Review I found about the Scan Station 500
We have used a Scan Station 100 Plus for a few years, and when we wanted an additional unit ordered the Scan Station 500 (ss500) instead. A very preliminary review, but what you are buying here is a world class paper feeder, attached to a pc with a touch screen, that does OCR and outputs ready to use, searchable PDF files. Another reviewer mentioned that directories cannot be browsed, this is not an oversight. The design goal (for better or worse) is something that an administrator can deploy on a corporate network without compromising network security. What's cool is that 10 people can walk up and drop scans directly into 10 different directories, and that the confidential/protected directories for the CEO are available on walk up, but not compromised to other users. The strength and limitation of this unit is that it is designed for enterprise use, with a high priority on security, HIPPA, PCI DSS, etc.
Set up has a little bit of the "IT Sys Admin" feel, and absolutely requires a PC. Once configured, the basic interface is an ethernet connection to shared storage, and/or a USB key. The ss500 office-user fast at OCR (not industrial speed). Image quality is very good (for a sheet fed scanner). The latest upgrade to the software rotates documents so that they are saved as PDFs with the top at the top even if fed up-side-down.
RAM: I'd love to be able to upgrade its 1gb RAM to 3gb. (Uses XP.) I'm using the attached flatbed, which is a nice extra and produces much higher resolution scans.
EXTERNAL KEYBOARD: Kodak doesn't say this for some reason, but you can attach a USB keyboard to this. The touch screen is fine, but being able to type a file name with a real keyboard is *much* faster. If all goes well, I may come back an give this a 5, but for now 4 stars.
COMPARISION WITH SCAN SNAP: I Have also used/own a ScanSnap S510. The Scan Snap a great unit, but because it is directly attached via USB to a single workstation, and requires drivers and special software be loaded onto that workstation, a USB-direct-attached scanner really becomes essentially tethered to a single workstation. (And for the Scan Snap) Adobe Acrobat gets activated to *that* workstation, and over-writes any existing acrobat installation -- it overwrote my Acrobat Professional with the less expensive, less powerful Acrobat Standard. The paper feed on the Kodak is also much better, bigger, heavier, and more serviceable. Jams are such a annoyance that they justify a large part of the price difference - sheet feeding on the Scan Snap is very good; sheet feeding on the Kodak is really great.
MACINTOSH: If you have more than one user, or need scans for both Mac and PC, then getting your scan output as a PDF file on a network drive and/or USB key means that scans can very quickly get used by any computer.
COST: The cost of a network scanner is 5 times the cost of a USB attached scanner. If you are a one-person operation or office, then the business case is harder to make. On the other hand, if what ends up happening is that you dedicate a workstation to the scanner anyhow, the Kodak makes huge sense. It a refined, flexible, and secure approach to a shared scanning.
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