New Scansnap IXI500 October 12th

Those Amazon $374 for the ix500 pop up and must only last a few hours, I have yet been able to catch one. I have one ix500 and would love to pick up another/

Hi JaxGirl. For what itā€™s worth, Iā€™ve had two Epson WorkForce scanners at work over the past six years. I donā€™t find them nearly as reliable as my ScanSnap iX500 at home, and getting the first Epson serviced for a minor detail was so problematic eventually our IT department just bought a new scanner as it wasnā€™t worth their time to argue with Epson any more. Very limited experience, I know, but perhaps a helpful data point.

You are right. I just checked and donā€™t see the $374 deal anymore.

Thanks for the personal experience. Iā€™m just hoping my S1500M doesnā€™t get bricked. I just had to replace a printer last week and donā€™t want to buy a scanner too in the coming year.

So, the thing that skeeves me out about Scansnap Cloud is that it retains your document for up to 14 days, even if you immediately have it forwarded to Dropbox or another cloud service. Does anyone know if you can choose to not retain the document in Scansnapā€™s cloud storage at all, or shorten the 14-day window?

I couldnā€™t find any way for them not to retain documents in the cloud. I usually go and erase them manually on my iPad in their cloud app.

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Thank you for posting these observations about the new ScanSnap software cloud storage. Iā€™m not averse to cloud storage ā€¦ but I want to choose which cloud storage. I trust Dropbox, iCloud, OneDrive and Backblaze, but I know nothing about Fujitsuā€™s cloud service. I donā€™t want to store documents in yet another cloud storage service that is unvetted and of unknown security status. And I donā€™t want set up and maintain yet another log-in credential for the cloud service - and more importantly, license credentials for ā€œuser-licensedā€ software just to run a peripheral device. Life is already too complicated ā€¦

This settles it for me - I will not ā€œupgradeā€ to the new ScanSnap software or buy a new ScanSnap iX500 or iX1500 to replace my ScanSnap S1500M purchased in 2012. For now I am running the S1500M using Fujitsuā€™s software for the i1300 on a 2010 MacBook Air and software for the iX500 on a late 2014 Retina iMac under macOS High Sierra. When Fujitsuā€™s software finally ā€œbreaksā€ (again), Iā€™ll look into an Epson or Brother document scanner.

User-Licensed and user-limited software and mandatory cloud storage ā€¦ just to run a (very expensive) scanner? Seriously, Fujitsu??

Iā€™ll mention again David and Katieā€™s continued ads for Fujitsu - If they want to sell ads, fine. But to maintain credibility with the ā€œMac Power Userā€ crowd I would suggest that disclaimers be made regarding the Fujitsu issues discussed in this forum.

This makes me wonder if Fujitsu is taking lessons from the airline industry. Once you could buy a ticket that included a seat assignment, checked bags and a meal on longer flights ā€¦ at least on the more expensive airlines. Now there is a ā€œgotchaā€ at every turn. You would think that an expensive scanner marketed to small businesses and power users would operate without onerous restrictions and rapid obsolescence. Now it appears not.

//end rant. I feel better now. :relieved:

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Calm down. You donā€™t have to use their cloud storage if you scan to your computer. The license is for four computers so is unlikely to be limiting except as a shared resource in a business. And the new software seems to work without any mention of a license for the iX500 and might work for your S1500M.

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@tomalmy - Thank you; this is the type of information I need to mitigate one of my two main concerns. I can forget the cloud storage concern for the moment.

The other concern remains - why must the software be limited to four computers ā€¦ and how does that work? I will certainly need to use a newly-purchased scanner on more than four computers over the lifetime of the scanner. I now have 3 Macs in my home - two iMacs (for my wife and me) and a shared MacBook Air. My current S1500M scanner is, at various times, connected to any of these computers, depending on the task at hand. I have simply downloaded and installed the ScanSnap software on each of these computers. Before my elderly mother passed away last year, I frequently traveled to her home, taking the ScanSnap S1500M to connect to either my MacBook or a locally-available computer to scan her documents - various bills, financial statements, etc. Over a period of 5 years I scanned hundreds, maybe thousands of documents for her. Having these documents available to me was essential in handling her affairs as trustee and administrator for her estate. Over the years I may have used 5 or 6 different computers to scan all of these documents with the ScanSnap S1500M.

To carry this use case further - at some point I would replace some, and probably all, of the computers that were initially ā€œlicensedā€ to the scanner software. Can the license be transferred from the initial four computers to other computers? If so, how is this done? And how does this work if I want to sell the scanner or give it to a family member? Do I really even ā€œownā€ the scanner, in the traditional sense? If not, that is not made clear in Fujitsuā€™s advertising.

It seems to me that scanner driver software should be simply available to the scanner, wherever I want to use it (within the advertised parameters - e.g., Windows, macOS), without a ā€œhassleā€ factor. I donā€™t consider my use for the scanner to be an ā€œedgeā€ case - Iā€™m simply the family-designated record-keeper who happens to own the only sheet-fed document scanner available. I paid a high price for the scanner (or would pay a high price for a new scanner) and donā€™t want to be unreasonably restricted in using it for what I consider ā€œnormalā€ use for this type of scanner.

Thanks again for you comments.

I expect we will know more about the licensing of the software for the IX1500 when someone gets one and reviews it. Meanwhile it would appear that the licenses are associated with the IX1500, not the computers. Note the comment ā€œFive computers per license can be connected to one ScanSnap unitā€ in these instructions https://www.pfu.fujitsu.com/imaging/downloads/manual/ss_webhelp/en/help/webhelp/topic/fu_env_01.html
It all looks confusing to me!

Five computers per license for a total of four licenses and up to 30 profiles - very confusing indeed! Iā€™ll be getting my ix1500 on Friday. Will post more when I have set it up. Iā€™m just happy that I can hook up two computers to one scanner, which is what I wanted to do.

It wasnā€™t intuitive, but if you right-click on the ScanSnap Home icon in the dock (ScanSnap Home must be running already), you need to choose ā€œScan Settings.ā€ See the image below for the button you need to click on to add your own scan destinations.

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I started with ā€œAuto Scan,ā€ gave it a custom name, and then clicked the ā€œAddā€ button in the bottom right.

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I bought the ix1500 as well, it was supposed to be delivered today through Amazon, but they didnā€™t receive it yet so shipping has been delayed.

Hoping it comes tomorrow though.

Not the best designer who did the UI for this app.

Not the best designer who did the UI for this app.

That is an understatement. The new UI is a nightmare. I made the mistake today of removing my perfectly working ScanSnap software (yes 32-bit but aside from the warning, it was working on Mojave). Now I have this dumbed-down UI missing half the features, with huge buttons that look like they were designed for a 3 year old.

This is a professional tool and the new software makes it seem like a childā€™s toy. So sad.

To top it off, I wasted 2 hours trying to get my ix500 to communicate with ScanSnap Home wirelessly. The old software had no trouble with this at all, but no matter what I canā€™t get it to work with SS Home. I can only get it to work with the USB cable. What a huge waste of time.

All Samsung had to do was update the apps to be 64-bit compatible. Pretty disappointing, and Iā€™ve been a fan of the ScanSnaps for many years and have recommended them to everyone I know.

Did you mean Fujitsu?

As of a few minutes ago, the ScanSnap Manager software is still available on Fujitsuā€™s support site. The content on the software downloads webpage is different, compared to about two weeks ago when I last looked. You might want to download the older software before it disappears.

Try this link: ScanSnap software for iX500 - macOS High Sierra

The new interface is definitely a bit of a jumbled mess but I did find that all the scanning functionality of the old software is still available though not always in the places you expect too find it.

I was able to setup the Wifi connection easily enough, though it requires to be connected via USB as part of the setup process. What is annoying is that it seems you cant set automatic Power Off when using a Wifi connection, which results in the Scanning Window popping up occasionally unless you manually close the ScanSnap tray.

One shouldnā€™t forget that the old UI (ScanSnap Manager) was also a nightmare and a major disregard of Appleā€™s UI guidelines ā€“ thinking particularly about its use of the dock icon.

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I seem to remember that according to @MacSparky and @katiefloyd the ScanSnap software was (is?) one of the major selling points of the ScanSnap scanners. I never understood that point of view (other than that they had to say it because Fujitsu was ā€œpaying for their shoesā€).

The dock icon indeed was quite annoying and pretty useless. It should have been a background process or a menubar application. Luckily Canonā€™s software (and their support of new OSā€™s) is much better.

Honestly, I am torn on the Scansnap software being a selling point. But I really get why Katie and Dave mention the software for being exactly that.

I am still using the ā€œoldā€ software. I would agree that the UI is terrible and because of the UI I do not like the user experience at all. But stillā€¦

Once the software is set up with the profile of my choice, I like the results the software provides me with. The scan results in combination with the ix500 are just great. The pages are straight. Usually, there are no black shadows on the edges of a page. The page orientation is being recognized quite reliably. The blank page detection works most of the time. So, I basically do not interact with the Scansnap software when using the ix500. I press the blue button and the software uses the profile of my choice and does its thing.

When I use the SV600 (mostly for digitizing partitures from books) the page detection, edge detection and deskewing works fine most of the time. It have not seen something comparable from other manufacturers.

What I hate about Fujitsu is their ongoing history to make perfectly fine working scanners obsolete just because they can (no TWAIN capability so that proprietary software is needed if you do not want to have a fancy paper weight on your desk). And even for their newest models they could be more willing to have their software ready when a new OS version is being released. With Apple providing them with a three months beta period, it really should be possible to accomplish that. And those two reasons make me doubt if I will buy a Scansnap again. I will try using both my sv600 and my ix500 until they break. If needed, I will use Windows on a VM for that.

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