Danny said:
Hi Ian,
The S500 ScanSnap does an incredible job of feeding the widest range
of your typical documents fast and reliably. Nevertheless, the design
is still a friction ADF scanner meaning that there's 2 primary parts
which A) Pulls the page thats going to be captured as well as B)
seperates or holds back the rest of the documets stacked on the ADF (up
to 40+ need to stay stationary while only one sheet pulls through at a
time.
The S500 is unique mechanically among scanners for the same price range
because it allows the owner to not only easily clean the critical
frictioin parts (Pick Roller & Seperation Pad Assembly) but, also
quickly replace them when they've exceeded their lifspan (50k- sep pad
assy/ 100k pgs.- Pic roller) without costing a fortune (approx. $20 pad
assy/ $35 pic roller). And since Fujitsu carries all parts until 5
years after announcing the end of life, you'll be able to use that
scanner for many years to come without being forced to upgrade due to a
lack of spare parts.
If your magazine pages are anything as thin as an NCR document
(carbonless copy paper) or as thick as a post card, the ADF will most
likely have no problems handling batches of these. If you'd have
trouble turning the pages with your hands, chances are so would the
scanner. Pages damaged from water and other factors causing them to
stick together would be difficult for any ADF to seperate so common
sense would still need to be exercised.
Depending on how many pages are in your collection of magazines, and if
you have a reasonable timeframe to gradually scan them to pdf, the
ScanSnap would be a great inexpensive choice. Keep in mind the
hardware's daily duty cycle is 250pgs/ day...
All things considered, the ScanSnap lineup is so popular because of the
ease of scanning to pdf, automatic color detection, deskew, deshad
based on the actual pages, speed 18ppm/36ipm, 2 CCD sensors for single
pass duplex scanning, and incredible price. It's arguably the best bang
for the buck...
Single pass-duplex scanning....
Hmm... wondering how does this affect bleed-through?
Because, my main issue with sheetfed scanners is that
you cannot change the 'background' color.
Why an issue? well... depending on the type, age, color and
thickness of paper (especially magazines) sometimes
a white background to scan against is better,
but sometimes a black background helps better
to prevent bleed-through.
With a flatbed scanner you can change that background color easy
by using a piece of white or black cardboard or thick paper
(or any other color you wish to experiment with
.
Does the S500 (or any other scanfed scanner for that matter)
have some special trick for this, or is this something that cannot
be solved? Or only in the high-end (high price
models?
Of course, I haven't used a dedicated sheetfedscanner in about 5 years,
so improvements may have been made
For the moment my HP 7450 with ADF works (sort of...) for my
occasional sheetfed needs.
Regards,
E.