grahamt's Full Review: Neat Receipts SCANALIZERâ„¢ Pass-Through Scanner
For this review, I am simply cutting and pasting the letter I wrote to Neatco after I ried this scanner for a few days:
After a search on the internet for a quick review of the Neat Receipts ADF scanner, I bought one at Costco on Sunday, hoping it would fill the bill to scan all my receipts and documents, to get rid of a large backlog of paper filed away. After spending a couple of nights "playing" with the scanner, I am compelled to return it, disappointed that Neatco can come up with such a brilliant piece of hardware, but such inflexible and slow software. A product such as this came so close but yet so far to being a winner, that I must give you my feedback:
- The size and portability is brilliant...one wire to a usb port.....great. Less than a pound and my brief case doesn't even know it's in there! - The scan speed is more than acceptable...quiet, smooth, and acceptably quick. Then the disappointment sets in after the sheet exits... I thought the computer crashed as everything froze for over a minute, only to find out later it was processing the scan. Way too long for me to transfer hundreds of sheets into electronic format. It would take me months. This product may be suitable for someone who would like to start scanning in documents and receipts, but if there is any sizable amount of backlog, forget, it. Nobody would have such patience to wait at least 30 seconds per page for it to process a 8 1/2 X 11 sheet, knowing you have hundreds of sheets to go. - The software interface itself is not that user friendly with key "next step" buttons in small print hidden in the corners of the screen. - There is no control over the scan quality/resolution. If there is a way to do this, I could not find out how, nor could I get in touch with technical support three days in a row (strike three). - There appears to be no way to turn off the pdf searchable scan option. I suspect it is the OCR processing that takes the time to process the scan. It is this feature alone that really drives me to the return counter at Costco. I don't need or want all my documents searchable. I find it amazing the hardware can scan a 8.5 X 11 sheet in no time, then the software literally turns to stone for several minutes for a six page document. I could put the document in my single sheet flat-bed faster (no my quad-core rocket is not to blame for the processing speed). PLEASE! Next software revision make the OCR searchable text as a turnon/turn off option so the user can trade that feature for scan processing speed!!! - The organizing capability of the software is very limited without the capability to make nested folders with as many sub-folders as needed. I have way too many sub-categories to label them as main folders. - It doesn't seem to be capable of scanning without the Neatco software as a stand-alone twain device. Your software is holding the hardware back from being a winner. - Again, I may have made statements for problems that may be overcome (but I doubt it as I am not computer illiterate), but the documentation only covers the real basics, and the access to technical support sucks. There is an option to leave a name and number on the answering machine when there is "an unexpected high load on the call center", support is useless if nobody calls you back.
So you guys at Neatco have some work to do to make a product that is usable and will sell as a winner. I am now looking at the Fujitsu S300 or S510 as the real McCoy, more in price, but the $200 Neatco machine would go back to the store even if it was $40 (it doesn't do the job of quickly swallowing large numbers of documents). I just wish the Fujitsu S300 was the size of the Neat Receipts. Due to my disappointment in this product's software, this feedback will end up on Epinions to save others from the time and expense of trying this toy out.
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