Scanner advice

[Nvidiaguy07]

So at the last school I taught at, I had the ability to use a business printer/scanner to scan pretty much everything I did to pdf so I could put it on my website. Also after grading, I would take tests and run them through and save them as a pdf if I ever needed to look back on them.

My new school has the same printers, but IT is dragging their feet to set up the scanning feature, so I'm considering just picking up my own for my room.

At the very least, I would like to be able to scan 1-10 pages at a time, which I would be sending to a pdf. Ideally, I would like to be able to run through stacks of tests, and possibly convert a few older textbooks to pdf's.

I just saw this pop up on slickdeals: http://www.pcrush.com/product/Sheetf...KQsHPuABhQWNjw

is this overkill? Can I get away with something much cheaper?

I also have a TON of family pictures that I would eventually like to scan, so that would be a bonus if its possible.

Lemme know what you think!

 

[luv2liv]

this is the best scanner money can buy for home or office, imho. usually $400 it is expensive but it is razor fast. it can scan both front and back in 1 pass!
i use it for receipts, small as well as larger invoices. im sure it can scan family photos too but i havent used it for that purpose.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7Bvw41Hg5A

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I have one of these.

www.amazon.com/Brother-MFCJ6920DW-Wi...dp/B00EANUUDK/

Love it.

 

[piasabird]

Fujitsu makes great scanners. However, generally speaking, scanners are not inexpensive and they tend to be dependent on having drivers for a specific operating system. For instance if you went from win 7 to windows 10 that could cause problems and something to be considered. I would not buy a cheap scanner made by HP, Cannon, etc. It is not that scanners are expensive, it is the software that works with them that makes them expensive.

Then the expensive part is something like a database product to store the files on a server along with a client to use with the server and the physical server hardware to store them on. We usually store single scans in a TIFF format due to legal issues and storage space. On a small scale a PDF is just fine.

 

[PUN]

this is the best scanner money can buy for home or office, imho. usually $400 it is expensive but it is razor fast. it can scan both front and back in 1 pass!
i use it for receipts, small as well as larger invoices. im sure it can scan family photos too but i havent used it for that purpose.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7Bvw41Hg5A

I agree. There is a reason why Fujitsu Snapscan has so many loyal followers.
Fast, Easy and with wifi scanning with your phone, don't even need to turn on the desktop for a quick attachment email.

 

[dawza]

That's a great deal on the Fujitsu, especially if you don't need Acrobat/already have a license/can get an academic license. As far as document scanners go, Fujitsu's offerings are probably the go-to gold standard. Keep in mind most of their models are not TWAIN-compliant, although this is probably not an issue for the majority of people. Epson, Canon, and Brother generally compete against Fujitsu on price (vs. features) in the $300-500 price bracket, but IMO, it becomes a no-brainer if the comparable Fujitsu is on sale for $300 (again, assuming lack of TWAIN support is not a deal breaker).

Document scanners are not, however, optimal for photo/image scanning. For those kinds of tasks, you'd want a flatbed. Different tools for different use cases. Still, if your primary need is document scanning, get a document scanner. Then, see how it works with your pictures-- quality is unlikely to be anything close to a flatbed, but depending on what a "ton" means, throughput vs. quality might be a more practical metric.

I don't know of a consumer-friendly (bound) book scanner. You could get away with using a flatbed if you have the patience of a saint. Or, you could cut the spine and run the loose pages through a document scanner (like the Fujitsu) for a much higher-throughput process. There are third parties that offer these services, keeping in mind all appropriate caveats, considerations, and disclaimers around copyright.

 

[Nvidiaguy07]

Ah, Im still on the fence about dropping 300 bucks. Tech has been telling me all year that it will eventually be working on our faculty machine, but I still think I would be better off just having my own.

Any idea how well it is with converting regular books for pdf, or even ebtter - epub? I have a bunch of older books I cant find on kindle, and if I could just run them all through that would be awesome. They are taking up way too much space. I was thinking about using a table saw to take the spine off, and then just run it through the scansnap. I think if it were able to convert these books right to epub that would be reason enough for me to spend 300.

 

[dawza]

Table saw was about what I had in mind when it came to cutting books apart. I'm sure others have tackled this kind of thing in the past and a quick search would turn up options. But yes, once you have loose pages the rest is easy-- just keep things in order and stay within the ADF page limit, and let the scanner take care of the rest.

Formats other than PDF may be tricky. The only experience I have is an out of print book I paid a vendor to scan, and they sent over a PDF, epub, and RTF. The PDF is the most accurate, due to imperfect OCR (i.e. as a human I can read the literal scanned text in a PDF, but the other formats were derived from the imperfect PDF OCR). Apparently, epub conversion isn't a simple process, starting with a scanned source, depending on page complexity.

 

[Nvidiaguy07]

ok last question before I order. I don't mind spending the extra for the fujitsu, but how much worse off would I be with something like this instead? http://www.amazon.com/Brother-Printe...d9e502ac2bdf24

I already have a laser printer that I have and love, but this would probably be just as good for printing, and I could scan. MOST of the time it will just be 1-3 pages scanned at a time, but occasionally it will be a stack. How good is the scanning on this compared to the fujitsu, and does it warrant and extra 200 bucks? (not counting the printer that you get with the brother as well)

 

[Nvidiaguy07]

so I bought the fijitsu, and Im liking how easy and fast it is, but for whatever reason it really sucks with orientation.

If I run a stack through, half of the pdf that it scans is upside down and sometimes even sideways. Should this be happening? How do I fix this? Havent had a ton of time to mess around with it, so any tips would help.

Thanks!

 

[VeryCharBroiled]

so I bought the fijitsu, and Im liking how easy and fast it is, but for whatever reason it really sucks with orientation.

If I run a stack through, half of the pdf that it scans is upside down and sometimes even sideways. Should this be happening? How do I fix this? Havent had a ton of time to mess around with it, so any tips would help.

Thanks!

check through the scan options settings for image rotation. mine is excellent at flipping anything with text in it so its right side up.

edit: youre running scansnap?

 

[Nvidiaguy07]

check through the scan options settings for image rotation. mine is excellent at flipping anything with text in it so its right side up.

edit: youre running scansnap?

yes im running scansnap. Should I be using something else?

Checked settings quick, it says it should adjust and all that.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Never assume the machine is smart - figure out which end of the machine is "up," tell it explicitly what direction you're orienting the paper, and don't let it auto-rotate.

 

[VeryCharBroiled]

yes im running scansnap. Should I be using something else?

Checked settings quick, it says it should adjust and all that.

no, I just use scansnap.

dunno why yours is not doing well righting things. I just scanned some stuff deliberately upside down and sideways and they all were rotated right side up.

make sure your scansnap stuff is up to date (updates happen every couple months it seems). I also have mine set to translate to text automatically, but I dont thing this has anything to do with it.

my scanner is the iX400 btw. which is yours?

 

[Nvidiaguy07]

no, I just use scansnap.

dunno why yours is not doing well righting things. I just scanned some stuff deliberately upside down and sideways and they all were rotated right side up.

make sure your scansnap stuff is up to date (updates happen every couple months it seems). I also have mine set to translate to text automatically, but I dont thing this has anything to do with it.

my scanner is the iX400 btw. which is yours?

ix500. Its actually fine now. Turned off auto-rotate, and it started acting weirder, and then turned it back on and now everything works great. Go figure.

What do people use adobe for? It currently does what I need it to do with just the scansnap software, is it for editing pdfs?

 

[narzy]

this is the best scanner money can buy for home or office, imho. usually $400 it is expensive but it is razor fast. it can scan both front and back in 1 pass!
i use it for receipts, small as well as larger invoices. im sure it can scan family photos too but i havent used it for that purpose.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7Bvw41Hg5A

Scansnap iX500 and luv2liv speaks the truth. Very good scanner, We recently took on an office archiving project and put 50,000 pages through one of these scanners with no problems. It doesn't like paper clips or staples at all.