Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

A few years ago I received a desktop ScanSnap S1500 at work and was blown away by its speed and versatility. No more trekking to a large workgroup Copier/Scanner/Printer to capture documents. No more being constrained by the "black & white only" limitation on our workgroup devices which made it difficult to capture color images. I was so impressed with software and the device itself that I bought its smaller cousin, the ScanSnap S1100, for home use. After three years of heavy use, I discovered that it had a failed pixel. While that would have been just a minor annoyance scanning text documents, it was a major problem scanning pictures. Since the cost of repairing the now out of warranty unit would likely have exceeded $100, I decided to replace it with the newest version of the s1100, the iX100. This unit is a functional twin to its older cousin but with added WiFI capability. Using a smartphone app, you can scan directly to your phone. If you are at home with a WiFI network running, the smartphone and scanner can communicate through the router. If you're not at home, the scanner can flip roles and function as a WiFI source to which your smartphone can connect directly. Also, your home-based desktop or laptop computers can connect via USB to the scanner or you can set up a WiFI connection through your home router to your home computers although only one of your home computers can be paired to use the WiFI connection at a time. You need to use the ScanSnap Wireless setup tool to select a different home computer to connect wirelessly to the scanner. You can use the USB interface on any of your computers without having to reconfigure any settings. The fact that you can only use WiFI between the scanner and one of your home computers at a time has been noted as a deficiency. I, too, thought that was a problem however upon thinking it through, I realized that it's a necessary constraint. Consider that if you had more than one PC wirelessly connecting to the scanner how would the multiple instances of the ScanSnap manager software know to which PC you actually wanted to scan a document? Unlike its big brother, the iX100 doesn't feed thru an automatic feeder, but the device makes handling multi-page documents quite easy. Just insert the first page and touch the blue button. The page will scan and the device will wait for you to insert the next page (or flip side of the first page). As soon as it detects the paper in the feeder, it will be scanned. When you've scanned the last page, just touch the blue button again to tell the system you've completed the scanning. The scanned document will be processed according to the settings you chose. While it doesn't do full duplexing like its big brother, it's quite easy (a Snap??) to just flip a page over to scan the second side. The device will scan at your choice of four different resolutions: Normal (Color/Gray: 150 DPI, B&W: 300 DPI) Better (Color/Gray: 200 DPI, B&W: 400 DPI) Best (Color/Gray: 300 DPI, B&W: 600 DPI) And at a slower speed (ideal for high quality capture of color pictures, etc) Excellent: (Color/Gray: 600 DPI, B&W: 1200 DPI) When you use it, the ScanSnap manager gives you several choices of what to do with a scan. You can Scan to a PDF in a folder, email, print, JPG, OCRd PDF, Power Point, Excel, Word, Sharepoint, Card or Receipt minder and several cloud-based destinations. You can customize each option to specify a location to store files, resolution, etc. You can even create custom items to scan documents into a specific application of your choosing. If you're scanning multiple JPG files, each scan will become a seperate file. Saved files are named with a long time stamp (YYYYMMDDHHMMSS) or you can specify your own default file name prefix (letting the software add a serial number after your file name). If you scan to any of the Office suite editors (Word, PowerPoint, etc.) the document will retain the original fonts and formatting! The Card Minder application will automatically capture metadata from a business card which can then be exported to your contact list. While it's not included, both soft or hard cases are available for the scanner. If you'll be travelling with the it, I'd suggest getting this case, too. The iX100 is powered by an internal lithium-ion battery which is recharged through the single USB connection. No worrying about a seperate power brick to lug around. It's small enough that I can leave it plugged in all the time and just drop it behind my computer when I'm not using it or put it in front of my keyboard to scan. All in all, a very impressive device!!