Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I bought the Fujitsu S1300i ScanSnap Scanner after doing research and reading the reviews on Amazon. I specifically needed to scan product/price lists into Excel to make pivot tables for my business. I had tried the free demo version of Abbyy FineReader on my slow flatbed scanner, and it worked perfectly. Since Fujitsu's advertising says that with the included Abbyy FineReader software, you can "scan to Excel" this purchase seemed like an ideal solution. The scanner itself works fine, if all you want to do is convert paper to PDF files. The paper-straightening function is especially good for small items. But, the software Fujitsu provides is pitiful! Once the sheets are scanned, and the ScanSnap does so quickly, it takes anywhere from 30 to 90 seconds to process. Then you must go through a laborious multi-step procedure to declare where to save the file. No pre-sets to send it directly to where you want. So while scanning itself is smooth and effortless, the software slows the process down to a crawl. The business card software has a "database" that is limited to the person's name, business name, e-mail, phone and fax numbers. No way to add useless information like an address. Have fun transferring it to Outlook! With regard to my original application, Fujitsu's claim that you can scan to Excel is not only misleading, it borders on being fraudulent. Yes, you can scan into an Excel file. But the results are useless garbage. From a six-column product sheet that is already formatted as a table, the first two columns appear in Excel correctly, the second two are placed below the first two and they appear one below the other with extra rows inserted between them. The last two columns appear below the others. Multiple pages appear in this same format. Scanned into Word, the information appears lovely, but it cutting and pasting it into Excel yields the same results. Ditto for cutting and pasting from a .pdf file. Even if cutting and pasting worked, I bought the scanner to save time, not to expend more. Surely there must be some setting that will make this right! I called Abbyy. They were pleasant but told me that they had sold the software to Fujitsu and did not support it. Any software Abbyy supports requires a scanner with TWAIN driver. If I needed help, I would need to speak to the folks at Fujitsu. The agent at Fujitsu seemed bored by my problem. He suggested I try changing the one and only setting that the ScanSnap version of FineReader allows. (Duh! I had already tried this with no success.) There is no ability to choose areas of the document to scan, as there is with even the demo version of FineReader. It's impossible to get the results I need from this software. Well, I'd have to spend the extra money and buy FineReader from Abbyy and connect it to the scanner with a TWAIN driver. Fujitsu informed me that NONE of their ScanSnap line has TWAIN drivers. If I wanted a scanner with TWAIN driver from them, I could take my pick from another line of $600-$1200 scanners. So, dear reader, if you are considering buying any ScanSnap scanner, be warned. Their scanners work ONLY with the proprietary driver and software that Fujitsu supplies. Their advertising uses the names of other software companies, but the Fujitsu version is stripped down to osteoporosis-eroded bones. And once Fujitsu has your money, they could care less whether their product meets your needs or not!