Fujitsu Scansnap S510

Efficient document storage and retrieval is an important consideration for those running small or home-based businesses and Fujitsu's Scansnap S510 is designed to make this chore as quick and easy as possible.

Users can choose to scan, automatically convert to text or save as a PDF, so that archiving becomes a matter of inserting the documents into the adjustable document feeder and pressing the large green button on the front.

Scanning was speedy too: we managed to scan, convert and save 10 single-sided documents in a minute.

The Scansnap S510 scans both sides of a document in mono or colour at various quality levels. It comes with optical character recognition software (which requires setting the device to a minimum quality level of ‘medium’) that converts the printed documents to text files. This means you can search for specific words such as company names, making it fast and simple to locate scanned records.

An application to store and manage the PDFs is supplied, with which we found it easy to create a filing system, and there are one-click options to send information by email or export text to Word, Excel or Powerpoint.

The search tool was impressive, although results were much better with typed documents than with those that included handwriting.

You can also scan colour photographs with the Scansnap and we found the quality sufficient for use on the web, although the scanner is by no means good enough to create archive copies of precious photos – a shame, as the document feeder makes it easy to scan lots of pictures at once.

The S510 comes with a USB lead and a helpful printed manual that contains detailed instructions on use, maintenance and troubleshooting. It's also worth noting that the supplied copy of Adobe Acrobat can also be integrated with applications such as Microsoft Office to generate PDFs.

Our only concern was that documents had to be placed in the sheet feeder slot quite carefully to prevent the paper jamming.

It's a bit pricey for home users but if you're running a small business the Scansnap S510 will help manage the clutter of receipts, invoices and correspondence.