I have bought three of these for my business, to scan documents from the road and send them in to clients. I only use black and white at 300dpi, which creates a very small file but a very clear image for documents. This scanner does the job well, and none of my three scanners has broken down yet, after 6 months of light use. There are several drawbacks:
1) Almost every page gets scanned in a little crooked. I'm thinking that there is a knack to getting it to go through perfectly straight but I haven't figured it out yet, one of my employees does pretty well though. Anyway, it is good enough, but still annoying
2) The whole process is tedious with multiple pages, hand-feeding one at a time, going through the program to tell it to scan each page. I shouldn't complain because this is a portable scanner, but one day maybe someone can make a portable scanner that can handle multiple pages by itself.
3) Occasionally it has trouble identifying that a piece of paper has been put into the scanner. The easiest solution for me has been to unplug the USB connection, plug it in again and try again.
4) You can only scan individual sheets, you can't scan out of books, newspapers, etc., like the HP Capshare 920. (The Capshare is unique in that it was made in the 1990's and is still better than anything on the market today. Unfortunately they stopped making it, you have to find it on Ebay.)
Everything else is great, it gets its power from the USB connection and does its job.
Update 2/24/2011: It has now been a year, and all three scanners are still running strong, no problems. Problem #3 that I mentioned above has ceased to be a problem, I think I was somehow putting the paper in wrong. You have to slide the paper in far enough to trip a tiny switch, and then allow the scanner to automatically pull the paper in about an inch before you start the scan. Brother DSMobile Scanner (DS-600)
I just ordered and received one of these scanners. Bottom line is this: The instruction manual and drivers that ship with the scanner are out of date. The directions will tell you to use OS X's Image Capture program to calibrate the scanner. (If you don't calibrate it after installing the software your scans will fail. The error message is "Run TWAIN software." However, Apple has removed the calibration capability from Image Capture for some unknown reason and even Adobe Photoshop won't do the job.
You need to download an updated version of the driver, which includes the calibration built in. I got it here: [...]
See this thread for more information: [...]
(If Amazon removes these links, contact Brother for the updated version of the Snow Leopard drivers.)
After just a couple of scans I can tell I'll use the heck out of this. It does exactly what I need: scans an 8.5" x 11" sheet of paper into a PDF file without a lot of fiddly fooling with DPI settings, prescans and whatnot. (Edited to add: Actually you CAN change DPI settings, doc formats and such with ease, as I've noted in Comments below. The one thing you CANNOT do is put in a document that's wider than 8.5" - it just won't fit.) Basically I need this to scan receipts and bills into my local Documents folder on my laptop (a 15" circa 2007 MacBookPro). Once I was able to nail down the calibration issue, the scanner installed with no problems at all and I'm able to select it from Image Capture for a scan that takes maybe 30 seconds from start to finish.
Now for the downside - I do agree with other reviewers: This device really needs a paper guide. Anything that isn't perfectly letter- or legal-sized can slide from side to side while you're trying to scan. I haven't had major problems with this - a little slide doesn't yield unreadable docs - but at some point I may need to resort to copying the irregular page and then scanning the copy. Hey, it'd be faster than all the pesky prescanning and adjusting I have to do on my flatbed scanner.
I would NOT recommend this scanner for inputting a lot of small photographs. 8" x 10" should be fine, but a smaller, say, 4" x 6" photo is going to slide all over the place while you input it. Forget doing it in 'Flatbed' mode (which requires two scans)....You'd just never be able to get it in the same place twice.
(One more edit: I'm using this scanner TO DEATH already! I'm a compulsive magazine clipper, which means I always have a pile of articles lying around. Thanks to this scanner, many of them are now dumped into digital files on my desktop, sorted by topic. I LOVE that I can change the file format or DPI literally with the click of a button and can name the file whatever I want BEFORE the scan, so I don't have to open up all the files to see what's in them, then name them.
The ease of this scanner is hard to overstate - the scans are usually right the first time, minus some minor paper slippage that can happen if the page is smaller than 8" x 10" or so, but even then it's usually not drastic.
The drivers work well - no 'spinning beachball' or freezing or hanging up. The scans run fast, they save quickly - again, no hanging up...Overall I am QUITE pleased with this device and wish I'd bought it years ago.
I'd give it a full five stars if it had a paper guide.)
I purchased this DS600 scanner as an alternative to my HP All-in-One which is too big for my laptop bag. The product description and reviews convinced me to buy this item and had it shipped overnight. After downloading the software from the included disc I was dismayed to discover the DS Mobile II software did not function at all on a Windows 7 system even though the included software said that it would. And the Presto! Page Manager was not at all compatible with Win7. I tried to install the software from the Brother website thinking maybe there was a problem with the disc, still the same issues prevailed. After trying for 3-1/2 hours to make it work I finally called the support team at Brother. After an hour on the phone with them there was still not a solution to this issue.They said they would have to send it to techs that were smarter than them and I should receive a call from them in the next 4 or 5 days and presumably if I am lucky I will be at home, in front of the computer when they call. I installed this on an older laptop that has a Vista op system and after a long period of time getting the program downloaded it did work on that system and the scanner itself seems to work well. It is not the scanner but the software that does not work on Win 7 which is what my intended use was.This was my first, and sorry to say last Brother product I will purchase and customer service at Brother is a joke. I will be getting in contact with Amazon in the next couple of days to obtain a refund for this scanner. Highly disappointed in a product that should be a breeze to set up and run and is nothing but frustrating and time consuming. - Usb Scanner - Lightweight - Mobile Scanner - Scanner'
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