[selowitch]

I'm trying to decide between NeatReceipts for Mac Advance Release for $159.95 ($20 off) or the Fujitsu ScanSnap S300M for $279.95 or so. Does anybody have real-world experience with this or a link to a review? I have Googled and found nothing terribly useful other than pitches from the manufacturers.

[vmarks]

I have both.

The s300m is great, it really is. As a scanner it's fast, duplex scanning, and can be powered solely off usb at a slightly lesser speed if you need the portability of leaving the power brick at home.

It's larger than the neatreceipts unit, but better quality. The software it comes with is CardIris, but they have a rebate that gets you readiris as well.

The neatreceipts is not nearly as ready for daily use as the fujitsu. The neatreceipts does not OCR business cards yet. It will eventually. It does not do duplex scan, it does not do a full page OCR (it's looking for receipt details, after all), it does not scan quickly (yet. this could be a software tweak.) Advantage? smaller than the fujitsu and thus takes up less space in a travel situation.

The software for neatreceipts is going to be refined, but it's not seen any public refinements since the beginning of March. If you want to OCR for real, you have to scan with NEAT, drag the image to the desktop or finder, and then run the pdf it adds to the folder into an OCR like readiris or finereader.

So, are you scanning receipts and business cards for tax and business reasons? Then neatreceipts will do you ok now and be good later. If you have bigger document needs (for example, I get insurance and medical type forms mailed to me, and so I scan and then fill them out on the computer) -- fujitsu may be the answer.

Several people have asked neat to get in touch with fujitsu and add support to their software for fujitsu's scanner. I have not heard or seen any progress in that direction.

[selowitch]

Wow, great detailed response! תודה רבה
My wife and I just need something to scan bills, receipts, etc. so we don't have to file and shuffle all this paper that keeps coming our way. Since we'll be doing this with a desktop (an iMac), seems to me the Fujitsu is the better choice.
How do you scan and fill out forms on the computer? Do you have to create fields for that in Acrobat or something? I'd love for there to be a faster, easier way.

[vmarks]

You can use OmniGraffle or SmileonmyMac's PDFPen (I use PDFPenPro) -- you have to draw text fields on the PDF and then type your text. OmniGraffle and PDFPen are quicker to launch and don't seem as sluggish on my Macbook as Acrobat.

The Omni Mouth » OmniGraffle for Bureaucracy talks about using Graffle to fill out forms.

PDFpen: PDF Editor for Mac OS X is the page for PDFPen.

Do you need the portability of the s300m? The s510m is the desktop fujitsu that has all the features of the portable unit, is faster, and comes with finereader (makes searchable PDF on scan), acrobat, and has the rebate for the readiris/cardiris software.

From your description of your uses, neatreceipts would do the organizational job, but all your files would be stored in the neatreceipts library document, and not fully OCRd (bills, for example, would be less than useful in neatreceipts.)

The s510m with finereader in the box would scan all your documents making them searchable, and then let you'd have individual files you can organize in folders any way you wish. If you're using leopard, then you've got time machine and spotlight working for you - retrieve old copy, search for that one bill or document you can't exactly recall, and so on.

[selowitch]

Indeed the S510M sounds like the right call for us. Again, thanks!

[vmarks]

Tip about the fujitsu scanners. If you load a document cocked to the side, or it jams (which has never happened to me) - DO NOT PULL THE PAPER OUT. There's a release lever that opens the whole front face of the scanner and the paper is then free to be released.

Pulling the paper out will bend a piece that places pressure on the paper for multi-document feeding. This piece is replaceable for 20 bucks, but if no one pulls paper out, you can save the 20 bucks.