Fujitsu Fi-6130 Scanner

Fujitsu fi-6130 Duplex Scanner - What a great product. The controls are simple. The drivers are extensive. The software is well rounded. The hardware is as solid as you could want.This scanner is top notch, sure its not exactly in the average home user price range but it has the quality and performance to exceed what Fujitsu charges for it. The twain and isis drivers are robust and proven, and in the scanner world that's a big deal. Basically any scanner is simply the interface between the physical and digital world, the drivers are the software conduit to the digital world so it's very important they are stable, these are very good.The font panel controls are simple but lack much documentation. The function button is a bit of a mystery for example in the reading materials but this has never been an issue in using the unit, just something that sticks out in my head as I like to know everything I can about any electronic equipment. There are some brief descriptions of all the buttons and a couple of examples in the manual. They do shed some light on the status of the unit which is nice. The good part is that the unit seldom has any errors and so you never really even look at the unit unless you're loading paper.This is one of the best parts of this unit and the fi-6230 as well, the paper handling. The paper pulling and path are as smooth as any high end scanner on the market. You can toss in the thinnest of paper or a near card stock flyer and this thing just plucks them all one by one without so much as a wrinkle. In the event you do get a jam with this unit it will stop in its tracks and wait for the user to fix things. Anyone can clear a jam in a flash with a simple finger flick of the release button and your all set because the paper is never squished between layers of rollers wrapping around a 180 degree turn in the path, no this unit is straight through and there is loads of space around the document when it opens up.In addition to the ultra-smooth paper path and handling this scanner uses dual imaging heads to scan both sides of documents in a single pass. Yes that's right no pull the document through and then double back around for the other side it's a once through pass for your documents! This translates into killer speed as well.So yeh this baby is zippy! With the single pass double sided scanning, this unit will chew through the biggest jobs in no time. Actually if you have been using a "lesser" scanner in the past this thing will make you giggle the first few times you put few stacks of stuff through it and find that what you thought would have taken a long time is done in minutes.The software provided with this unit is very nice, in particular Adobe Acrobat 9 standard. Of course you will want to download the most current scanner drivers from the web site but once you do that and install Acrobat you are all set to begin your digital workflow. Since Acrobat has OCR built in now you no longer have to purchase other software to create searchable documents. If you prefer a different OCR engine they by all means, if nothing else you will have the full version of Acrobat to create quality PDF documents that are well sized and editable at any time.All in all this scanner (and the fi-6230) are the best units I have come across in the sub 2k price range. If you are looking for a well-rounded scanner, great paper handling, solid drivers, super speed and great quality then look no farther this unit is for you!

After researching my available choices, I purchased this scanner in order to digitize my awfully big collection of magazines. I have a very good paper cutter I purchased on eBay that allows me to cut a half inch off the side of the magazines removing the binding and any of the associated binding glues or staples. Getting this clean cut is necessary to do high volume scan feeds of magazines. I scan everything directly into Adobe Acrobat. I already had Acrobat Pro, but this scanner comes with Acrobat Standard which is all you need to do beautiful, fully rendered high quality color scans into PDF.This Fujitsu scanner has a very small footprint compared to my lumbering Brother multi-function machine which has the ability to do auto-feeds for scanning as well, but don't let the size deceive you because this performs at a much higher level than any cheaper consumer scanner.I looked for an alternative to the Brother because I need to scan about 2000 magazines and with a duplex feeder it would take me years the Brother is that slow. But this Fujitsu is a champ! It scans on both sides of the page at the same time so none of that laborious back feeding you see with a duplex feeder is necessary.It zips through in a few seconds, recognizes both sides in a few seconds and then its on to the next page. It feeds about a dozen color double-sided magazine pages a minute which is 24 pages. A whole magazine therefore feeds in 3-5 minutes. I scan them at 400 DPI which results in crisp color images and very readable text.After it feeds, I let the OCR program run so my text is searchable. This character recognition process is optional, but I consider it very important for my future digital archives which I will be able to then index and search. This OCR process takes three times longer than the actual scanning. Altogether, the scans and then the optical recognition of a 100-128 page color magazine may take 15-20 minutes. With a regular auto-feed scanner, it would take 3 hours and it would not be done as well. When scanning into PDF, remember to use Acrobat's PDF Optimization procedure which condenses the file size of the PDF by 40-70% without any noticeable loss in quality.I am very impressed with the efficiency of this scanner and I am very happy it is enabling me to put two decades worth of archival material into high quality PDFs. I will no longer have to lug 20 boxes of magazines with me when I move. They will all be archived on a few DVDs. I'd say this scanner is worth every penny I paid for it. I did not see anything comparable. If you want to do anything like what I'm doing with PDFs, I'd encourage you to get this scanner. It's a workhorse. In the first two weeks, I've scanned 100 magazines flawlessly.

Even thou its speeds fast it takes lotta time to scan docs. meaning you gotta set all the variables. It would be lot better if you could set default settings.

The ADF technology in this product is amazing. It can separate a paper stack of the thinnest sheets, and scan them all one by one at incredible speed. All you hear is "whoosh whoosh" as each sheet goes through the ADF. Will not double-feed as long as the ultrasonic double-feed detection is enabled. I do not believe any other ADF scanner can compete.But I had more difficulties getting started with this scanner than with any other I ever had.Initially Windows would not recognize it as a USB device, possibly because it draws too much amperage from the USB port. I had to try several different USB ports until I found one that worked. I have not had this problem with the Fujitsu ScanSnap scanners.Then the scanning software that came with it would pop up a generic error message, and refuse to scan. After some detective work, I figured out that the Fujitsu scanning software was attempting to use the drivers from an old Cannon scanner instead of its own Fujitsu drivers. I was surprised that the Fujitsu QA did not test this software on PCs with other scanner drivers. So I had to uninstall the drivers for the Cannon scanner to get the Fujitsu scanning software to work.The scanning software itself was not very "user-friendly". It had lots of buttons and menu items titled "Settings" and "Setting" and "Configure", all mixed together in a messy UI with little indication of how one differentiated from the other.Once I got it to scan, the scanning progress window kept stealing keyboard focus each time a new sheet was scanned. This prevented me, for example, from typing emails while the scanner was scanning a stack of papers. I can't believe nobody at Fujitsu noticed this little annoyance. I had to download a separate utility from Microsoft called "TweakUI", and tweak my Windows Registry with it to disallow applications on my PC from stealing keyboard focus from other applications.Finally I got the scanner to scan, and started scanning lots of documents with it. By now I was pretty impressed with the scanner, thinking that it's not so bad. ...even though there was still that awkward pause between when I directed its software to scan, and when it would actually start scanning.Then after a few weeks, I started noticing a streak running along the length of everything it scanned. It turned out to be a simple crack it developed on the scanning element glass.I pondered repairing it at home, but did not want to risk voiding the warranty on this pricey little gem, and it was less than 30 days, so I could still return it. In any case, I could not find the appropriate spare parts on the Fujitsu website. So with significant disappointment, I shipped it back to Amazon.Amazon refunded the money.Amazing ADF technology, but hope Fujitsu can improve on the rest of its implementation.

I've been using this scanner for many, many months. While the scanner appears to be well constructed compared to other scanners I have used, it does exhibit some problems.Pros1) Well constructed and durable scanner.2) Easy to clear paper jams.3) Works with PaperPort software (single sided scans only)4) Included scanning software is very fast in simplex or duplex modes, much faster than the PaperPort scans.5) Few paper jams when scanning 20 lb copy paper.6) Compact, heavy, with a small footprint.Cons1) Ultrasonic jam detection does not always work to stop the scans resulting in torn, ripped or skipped pages.2) Lightweight glossy thin" color paper tends to either mis-feed frequently resulting in pages being scanned out of order (i.e.: the scanner may pull pages from the middle of the stack) or they do not track evenly resulting in skewed pages (yes - I keep the path clean).3) Single pages may not always feed into the scanner without gentle human assistance.4) The included ScanAll software is not intuitive and requires a great deal of experimentation to set up. The existing documentation is very poorly written.5) Occasionally either the scanner or the ScanAll software will NOT scan an entire page - it may only scan 1/2 to 3/4 of a page (vertically or horizontally). Rescanning the same page(s) causes duplicate results. The mis-scans appear to occur more frequently on dark colored pages.6) No driver software to perform duplex scans in PaperPort on a Windows 7 64 bit computer (It did perform duplex scans in PaperPort on a Windows XP 32 bit computer).7) The ScanAll software does not include an option to eliminate blank pages from the scans.8) The ScanAll option to fill in the "punched holes" in the page with the adjacent background color does not work.Overall, with the exception of the feed problems, this is a good scanner which I would buy again. Most of my complaints center around the software and drivers which come with the scanner. With better drivers and scanning software, this scanner would perform much better. I would welcome any suggestions about drivers and scanning software fixes or better scanning software.