Neatdesk vs ScanSnap s1500

I am looking for a document scanner for my laptop to scan all my important docs and I have heard a love/hate relationship with neatdesk and overall satisfaction with S1500, which makes me weary of the Neatdesk. I was wondering if anyone here knew much about these things. I am basically looking to turn all my medical/tax/insurance/all other documents into a database that I can organize and search easily. I have heard the neatdesk software is great but extremely limited, which is a problem if I use it for a long time and I max it out and if the company stops upgrading and making the software better. One question is with the S1500 when you turn everything into PDF files are they OCR? Am I understanding that term correctly? The reason why I liked the neatdesk/neatdesk software is because you can search each document making it easy to find paper work. Can I do that with the S1500? I was thinking if I got the S1500 I would just organize it myself into a folder group like I originally planned on doing with in Windows. Although, I do not understand if I am able to easily search with in each document to find the papers I want/need. For an example, use windows search and type in w-2 Intel 2011 October, which is all the information I can remember off hand in the doc. Another example, is doctor Freeman spleen scan. This would pop up all relevant articles with that information in it. I have seen windows search look in text/doc files and read whats inside them (you can literally type a sentence from a word doc and it would search the doc files and find the one with the exact sentence). Can it do that for the PDF files from the S1500? If i can than I don't have to name all the files and it would be super fast to find the paper work I need. Just like the neatdesk...minus I would sort files into folders for added organization.

If i did not explain this well or if you need clarification of what I am asking please say so and I'll try my best and thanks for all your help.

here are the pcmag reviews

Fujitsu S1500

Neatdesk

 

There are actually three different tools that you need for a paperless life: Scanning hardware, scanning software, and a search tool. It is not enough to just look for a scanner, and call it a day.

1) My wife uses a Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300 scanner. She specifically bought a Fujitsu ScanSnap because it does duplex scanning (scans both sides of the document in one pass).

2) OCR processing (allows scanned text to be recognized as "text", instead of just images, making text-based searching easier) is a function of software, not the scanning hardware.. So whether you get OCR support or not depends largely on the software that you use for scanning.

The software that comes with a lot of scanners usually includes "lite" versions of more fully-featured scanning tools. My wife was not happy with the limited feature set of the "lite" software that came with her Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300, and decided to purchase a full version of ABBYY. She is very satisfied with that solution, despite the (nominal) extra cost of buying additional software.

3) The ability to search for a document is a function of the search tool itself, not the scanner hardware or scanning software. So the ability to do text searches, "best guess" contextual text searches, full sentence searches, keyword searches, etc depends on the search tool you use.




What I would suggest is this:
Buy a Fujitsu ScanSnap scanner.
Buy a copy of a 3rd party scanning tool (ABBYY or Adobe Acrobat) for better OCR conversion
Rely on Windows Search (in Windows 7) for your searching needs. If that is insufficient, consider downloading (or buying) a 3rd party desktop search tool.

 

my question was does windows search allow you to do text search like that with OCR docs? also how much did the ABBYY full version cost

 

Yes, Windows Search allows you to search for text within documents, as long as they are properly OCR'ed.

And I don't know how much ABBYY costs now. You'll have to go on their website to check.

My wife found some coupon online, and paid $30 for their "basic" or "personal" edition. I think the full list price of that version is $50 or so.

 

cool thanks thats not too bad...was afraid to here adobe prices like 200 dollars lol. I think then i'll go with the S1500 since its only a little more and "works better" as a scanner.

 

Ok need some help real quick. I know you guys said I would need to buy an OCR for the scansnap but do I need Rack2 filer? there are two models onee with it and one without...which should i get.

$445
Newegg.com - Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500 PA03586-B015 CCD 600 x 600 dpi Sheet-Fed Duplex Scanner with Rack2 Filer Version

$395
Newegg.com - Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500 PA03586-B005 CCD 600 x 600 dpi Sheet-Fed Duplex Scanner


please help quickly there is a discount on scanners on newegg. 10%