I'd like to go on a phased transition to paperless, and I noticed that my multifunction printer, the Brother MFC8910DW, has a duplex scanner. Is this scanner good enough for my needs, or should I go for a dedicated scanner like the ScanSnap iX500?
Some links for the specifications:
http://support.brother.com/g/b/spec.aspx?c=us&lang=en&prod=mfc8910dw_us_as
http://www.fujitsu.com/us/products/computing/peripheral/scanners/scansnap/ix500/index.html
As
ZapNZs above. But basically, the Fujitsu Scansnap range are typically thought of as more or less THE industry standard machines these days in many circles, especially the auto-feeder models like the iX500. Sure other machines large businesses use are faster throughput for hundreds of docs a day, but they typically cost double/triple or more the iX500s price, and most users wouldn't need such power. (the iX500 is a bit like how the Technics 1210 record decks were/are in the club DJ-ing scene; they just work continuously with few problems, lol!)
Provided one gives the glass inside a really quick wipe now and again (for example, when you see a line on a scan), which can be done in seconds by opening the simple mechanism button, that lets the user open the inside really easily.
I have the previous USB
wired-only Mac-specific white Fujitsu Scansnap "S1500M", the black "S1500" was for Win machines (although both work on Mac/Win just fine as software was included for both OS's with each model anyway! The only difference was each coming with their Mac/Win respective version of
Adobe Acrobat software, AFAIR).
The latest "iX500" (though it's been around for at least a couple of years by now) is a single
wireless or wired model for both Mac/Win, and Acrobat isn't included this time AFAIR (at least not for Mac users, it's not, likely to keep the price down!). Though instead, you could just use the in built OCR functionalities this new model uses, or invest in the vastly cheaper PDFpen software or similar, over the super-expensive generally OTT software that is Adobe Acrobat.
I scan a doc in, which in my case auto-opens in Acrobat, then I press cmd-A ("select all") which opens a dialog saying no-OCR is present and asking me if I want it to do it now (I just hit return twice, and it does it!).
All models take seconds a page, then just use my own Finder folder structure to file away with file names that typically run like this example:
2017.09.30.Sat - My Bank - main ac (12349876) - letter confirming overdraft.pdf
(I add Mon/Tue/...Sun days to aid following document progression. E.g. I may want to notice why the last one of docs produced daily ended on the 20 and then restarted on the 23, with nothing in-between? ...Ah!, it was a weekend, as the DAYS are ...
20.Fri then ...
23.Mon type-of-thing! Other uses involving comms between parties, can be helped having the DAY as well I personally find.)
If a file/folder is a project, I often use
dashes to indicate the year+
months it ran over, rather than exact dates with separator dots, eg. a project between July and Sep 2017:
2017.07-09 - blah blah
E.g. a project between 2017 and 2018:
2017-2018 - blah blah
The reason I use full dates (as in not
2017-18 but rather
2017-2018) rather than shorthand (
17-18) and full words (e.g.
NatWest Bank and not
NW Bk) is that they can be easily searched without having to think of the clever naming scheme I chose and likely cannot remember when needed to search again. Or might simply have been named wrong in the first place, as they typically introduce complexity, being as they are, not in natural language.
I also run a "current" top folder, and an "archive", with the latter having "2016 archive"/"2015 archive"/"2014 archive"/etc.
At the beginning of each year, I try and archive things away. Each thing that ENDED in that year gets archived, so older and importantly
finished projects/accounts (nothing still ongoing, basically!) don't end-up clogging up my "current" folder), e.g. folders:
archive
-
2016 archive
--
2016 financial
--
2016 misc.
[...]
-
2015 archive
--
2015 financial
--
2015 misc.
[...]
As for the Brother or any other all-in-one; it may work, but typically dedicated document scanners are miles better for mass document scanning compared to all-in-ones. Mine's been going for several years now without hiccup, so trust me you won't regret buying it. ;-)
[doublepost=1506812319][/doublepost]...oh, and forgot to say, the Scansnap can also scan extra-long docs, simply by holding down the blue scan button on the front for a few secs.
And you can scan A3 docs by folding the page in half and scanning them in the included clear folder on each folded half. Typically, the only thing a few bigger flatbed all-in-ones do is single-page A3 doc scanning. There are no mainstream auto-feed doc scanners such as the ScanSnap's, that can do single-page A3 scanning AFAI have seen.
But then how often do you scan an A3 (without folding it)? When I needed one last week I went to a print shop ("Mail Boxes Etc." branches across London, are one example), and paid my £1.50 for it.
