This scanner uses LEDs as a light source and so has zero warm-up time. The paper feeding system is very fast and and handles irregular sheets and ragged corners with no trouble. The scanner itself beats the HP 5550C I've been using.
Epson's scanner interface is not to my taste but has presets for office and graphic professional scanning needs. What keeps it from getting highest marks is the abysmal customer service.
I couldn't get the twain driver to work under Windows Vista. The WIA driver did work, but doesn't support acquisition from the sheet feeder (which defeats the whole purpose of buying this scanner). Lack of sheet feeder support is a crippling blow to the usability of Paperport (which I have used for years). Epson should not be bundling software that their own product does not support.
I spent hours on the phone with three levels of Epson's technical support to no avail. They tried to pawn me off on Nuance to get Paperport support (Nuance's policy is that software bundled with hardware is supported by the manufacturer of the hardware!)
One of the technicians I spoke to did not even know that twain and WIA were different drivers. How can they possibly address my problem when they have such poor background in the product?
The answer of course, is that Epson's support is provided by a call center in India or some such place and the support people are reading canned responses off a computer screen.
The level two technicians knew nothing more that the level one technicians. After a lengthy conversation with a level three technician I was promised a resolution and a return phone call, which as you might guess, never happened.
In the end, I was left to my own devices and discovered a workaround. Scan using the Epson interface (which does support the document feeder) and set its destination directory to the main Paperport directory.
Then open Paperport and manage your documents from there. Not as good as scanning directly from within Paperport, but it gets the job done. Epson WorkForce GT-1500 B11B190011 Document Imaging Scanner (White)
After many false starts with several scanners the Epson GT-1500 has earned a permanent place in this book scanner's office (until the prices on commercial units come down). Most of the reviews for the Epson GT-1500 are, quite reasonably, predicated on the idea that most customers will use the product in a small or home office environment. This review is from the perspective of one who wishes to use the GT-1500 as a book scanner or archival tool.
Pros:
- The GT-1500 is extremely fast. Much faster than any of the Canon or Brother scanners that I tried and faster even than Epson's own multipurpose scanner/printer/fax machines.
- Document handing on the ADF (Automatic Document Feeder) is remarkably reliable. From glossy magazine papers to heavily milled 32lb papers to newsprint-quality paperback paper the ADF seldom jammed and never grabbed two sheets of paper.
- Resolution is great for OCR (Optical Character Recognition.
Cons:
- Epson Scan software is clunky and far from convenient. More on this later...
- For a Mac user, the scan to PDF function does not allow for an editable text layer behind an optical scan. In fact, it does not even seen to allow for editable text at all.
- No duplex functionality and worse yet, very limited naming option makes recreating double-sided documents (like the pages in a book) a real pain.
- Included Abby FineReader Software is a joke unless you plan to scan only a few documents or are willing to take whatever the scanner spits out with its auto "scan to PDF functionality."
On the pros, the scanner is remarkably well built and seems to handle automatic document feeding well with a minimum of hassles. While the scanner is able to scan at a native 1200 ppi its ability to perform OCR and automatic deskew is capped at only 600 ppi. Functionally then, the scanner is only useful for document archival up to 600 ppi unless one wishes to run through each page with Photoshop and manually correct the image before sending it through a second round of OCR conversion. However, 600 ppi is sufficient for OCR with all but the most demanding (Hebrew or Sanskrit) documents so this is not a huge issue. Also, this is not a fault of the scanner itself but Epson's included software. This note will be struck again and again: the scanner is great but the included software hobbles it.
On the cons, book scanning means being able to handle a high volume of pages in an orderly and efficient manner that does not suck your life away. My first couple days with the GT-1500 were mind numbing, soul stealing excercises in document renaming and workflow headaches. This was due, largely, to two oversights on the part of Epson's software: 1) the scan naming functionality is weak. Documents may be named with a re-occuring string of alphanumeric character plus a strip of ascending numbers beginning with 001 and topping out at 999. While this is fine for single sided documents, it makes for frustrating dual sided scans. The workable solution is to scan a book's first 40 odd pages that will be labeled something like "Book 001" and so one and then rename them all so that they read "Book 001b, Book 002b, etc." Then scan all the even pages with the normal "Book 001, Book 002, etc. so that they fall into the correct order. This batch renaming can be accomplished in Photoshop for PC users or in Mac's Automator program that resides in OSX. Would it have killed Epson to include the ability to name files with multiple fields, descending numbering, or just the ability to designate a batch of pages as "odd" and the other "even?"
This brings us to the joys of Epson's included Abbey FineReader software. First, unlike the IRIS software included with Canon's scanners, the the FineReader software is largely a stand-alone product. The exception is in the automatic "scan to PDF" functionality. However, as a stand alone product it reveals itself to be a cheesy sut rate version of Abbey's otherwise outstanding OCR products. First off, the software does NOT for the creation of editable text. Thus, whatever the OCR reads on the page is what will be included in your PDF or stripped out as a text document mistakes and all. For PC users, one can opt to buy the full software for an additional $500 and actually get something that does the job. For Mac users, the only option is to pay an additional $100 and get the "Express" version which does at least allow for batch processing of file folders (something that Epson's included version of the Abbey software does not). This is nearly unforgivable in my opinion. If one wants images that are straight beyond the narrow abilities of Epson's automatic deskew they must manually correct the skew in a program like Photoshop and then sit and manually open each individual file and save it as a converted OCR'ed PDF while manually typing in the name of the new document. NO, Abbey's software can't even be bothered to default to the name of the original file. Instead ever file is called "TEXT" until you manually enter in its proper name. So, for a person scanning books the included software is a joke unless you are willing accept wonky text angles and mistakes in your searchable PDF files. The only complete solution is to buy Abbey's full version of the FineReader OCR software that includes the ability to batch process and edit the resulting text before resaving the whole document as a converted PDF file. The work-around solution for MAC users is to pay an additional chunk of change for the "Express" version to get batch processing and just deal with the mistakes that the OCR software throws-up periodically.
That brings us to the most easily fixed broken-link in Epson's "Epson Scan" software: there is no manual de-skew. The auto de-skew is barely functional in general--far less so than Canon's script to do the same-- and without manual control some pages are bound to wind up a bit wonky. Fortunately, Epson's ADF is quite competent at pulling the pages in relatively straight as long as the feed arms are kept tight to the edges of the stack. However, generally first and last pages tend to get pulled a few degrees (or thirty) off of straight.
For those who are unwilling to pony up thousands for camera based book-scanning solutions or unable to build DIY projects that do the same, the Epson GT-1500 can turn an average book into an archival string of bits in about four hours start to finish. This is fast enough to equal cheap college text books (borrowed from friends or libraries and digitized) and easy enough to allow for a person to convert often used reference books into searchable digital PDFs. However, for those with deeper pockets there are better camera based options available. So while the Epson's scanning software greatly limits the scanner's native abilities there are no other options available in the sub $500 range that turn a book into a file as easily. The duplexing abilities of Fuji's Scansnap series of scanners would be a great step up for those willing to pay $500 (and sacrifice a document table) or so but the reality is that most people are still going to pay an additional fee to buy scanning software capable of producing editable text.
The final words on Epson's GT-1500 is "good enough" and worthy of five stars only in that it does the job that very few others do--even while it does it poorly. - Photo Scanner - Scanner - Document Scanner - Flatbed Scanners'
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