does this have the newest software by neat

Amazon has a lot of reviews for this hardware and software. It seems to have a lot of problems. The price is good though.

What this has, that most print/scan/fax devices don't, are (1) duplex (double-sided) scanning and (2) ADF (automatic document feeder). This is a terrific price for a scanner with those features. (If those features don't matter to you, this'd be a waste of money.)

Now I just need to figure out how good its doublefeed protection is, and if it's capable of scanning 500-1000 pages at a time, or if it overheats or jams after the first few dozen pages. (I convert paper books to ebooks, and my current scanner is a bit glitchy & needs replacement.)

lakedawg wrote:Good Job Woot. Try to sell all of Amazon's crap that they couldn't on their site. Woot SUX!

And yet here you are, having Woot-ed 25-49 items no less. Apparently Woot does not SUX!

I had one of these, emphasis on HAD. Unless your papers are PERFECT, it jammed constantly or pulled through 3 pages at a time and the software bundle wasn't very good (horrible OCR). I scan my small manufacturing business' docs and drawings for archiving so do a lot of scanning. If you are only doing 1 or 2 scans at a time (like for home finance) it's okay, but don't expect to put a stack of 10 pages and have it be reliable. I ended up dumping it for an Epson S50 which has been flawless even with huge stacks of chewed up papers, albeit it was more expensive than this (they are comparably priced at retail).

$250 is simply too much for such poor paper feeding reliability. You are better off with an el-cheapo flatbed for 1/10th the cost.

brokpod wrote:does this have the newest software by neat

You could always download the update as soon as you get yours. I check for updates occasionally for my portable scanner, and boxed software typically in my experience has already been updated by the time I purchase it.

I had a friend who bought one of these (at full price). He's quit using it. While it looks good, the reality is that it is not that great. Bottom line is a cheaper all-in-one printer with PaperPort will blow this little expensive piece of junk away. It will truely eat your documents and spit out trash.

Sure, I know PaperPort has a very rocky history, for those who've used it in the past. But version 12 is miles above anything else on the market today. Still not perfect, but still much better. I personally use PaperPort along with Nuance's PDF Converter. Together, those packages are the best I've found. (gees, I sound like a Nuance commercial! Oh well...)

If you want to scan perfectly with no destroying your documents, use a flatbed, period. If you're lazy, most all-in-ones have a feeder mechanism too. And good HP models have duplex ability too! But, nothing will keep your documents more tidy than your own personal effort. No software will do it for you.

hbsurfer17 wrote:Do most stores accept scanned receipts for returns or would you still have to keep the hard copies?

I like what Sears is doing. E-mailing you receipts, even for in-store purchases. I'd like to see more stores do that.

I went for this in the last woot, a couple of months ago. Here are my impressions:

Hardware: Works great. yes, you can line up a ton of papers into the feeder, and it will go through each one individually. I only had it fail to do this correctly once, out of maybe 100 scans so far.

It's pretty fast. If you double-sided scan a bunch 20 color sheets, it shouldn't take over 30 seconds. I haven't timed it, this is more of an impression, so yer mileage may vary. Suffice it to say it's plenty fast.

It scans and OCRs about any size and orientation of paper. If you are a neat freak who has to have all his PDFs exactly vertical/horizontal, then you won't like it, because a tiny bit of rotation occursquite often, but it doesn't seem to affect the OCR at all.

Software: You can put a bunch of single page receipts in and tell it they are single pages, so they are all separate documents. Or you can tell it to combine them all.

When you scan something, it will go itno a queue to be processed/OCRed. I have a pretty fast machine, even with that sometimes it's a little slow. but in general, it's not a big deal, and it lets you know what document it is processing and how big the queue is.

There are three types of docs: receipts, business cards, and documents. The receipts and business cards OCR very well. And the receipts quite often seem to adjust themselves to find some fields that are in the same place on the same company's receipt.

The documents do virtually no OCR, except that they are searchable. So you can look for a word in a document, but the filing isn't so automatic.

The categorization is pretty good if you are an accountant. If you are trying to replace your filing cabinet as a normal human being, it's a little wanting. I have been told by Neat, however, that a new rev is coming out late this year which will allow hierarchical folders for categories.

All in all, I'm happy I bought it. It has some SW shortcomings, but it does most things very well.

havermm wrote:Would they be high-quality JPEG files?

No. The max resolution on this is just average for photo work. Quickie copies.

betts4 wrote:How many pages would this scan at a time? I have been looking to scan some of my paperbacks for use on my kindle. Not sure what scanner would do this as a complete deal.

As many as you can load and it duplex scans. (Both sides) The "speed" limit is how fast you can tear the pages out of the book to feed them into the slot.

havermm wrote:Anybody know if you can scan multiple pictures quickly/easily with this vs one by one with a regular scanner? Would they be high-quality JPEG files?

You could use a Kodak Kiosk, some of them have scanners that scan up to 20 images at a time, then save them to a CD or DVD if you want the digital copies or print them right there if you wanted hard copies.

http://www.kodak.com/eknec/PageQuerier.jhtml?pq-path=7965&pq-locale=en_US&_requestid=14368

Select Rapid Print Scanner for a feature to find one near you.

rprebel wrote:$250...and it's just a scanner? No print, no fax? lol...fax. Anyway, my scanner has almost identical specs and is a printer and a fax machine as well. It was $40. You can get a new Epson 835 with better specs than my Epson 323 and better specs than the NeatDesk for $170.

I have nothing against NeatDesk, I just don't see the point of a standalone scanner.

It's not the scanner per se....its the software. It does a bang up job of not only scanning receipts, documents and biz cards, but it will catogorize them for easy use. For example your receipts automatically get broken down into tax catagories and provide you running totals. Biz cards you end up with a nice database that you can use for mailmerge, emails, faxes ect....

The scanner scans superfast but it's the software that makes it special and very useful to people who do tons of stuff like that. The normal home user probably won't get tons of benefits from it.

rmeden wrote:Maximum Scan Area 8.5"x11" (up to 30" long)

?????

What's the 11" if it's not length? thickness?

That's what she said?

havermm wrote:Anybody know if you can scan multiple pictures quickly/easily with this vs one by one with a regular scanner? Would they be high-quality JPEG files?

the specs mention jpeg but Im sure this does not scan and result in jpegs. this is not a picture scanner..

Why no love for the Mac users? Bummer, man.

Krumlov wrote:These are for PC ONLY.

Mac versions are online here: http://store.neatco.com/index/page/product/product_id/107/product_name/NeatDesk+for+Mac

Sure, for $400. Harumph.

betts4 wrote:How many pages would this scan at a time? I have been looking to scan some of my paperbacks for use on my kindle. Not sure what scanner would do this as a complete deal.

I think 25 to 50 pages is the tray limit but the software will allow you to add more and still be one document. the document size is only limited by the amount of memory your computer has.

elfwreck wrote:What this has, that most print/scan/fax devices don't, are (1) duplex (double-sided) scanning and (2) ADF (automatic document feeder). This is a terrific price for a scanner with those features. (If those features don't matter to you, this'd be a waste of money.)

Now I just need to figure out how good its doublefeed protection is, and if it's capable of scanning 500-1000 pages at a time, or if it overheats or jams after the first few dozen pages. (I convert paper books to ebooks, and my current scanner is a bit glitchy & needs replacement.)

these scanners use LEDs so do not get hot like conventional bulb scanners. as long as you have fairly decent pages going in, I would not expect any jams to occur. double feeding should not occur unless you have sticky pages.

Krumlov wrote:These are for PC ONLY.

Mac versions are online here: http://store.neatco.com/index/page/product/product_id/107/product_name/NeatDesk+for+Mac

you can use this scanner and purchase the mac software (NeatWorks) directly from neat.com. The software is 30.00.

I have the mobile version of this; it scans quickly, but it takes FOREVER for the program to fully load a clear copy of the scanned page--and that's with me just scanning pages as PDF docs without needing the program to search for field text. I don't know if it's a software issue or if it's unique to the mobile version, but be aware that is one major downside you may potentially encounter. Major upside: page scanning is generous enough to scan an entire long lease page without breaking it into multiple pages.

The scanner is great. The software, not so much.

If all you want to do is quickly scan docs and organize them, then this is what you want.

But if you want to do anything beyond that, The software won't let you. And I could not figger out how to run this scanner without the software. (i.e. use Adobe Acrobat to run it.)

I don't like limits. So I am disappointed.

I have been using this application for over 6 months. The scanner works extremely well. It can scan a 26 page document in under 30 seconds.
The software has its quirks, but for my purposes does quite well.

marcillus wrote:Why no love for the Mac users? Bummer, man.

You are SOOO right, marcillus! C'mon!

I don't understand the point of this thing...it's a scanner, it's a horribly over priced scanner. Why would ANYONE ever spend $250 on a scanner?? There are all-in-one machines with a ton more functionality and just as easy to use...and well under $75 Please don't ever put this item on Woot again, waste of space and 24 hours.

kimklopez wrote:you can use this scanner and purchase the mac software (NeatWorks) directly from neat.com. The software is 30.00.

Am I missing something? The software seems to be priced at $79.95?

http://www.neat.com/products/neatworks-for-mac

What version of the software is included?

Neatdesk or Fujitsu Scansnap S1500?
It appears that Scansnap has better hardware but Neatdesk's software seems to work easier. Which model would you buy for a small business use?

does it scan both sides of the doc at one time

woot4jam wrote:
currently i'm doing it with an all-in-on scanner to an eye-fi card which drops into an imported evernote directory. works well, but the all-in-one is slow.

After much debate and research, I'm passing.

I'm saving the $250 to put towards a Scansnap S1500. (~ $420 new)

Superior HW all around, software doesn't matter as I am using evernote, so I wouldn't use Fujitsu's nor neatdesk's fully.

and if I change my mind, seams woot posts these about every few months for $10 less each time : )

We ordered some of these for our clients in the Army. Just so happens the software which is AF approved doesn't work without administrative rights. If your computer is on a domain, even neat recommends not using their scanner.

Great for home use though. This thing doesn't jam much either.

Narg wrote:I like what Sears is doing. E-mailing you receipts, even for in-store purchases. I'd like to see more stores do that.

Great concept when it works - emailing receipts to customers. My experience is that Sears was able to email my receipts to me earlier this year, but the past few months, the system has been broken (hope they are not using NeatDesk). Sounds like Sears may be out of business soon anyway, and like so many companies these days, the systems responsible for all the neat things like emailing receipts to customers have been outsourced and put in much less capable hands. Even if more companies started emailing receipts to customers, you can bet that these systems would be unreliable and open to security issues - until we start hiring people in America to do the work.

As for NeatDesk scanner, I bought the portable one a while back and it works pretty well, although it is slow and the OCR software is klunky as mentioned many times in previous posts.

phreecaller wrote:Neatdesk or Fujitsu Scansnap S1500?
It appears that Scansnap has better hardware but Neatdesk's software seems to work easier. Which model would you buy for a small business use?

I have used the neat receipts hand scanner and the Fujitsu Scansnap S1500. The scansnap has far superior software. It's quite customizable and the search function is awesome. The neat receipts software is not even comparable.

If you are a mac user, the hardware is cross compatible all you have to do is call neat receipt and tell them you own the PC version and ask for the mac license, they will send you a coupon code to drop the price of the software from $79.95 to $29.95.

shagen99 wrote:Best Document scanner hands down is the Fujitsu Scansnap S1500 and S1500M(Mac ver).

Ask anyone who has one and they will tell you they love it. It comes with real good OCR software, Organizer software for your scans. It auto aligns crooked feeds, full two-sided scanning on a single pass. You can feed it all different size papers at once and it just cranks out the scans. Plus it is extremely fast.

Plus it comes with a full version of Adobe Acrobat 9.0, which I believe is about $125 for just the Adobe Acrobat.

Now to be fair, I haven't tried the NeatDesk, but why would I. I got the Scansnap from the Egg for about $349. Amazon has a pretty good price on it as well.

I also think the ScanSnap has it hands down over NetaDesk.

adr5 wrote:You are missing the point. This is a cheap scanner with expensive software. You are paying mostly for the software, not the hardware. It look tempting, but I am not sure how good the software is.

Exactly. So, you could get a new all-in-one printer, faxer, copier, scanner that has a good document feeder for batch copying, scanning,faxing, also, much higher resolution on the scanner than this one on woot (4800x4800?), for less than $100.
The OCR software? Bittorrent and there you go.

And who says all-in-ones are slow at batch scanning? Have you guys seen any of the modern ones?

Not much of a deal when you can buy a brand new one at Staples for $299.00.

I use Quicken and track almost everything. Once receipts are entered into Quicken, I get rid of them after three months unless they are needed for warranty or tax purposes.

That being said, are there any Quicken users out there using this? Will it help me enter receipts into Quicken? Most receipts don't get itemized, or are broken down into a very few categories, so entering receipts now isn't all that much work. Will this scanner make the process faster or easier?

I'm also aware that Neat's software support isn't the greatest after the warranty ends. If the receipts are exported to Quicken, will I care much about this?

Thanks for any comments.

endylaw wrote:Not much of a deal when you can buy a brand new one at Staples for $299.00.

Is it on sale at staples?

http://www.staples.com/NeatDesk-Scanner/product_758317

Gary

phreecaller wrote:Neatdesk or Fujitsu Scansnap S1500?
It appears that Scansnap has better hardware but Neatdesk's software seems to work easier. Which model would you buy for a small business use?

I have had both. You'd be buying my returned Neat. They are AWFUL. Hardware is decent, software is proprietary and abysmal.

Fujitsu s1500 is a Clear winner