Fujitsu ScanSnap S500

For any attorney either practicing from home or running a small office, digitizing documents is a requirement. Nothing will bog down a solo practitioner or small law firm more than how documents are handled. Entering the fray is the Fujitsu Scansnap S500 which will turn the files cluttering your desk into .pdf’s faster than ever before. Granted, this machine is no match for a large-scale document scanner. However, if money is a concern, the S500 gives you more for your money than any other machine. Able to scan documents at 18 ppm, double-sided and in color no less, this scanner will blow through any stack of documents you set in its 50 page hopper. Not only will it scan and save the documents as .pdf’s, it of course comes loaded with the obligatory OCR (optical character recognition) software necessary to turn your .pdf into a document ready to be edited in Word or Wordperfect. What sets this machine apart from the rest of the pack is its feature set. It will automatically detect blank pages in the scanned pages and delete them, useful when you receive a stack of discovery from opposing counsel and haven’t looked through it before scanning. Additionally, this scanner will automatically detect page sizes, so you can drop documents of varying size, e.g. receipts, letter, legal and scribbled notes, into its bin and it will recognize the varying sizes and scan accordingly. I can’t tell you how many times client’s will drop of receipts and pieces of paper which I have to photocopy prior to scanning since the scanner won’t accept anything but legal and letter size. Though the $500 MSRP may seem much, this includes a coupon for OCR software as well as Adobe Acrobat 7.0 Standard Edition (worth $50-$100 on its own. A check through Froogle shows current prices averaging ~$400.00.