It is a small unit only slightly wider than an A4 sheet of paper. The dimensions are 25x16x14cm with the lid closed, open the lid – this turns it on – and you add 13cm to the height then add another 10cm for a stack of sheets waiting to the processed and maybe another 4cm to the depth as the lid slopes backwards holding anything waiting to be processed.

Once the lid is opened you see the two buttons Scan and Power, the rear of the unit has two inputs for the USB and power leads both provided. Four seconds a document is the claim and when I first used it I was sceptical but pages are through the unit in that time. By default they are saved as .PDF but they can be saved in Microsoft Word, Excel or Power Point should you wish. I found that this choice did slow the final results but it still works efficiently.

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The thing I find most impressive is the double sided scanning in a single pass this little unit has two scanning units. Should there be blank sides the software reads this and unless you say no will get rid of the blank sides.

Surprisingly this unit will work on a Windows 98 or later PC. However to scan at 15 pages a minute you need a Pentium 4, 1.8GHz or better machine.

The software provided comes on three CD’s and all should be installed before the USB lead is connected. Only one reboot was required and that after the Fujitsu CD that I installed first. Next I installed the OCR software from ABBYY and finally the full copy of Adobe Acrobat 7 thus enabling you to make and send .PDF files and this is not the free Acrobat reader that comes with most software. Should you have Windows 98 or Windows Me Acrobat 7 will not work so a copy of Acrobat 6 is also in the box. There are other software goodies provided including a Business Card Reader, Card Minder V2.

In time I was up and running 20 minutes after taking the Scan Snap out of it’s box. In total space I used around 1100MB of hard disc. However .PDF files are not small especially if they include colour images so you will find that hard discs fill up quickly.

I ended with three icons on the desktop and seven folders in the programs section. However for basic scanning you only need to open the lid of the Scan Snap load pages to be scanned and press the scan button. The images are displayed automatically and by default the message offering to remove blank pages should there be any. By default all files are stored in the My Documents folder.

For such a powerful tool it is amazingly easy to use, anyone needing to regularly scan a lot of pages will certainly find this an easy tool to use. By default you enter pages upside down and the front page away from you but this is configurable.

I saw this at the education show BETT last month and was amazed at the speed, now there has to be a drawback I thought but as far as I can see there is none, yes .PDF files do tend to be large (a full colour image can easily be 1MB) but as paper trails need to be tightly regulated this is ideal. Perhaps the only fly in the ointment is the price just under £300 is the best I could find, link below, but do remember you get a full copy of Adobe Acrobat and if you purchased that separately then the Fujitsu Scan Snap fi-5110EOX becomes very reasonable.

http://www.fel.fujitsu.com/home/v3__product.asp?pid=452&inf=dsc&wg=75