Scanner advice

[Fred]

I am investigating installing sheet fed scanners at 16 remote sites and
transferring the documents to our headquarters via ftp. This will
replace existing fax machines at the remote locations that currently
fax 10 to 50 pages per day to a fax server which captures the faxed
documents in .tif format. The ideal solution will be to mimic a fax
machine by placing the documents in the scanner and pressing the scan
button to capture the images on the pc in .tif format. Scheduling
software could then transfer the documents at a specified interval.
That would eliminate the need to train some of the technologically
challenged indivuals that would be using this system.

Questions:
1) What would be a good scanner for this project? Color, resolution
and speed are not important factors. Remember, this is replacing a fax
machine. Price and ease of use would be the primary factors.
2)What software and/or drivers would I need on a Windows PC that would
allow the capture of .tif images to a folder automatically. Most
software I've seen that come with scanners open the document in some
type of viewer first. This is not desirable.

Thanks in advance for any insight or references to sources of
information that would help me with this project.

 

[Barry Watzman]

There are several "scan to pdf" scanners on the market. The actual
image is almost always (perhaps absolutely always) a JPEG rather than
TIFF, and you want JPEG rather than TIFF anyway. But since it ends up
within a PDF file, it's irrelevant (Adobe Acrobat will allow you to
extract the imbedded images from a PDF file if desired or necessary).

 

[jeremy]

I am investigating installing sheet fed scanners at 16 remote sites and
transferring the documents to our headquarters via ftp. This will
replace existing fax machines at the remote locations that currently
fax 10 to 50 pages per day to a fax server which captures the faxed
documents in .tif format. The ideal solution will be to mimic a fax
machine by placing the documents in the scanner and pressing the scan
button to capture the images on the pc in .tif format. Scheduling
software could then transfer the documents at a specified interval.
That would eliminate the need to train some of the technologically
challenged indivuals that would be using this system.

Questions:
1) What would be a good scanner for this project? Color, resolution
and speed are not important factors. Remember, this is replacing a fax
machine. Price and ease of use would be the primary factors.
2)What software and/or drivers would I need on a Windows PC that would
allow the capture of .tif images to a folder automatically. Most
software I've seen that come with scanners open the document in some
type of viewer first. This is not desirable.

Thanks in advance for any insight or references to sources of
information that would help me with this project.

If you want to transfer image files, I don't think that it makes sense to
transmit them via the fax protocol. That was set up for transfer via
voicegrade phone lines.

If you scan the documents as pdf files it would be a much faster process to
transmit those files to your headquarters, rather than convert them to fax
image files. You could, as one example, have your remote locations each
send a single email to your headquarters nightly, and attach all of the pdf
files that were created over the past 24 hours. If your remote locations
have broadband connections, the process should take only a couple of
minutes.

Alternately, if you insist on using fax, I have seen various "Fax via Email"
services that might work for you, but there would be a per-minute charge
involved, whereas transmitting via email would be free, except for the
Internet connection charges.

 

[bmoag]

You need an industrial strength machine.
Ricoh has several models at reasonable purchase/lease prices that can do
exactly what you want.

 

[Danny]

Hi Fred,

There's several options which come to mind for your requirements. But,
based on the volume that you noted (10-50 pgs/day), most of my initial
ideas would be a gross overkill.

I had a couple questions that would help me get an idea of which
scanner to recommend:

1. Does your current domain / network infrastructure connect the 16
satellite locations to a central server? (i.e. Windows Active
Directory)

2. How secure do you want to make the scanned images? (from point of
capture to saving to central location server) In other words, if user A
at Satellite Location 1 Scanned 20 pages - would you want to restrict
other users from the same satellite location from seeing that data? or
is the information open to all?

3. Is there a specific application/ workflow requirement which makes
the .tiff CCITT Group 4 compressed file format an absolute requrement?
Would an Indexed PDF file work instead of the tiff?

4. If you were to forcast each location's imaging volume 3 years from
now, how much volume could each site scan /day? less than 250 pgs? less
than 2000 pgs/day? or more?

Over the last 6 years, I've worked with countless large Enterprise
implement their imaging solutions to small mom and pop shops, and
everything in between. I enjoy helping the single person companies just
as much as the Fortune 500 Juggernaut... sometimes even more .

give me a call if you'd like to discuss my thoughts...

Hope this helps...

Danny Ha
408-996-1829

 

[Fred]

Thanks for everybody's input so far. It appears from your replies that
changing from .tif to .pdf would increase my options. To answer
Danny's questions, (1)the remote sites are not on our domain or network
but do have independent broadband connections. (2)Security is not an
issue and (3) the volume will remain fairly static however the number
of remote locations may increase or decrease slightly. (4). There is
currently a small system for viewing, sorting and checking the .tif
images, a change to pdf would require a change in that system which is
an option but I'm loooking for the path of least resistance.

 

[Danny]

Hi Fred,

It's not necessarily that changing from tiff to pdf increases your
options, it's that in this case- it possibly reduces your cost by
making the ScanSnap s500 an applicable solution. ScanSnap s500 pros:
Small, durable, easy to operate, easy to maintain. Intuitive software
running as a service in the background, will analyse the images for
percentages of color content and decide on monochrome or color based
upon the threshold you setup, automatically OCR the images, properly
orient the images based upon the characters on the page, detect whether
the back of the document has data- if not, it's dropped out of the
image file, automatically detect the size of each page and crop
accordingly, etc...

The s500 does all this and more while still maintaining 18ppm / 36ipm.
The ScanSnap is not a twain or isis compliant scanner so that's the one
thing to remember. If you want to use this scanner with another capture
application. It's best for soft scanning or ad hoc imaging needs rather
than the hardcore document imaging environements- which is why the duty
cycle is only 250pgs/day. The cost is the most attractive comparison-
it's less than half the cost of the next competitor with similar
capabilities, and comes with almost twice the features... Your IT staff
wouldn't have to worry about training with the s500/ if the satellite
offices know how to attach a file to email, then the s500 is a solution
in a box ready to implement immediately- let me know if you'd like to
know about the next option which would fit the tiff requirements as
well as ftp on the fly...This would be the fi-5015/ fi-5110c / and
possibly the fi-5120C models.

Hope this helps...

Danny Ha