Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500

Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500

If you're someone who's interested in digitizing and archiving all your paper receipts and financial and legal documents--or just about anything you have on paper--there are a handful of consumer sheet-fed scanners to choose from, including Fujitsu's ScanSnap S1500. What makes the S1500 so appealing is that it's not only compact (about the size of a loaf of bread), but also very fast. This 600x600 dpi color scanner is designed to do one main thing and do it well. It scans documents--both color and black-and white--and instantly turns them into searchable PDF files (if you opt to make them searchable). According to Fujitsu, the S1500 can scan at a rate of 20 pages per minute. In our tests, that proved to be accurate as we scanned a 350-page manuscript in about 16 minutes. It's also able to scan both single-sided and doubled-sided documents. As with most of these consumer document scanners, setting up the scanner is very simple. You install the ScanSnap software on your Windows or Mac computer, connect the S1500 via a USB cable, and you're ready to start scanning. Slip some documents into the top-loading tray and then press the button on the front of the unit (it's the only button) and the desktop software automatically launches.