I need to buy a scanner that will work with DevonThink Pro Office. My current scanner, a very inexpensive HP, doesn’t much like my Mac (I bought it originally to pair wiith my Dell laptop, which it does well.) and it won’t talk to DevonThink at all. In fact, even with a Mac driver which I downloaded from HP, Devonthink says that there IS no scanner attached to my Imac. I tried following the advice for correcting this that I found in the help index, and all I accomplished was that I now can’t get it to do OCR on my Mac at all.
I looked on the Devon web site, and I can’t figure out what they’re talking about when they describe which scanners are compatible with their software. This must be some more of that arcane Mac Talk that leaves me clueless. Sheesh.
Can the rest of you help me out with this? I don’t want to spend a fortune on this, but could/would certainly spend up to, say, $400 American for a scanner that worked, was rugged and durable, and wouldn’t give me any headaches for the long haul. It would earn its keep in two or three years. I scan books as well as sheets, so I’d need (if possible) both a flat bed and sheet fed scanner combined. If not, just the most reliable and easy to use in any configuration would be what I want.
From memory I think DevonThink recommend the Fujitsu ScanSnap 500M (for the Macintosh). I believe there’s a button in DT Pro Office that allows you to control the machine from the software (but I’ve never used DTPO).
I have the version for Windows. I bought my ScanSnap on the basis of some excellent reviews on Amazon and elsewhere, and I have not been disappointed. It is of course sheet-feed. But I’ve had mine for about a year, it seems robust and it’s proved to be a very good way of getting printed data into my computer quickly. Certainly a quantum leap from all the flat-beds I’ve had in the past (leaving aside the book problem).
Looking at amazon.com, I notice they have them at around $450 each at the moment.
Well, fwiw, I have an older Epson Perfection 3200 Photo scanner that DTPO “sees” with no problem.
As I recall, the Fujitsu ScanSnap was the one that worked with DTPO, as long as you were using Fujitsu’s own software. The actual model was the one before the current S500 model (I don’t remember the number, sorry), but from reading the DT Forum (and here) it sounds as if the S500 works well, too. I keep looking at them, but it’s $400 I just don’t need to spend when I have more than one working scanner as it is.
(The one I wished worked is my Opticbook 3600, but it’s Win only. )
I don’t know if this will help or not but I have used VueScan many times to get older scanners or scanners that didn’t act real friendly in OSX to work.
What it does is takes place of the original scanning software and drivers and uses its own. Sometimes you actually get better results using the VueScan versus the original Software. They support a lot of scanners (I think over 750 models) so check to see if your scanner is on the list.
You can download a trial version and test it with your current scanner and DPO before you go out and spend money on another scanner.
After all the scanner is just hardware. It is the software that drives the scanner that can make all the difference in the world.
If anything the only thing you would have to lose is a few minutes time.
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