OT: sheet-fed scanners?

[Lobster]

Does anybody have any experience of these, for the home-office environment?

I have an ancient USB1 flat-bed scanner, which for the occasional one-off still does the job fine if a little slowly. However increasingly I find myself needing to scan in quite long multi-page A4 documents, which it simply can't cope with (the only way is to process these manually while sitting at the desk doing something else, which is very tedious...

So I've been tentatively dipping my toes in the waters of sheet-fed scanners. All the ones I can find seem to be massively expensive though

- are there any available for home use that anyone would recommend? The usual suppliers seem to provide machines that do about a thousand pages a minute; speed is really not something I need or want to pay for; I just need something that will chug away happily without user intervention.

Thanks David

[dennis]

I use a Brother MFC4890CN to scan to PDF using Paperport. It will handle about 35 pages at a time. To do duplex you turn the pile over and feed it through again, Paper port sorts the pages into the correct order.

Currys had them on offer last week, £99 IIRC.

They work over the network so the computer doesn't need to be nearby and you can even scan to PDF on a memory stick/card without the computer being connected.

[Owain]

Yes, but you might find a cheapy one on ebay.

If you can cope with the low resolution and monochrome (it's fine for OCRing typewritten text) then a fax machine will usually sheetfeed about 10 pages - connect it to the PC via a faxmodem or use a fax to modem service and fax yourself.

Otherwise photographing documents with a camera is very quick and gives good results if you hold the camera steady - it's what I do now for archiving/emailing stuff. Some OCR packages with OCR from TIFF or JPEG, some won't.

Owain

[GB]

I tried an Epson multifunction printer that I bought for around £50, and that was a total disaster that got returned for a refund within a few days. Possibly, the brother is better, and of course it ought to be as it costs twice as much.

In the end, I settled for a Canon D R 2010 C scanner, which cost about £300. it does the job well, and I am very pleased with it. Bear in mind that quite a lot of paperwork you get these days is double sided, so ideally you want to buy a duplex scanner, such as the Canon one. The market leaders in this type of scanner are Fujitsu, and they do one about the same price as the Canon.

[Tim Watts]

The cheapest way to get a reasonable 10-sheet autofeed with network scanning (if desired) seems to be by buying the multifunction inkjet printer it's part of.

[dennis]

I have a dedicated HP duplex scanner that I bought several years ago. I stopped using it when I bought the Brother as the brother is far easier to use and quicker. I seldom copy anything more than about 15 pages and its quicker to scan it and turn it over than it is to let the HP duplex one do it. Add in the space problem of having a scanner and a printer separate and the HP ends up in the attic.

[Ericp]

Try one of the hand held wand type ones. They can scan anything and provided you have a steady hand are quite good.

[Steve Firth]

I think, other than a s/h machine, there's only the Fujitsu Snapscan S1500 in a reasonable price range.

[GB]

Does the Brother software automatically interleave the pages from the second scan in with the first? That would be cool.

I'd stick the HP one on ebay, rather than letting it rot in the attic. They go for a fair bit on fleabay.

[GB]

The Canon I bought is the same price range, and IMHO the Canon looks much smarter. :)

Fujitsu outsell Canon at least 10:1 in this price range, btw, so I guess the safe bet is Fujitsu.

[Lobster]

Thanks for all the replies. Yes it looks like the above is the way forward then. How weird and irritating that to get a stand-alone scanner you have to spend several hundred quid, whereas 80 quid or so gets me a multifunction job, containing lots of components I don't need, and which must surely by definition must be pound-for-pound of disproportionately inferior quality?

If I do buy a multi-function machine, the inkjet printer part will hardly ever - if at all - be used as I have a perfectly serviceable laser printer... can anyone advise, for using in scanner mode whether there are any models which you definitely do or don't need to keep fed with inkjet cartridges? And either way, whether there are any models which particularly lend themselves to being left for weeks between print outputs without the jets clogging?

Thanks David

[Tim Watts]

I don't think the HP C6180 cares if the ink is dead, re scanning. It's whining the ink is old, but still let's me override that.

[Theo Markettos]

I imagine they don't care if the jets are clogged, so just put in a cartridge and leave it there. If it dries up, it doesn't matter. I have an old HP Officejet 350 inkjet printer/copier/scanner/fax machine that keeps trying to print fax reports (which I don't care about)... a dry cartridge is just fine. Not giving it printer paper makes it bleat, but it still faxes OK.

Theo

[Mike Barnes]

The multifunction jobs are probably loss-leaders for the cartridges. Don't buy any cartridges and you're a winner.

[Andrew Gabriel]

Bought an HP C6180 Photosmart a few years back, which is a printer/fax/copier/scanner, with Ethernet/WiFi/USB interfaces. The hardware seems to be very good, and also the print driver for photo quality. Unfortunately, the scanner software is a pile of crap, particularly for auto sheet feeding, and lets the product down badly. We've never tried the fax functionailty.

[tinnews]

The Windows software for many HP all-in-ones is *horrendously* bloated, however the Linux software for both my old HP 7310 and the new Photosmart 'just works' with very little hassle.

[T i m]

I think my S1500 is brill, matched with a guillotine that will easily slice the spine off something the thickness of a Maplin catalogue. ;-)

Cheers, T i m

[Andrew Gabriel]

Unfortunately, it's primarily used from Windows by my mum. I chose it because of the IP connectivity. It sits on the Internet, and this enables family members to print photos of the grandchildren, etc from remote locations. That side of it was a fantastic success.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I thought I was the only one to put a domestic printer on the internet..:-)

But what is the POINT of printing a photo at someone's house 100 miles away?

In my case its a way to get a remote server to print to MY printer, which is all about having the ability to use a cloud based server without having to download-and-print explicitly..

[Harry Bloomfield]

It happens that Lobster formulated :

A very cheap all-in-one inkjet will do it. I got my last one for around £40, where they sell you the printer cheap and make it up on the consumables - just don't buy the consumables (ink).