I caught myself saying things such as “Paper is so old millennium” and “Haven’t you heard of email?” And then it dawned on me: such comments were simply strengthening the case for owning one of these devices.<\/p>\n
Bright white in colour and designed expressly for the Mac environment, the S500M is the easiest way to cut down on paper clutter in the office while at the same time ensuring valuable paperwork doesn’t get lost in “file 13”. It supports multi-page documents between A4 and A5 in size, captures documents in colour and monochrome and carries out its work so speedily you’ll hardly believe your eyes.<\/p>\n
When you’re ready to scan a document, you simply insert it into the top of the scanner and press the big “Scan” button. The scanner takes care of the rest. Pages then immediately begin ripping through the scanner at a rate of about three seconds per page. Incidentally, the simplicity of that application and how easily it drives the scanner were what I enjoyed most about testing the S500M: insert document, press button. There’s nothing more to it.<\/p>\n
Instead of hampering the user with tons of options, the moment the button is pressed the scanner simply uses the preferences selected in ScanSnap Manager. That application gives users full control over preferences such as scan quality (balancing compression with file size), preferred file formats, save locations and the preferred applications scanned documents should open with.<\/p>\n
By taking this “set and forget” approach to preferences, digitising documents becomes quick and easy – something that undoubtedly increases the number of people likely to use the scanner.<\/p>\n
Overall, The ScanSnap S500M is one of those devices you never think you’ll need until you begin using it. And now that I’ve used one, I can quite honestly say I’m a convert.<\/p>\n