately, the default “quick menu” feature can be turned off, revealing a function called “profiles” which allows you much more precise control over the scanner’s behavior.
Design
I really appreciate the design of the ScanSnap – it’s an extremely simple and intuitive product to use, it is sturdy and well-built without being extremely heavy, and simply looks and feels like a professional-level device.
The fact that the ScanSnap simply unfolds into its full form, and is then able to quickly and easily fold back up into a more compact and space-saving configuration is brilliant, and the fact that you don’t have to worry about whether the device is switched on or off is comforting to those that are concerned about saving power – if it’s folded up, it’s off!
Performance
Performance is definitely one of the strong suits of the ScanSnap. The S1500M is much faster than the NeatDesk at 20 pages per minute, and has a document feeder that can handle 50 documents at once – a significantly higher capacity than the NeatDesk. Additionally, I felt more confident loading the ScanSnap with 30 sheets and walking away, confident that it would do its job without requiring my interference.
The S1500M’s included software is extremely powerful as well. In addition to featuring Adobe Acrobat Professional 8.0, which comes in handy for searching and editing PDF’s after you have scanned them, the device also includes Cardiris 3.6 – a very nice business card management suite – and ABBYY FineReader for ScanSnap, which is a very high-performing OCR engine.
The ScanSnap featured very high word recognition straight out of the box when using OCR, only very occasionally missing a word or getting one wrong, and the CardIris seems to handle the scanning, organization, and extraction of information from business cards at least as well as NeatWorks for Mac.
More Than Meets The Eye
The S1500M is not your average garden-variety scanner. It is different from most other scanners in fundamental ways. One such difference: Customization. The ScanSnap is infinitely customizable, and can be quickly and easily configured to work with almost any off-the-shelf scanner utility.
You can even set up a profile for those programs. I found this particularly useful, as I sometimes like to use the scanner for organizing my receipts and documents (for which I configured the scanner to work with NeatWorks for Mac), but also have the occasional need to scan straight to email, or scan in particularly high quality for advanced editing. The ScanSnap S1500M makes both of these main functions a snap, and even a pleasure to perform.
Concerns
While I was overall very impressed with the S1500M, I did have a few worries, one of which was the fact that Fujitsu continues to bundle an outdated version of Adobe Acrobat with their product. I also often felt that the included software, while very feature rich, wasn’t very simple to use, and certainly wasn’t as intuitive and user-friendly as the NeatWorks software bundled with the NeatDesk for Mac.
I also found that, while the S1500M handled standard sheets of paper extremely well, it often had difficulty handling thicker sheets of paper, or sheets of non-standard sizes. Further, using the S1500M to its full potential requires spending a significant amount of time learning how the included software works.
Verdict
Overall I was very impressed with the ScanSnap, and for an enterprise user, it’s an exceptional device. The speed, build quality and overall usability of the device were exceptional. The device’s included software does include a steep learning curve in order to learn and master its more complex features, however, like profiles, direct scanning to email, and so forth.
I appreciated the fact that the S1500M came bundled with such powerful software, but was disappointed that Fujitsu is still bundling Acrobat Pro 8 with the device, which is not fully compatible with Mac OS X Lion. It seems as though they haven’t updated the software the device ships with since it was first launched in early 2009.
In light of the ScanSnap’s many positive attributes, balanced with the above concerns, I feel I can only give the S1500M a limited recommendation – I would recommend this to advanced users in an enterprise setting, but I do not feel that this device would necessarily be appropriate for home use and home office environments. In addition, users of OS X Lion would be cautioned that the included Adobe Acrobat Professional 8 does not always work well under Lion.
Rating & Information
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 [rating:3.5]
In considering all aspects of the Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500M, I award this device a 3.5 out of 5. While it is no doubt an excellent device, I did experience a number of disappointments, including the fact that the scanner ships with software that is currently outdated. Nevertheless, the scanner is still a powerful and extremely useful tool for the right audience. Below is a list of the pros and cons that I encountered while reviewing the ScanSnap S1500M.
Pros
- Fast and highly customizable.
- Features excellent character and word recognition.
- Comes with a full suite of professional software to take full advantage of its features.
- Works with 3rd-party software such as NeatWorks for Mac.
Cons
- Comes bundled with outdated software.
- Doesn’t handle non-standard paper sizes and thicknesses well.
- Can be complicated to take full advantage of.
- At $500, it’s a bit on the high end of the price spectrum.
For more information, or to purchase the ScanSnap S1500M, visit Fujitsu’s product page on the web. The S1500M can be found for as low as $418.99 over at Amazon.com.
Once upon a time, I thought a document scanner would be a waste of my money. For scanning photos, a flatbed scanner was far superior. For scanning pages from books and magazines, a document scanner was useless unless I was willing to tear pages out. So why bother with a document scanner?
Times change. After trying out a Fujitsu SnapScan S510M, back in 2008, I was sold.
My new document scanner quickly emerged as the busiest workhorse on my desk. I had a bunch of old tax returns in my drawer. No more. I just scanned them and trashed the hard copies — in a matter of minutes. Impressively, the 510M scanned both sides of a page in one pass.
Our folder of recipes saved from magazines and such over the years? Gone. The SnapScan not only digitized them but converted them into editable Word documents.
Whenever I receive a form that needs to be returned, I no longer bother with snail mail or fax. If I have an email address, I just scan it and email it.
All of our essential documents, from driver’s licenses to credit cards to passports, have been scanned with the touch of a button.
Meanwhile, thanks to the rise of digital photos and epubs, I hardly ever scan photos or books anymore. My flatbed scanner sits idle for weeks at a time.
Over the years, I have had the opportunity to try out several of Fujitsu’s ScanSnap products, such as the S1100 and S300M. I have written glowingly about all of them. It is with this positive mindset that I approached Fujitsu’s latest scanner, the S1300i. Happily, it maintains Fujitsu’s fine tradition of quality scanners. As an upgrade, however, it is barely worth a mention.
Hardware
The S1300i is the middle child of the ScanSnap family, with the desktop S1500M as the big brother and the mobile S1100 as the little kid.
At half the size of the S1500M, and with an option to run on USB power, the S1300i qualifies as portable. However, if you want a scanner that you can easily toss into your backpack, you’ll be much happier with the S1100. You’ll have to sacrifice a few features with the S1100, such as dual-sided scanning, but its super small size and light weight make it a worthwhile trade-off.
On the other hand, if you want Fujitsu’s fastest and largest capacity scanner sitting on your desk, you’ll want the S1500M. It’s capable of holding 50 sheets and scanning 20 pages per minute — compared to the 10 sheets and 12 pages per minute capacity of the 1300i.
Who does this leave as the target audience for the S1300i? It’s for people who expect to have the scanner on their desk most of the time but who would rather save $200 bucks (at MSRP) compared to the S1500M and/or who need to take their scanner on the road occasionally.
Depending upon your perspective, the S1300i is either the “best of both worlds” at an affordable price or an awkward compromise machine that doesn’t excel at being a desktop or a mobile scanner. Your call.
All of this could equally be said of the prior generation S1300. What do you get by moving up to the 1300i? Fujitsu claims the 1300i is 1.5X faster. That’s all. If you were hoping for some technological breakthrough, you’ll have to continue waiting. The S1300i is not it.
Scansnap S1500m Driver Download
Software
The 1300i comes with a new version of the ScanSnap software. The primary new feature is the addition of a Dropbox item to the ScanSnap Quick Menu (it only appears if Dropbox is installed on your Mac). This allows you to save scans directly to your Dropbox folder with the click of a button. It works exactly as advertised. However, this amounts to only a minor increase in convenience. Without this option, you can still save scans to Dropbox simply by selecting it as the destination folder in Scan to Folder. The only hassle here is that, if and when you no longer want to save scans to your Dropbox, you’ll have to change the destination path again.
The new software also adds Android device support to the Scan to Mobile feature. Mac app better than spotlight. This is likely not relevant for most readers at TMO. For iPhones and iPads, Scan to Mobile works in conjunction with a free ScanSnap Connect iOS app. After entering a password to link the iOS and Mac apps together, you can save scans directly to the app on iOS devices. If you forget your password, it won’t be easy to find or reset it. So far, I haven’t been able to figure out how to do this — and Fujitsu has been unable to provide a satisfactory explanation. [If I learn more, I will update the article here.] In any case, it doesn’t matter much as I will almost certainly never use Scan to Mobile. Saving files to Dropbox accomplishes the same goal, but with more flexibility and one less iOS app to worry about.
As has always been the case, Fujitsu relies on third-party software, rather than its own custom software, for most of its post-scanning features: ABBYY FineReader, Cardiris, Evernote, SugarSync, and now Dropbox. Although this could easily wind up feeling cluttered and confused, Fujitsu does a good job of tying them together in the Quick Menu.
Software upgrades
If you own any 1000 series scanner (1100, 1500 or even the prior 1300), you can update to the latest ScanSnap software. Just select the Online Update command from the app’s Help menu.
For older ScanSnap models, there is no official upgrade option — not even for a fee. This is true even though, as I confirmed via my 510M running the software installed for the 1300i, the upgrade apparently works fine with all ScanSnap scanners. When I asked Fujitsu about whether an upgrade for older models might be offered, they replied: “We’re constantly working with our partners and engineers to provide software upgrades to the Fujitsu ScanSnap scanner line. Today, this new software upgrade is only available for the S1000 series.”
Fujitsu Scansnap S1500 Drivers Mac
Bottom line
If you own any ScanSnap scanner and are happy with it, especially any 1000 series scanner, there’s no reason to think about replacing it with a 1300i. The improvements in the new model are so minor that the machine barely deserves to be called an upgrade. In fact, I feel a bit misled by Fujitsu. When they asked me to attend their press briefing, they made it sound like there would be more to the 1300i than there turned out to be. I suppose I should not be surprised; that’s part of what marketing does.
Scansnap S1500m Software Download
On the other hand, if you don’t own a document scanner at all or if you want to move up from an S1100 to something more substantial, the new S1300i is a fine choice. My overall affection for ScanSnap scanners remains unabated.