Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 37
 Outstanding scanner, but horrible documentation September 6, 2010
Comdet
I needed a document scanner for a work project that involved scanning thousands of pages of text. I narrowed the list down to the Epson GT-S50, the Epson GT-1500 or the Fujitsu ScanSnap 1500. All had good reviews from users as well as professional reviewers. The Fujitsu was praised for being easy to use, but the fact that it is not TWAIN compatible gave me pause since I would like to use other software rather than just what the manufacturer provides. Plus, really liked the idea of having programmable buttons that the Epson offers.
The GT-1500 was a contender until I found out that it was a single sided only scanner. So, the S50 was the winner (actually liked the S80 better, but cost was an issue). Plus, the S50 was on sale at B&H for a great price (sorry Amazon!).
I'm familiar with Epson scanners having used a Perfection flatbed for some time. So setup was straightforward, and I liked the fact that I could select which programs to load (didn't load the business card software since I won't ever be scanning those, and gave PaperPort a wide berth due to problems I've had with it interfering with other programs).
The performance is excellent. Fast, easy to load paper, no mis-feeds whatsoever. Love the fact that the rollers are user-replaceable since those do wear out with heavy use. Lots of options for tweaking the scan quality and performance.
The only negative is the documentation. Or rather, the lack of documentation. The only printed material is a setup sheet that basically tells you how to unpack the scanner (lots of tape to pull off). Everything else is in an online document. I don't have a problem with online docs, but this is so oddly organized that finding the answers to questions is almost impossible.
Fortunately, the Epson scan software is pretty much the same as the version I use on my Epson flatbed, so I was able to get up and running. But using features such as programming jobs to the quick select buttons was figured out via trial and error - the documentation was of no help.
What would be wonderful would be a workflow description of typical uses and how you can best use the software to accomplish tasks such as scanning a book, scanning receipts, etc. Tips and tricks. Or, at the very least, a nicely organized manual that you can find things in! I'll bet there are more than a few people who buy this, can't use it, and exchange it for a Fujitsu - the latter has fewer capabilities, but good documentation (I looked through the user manual on the Fujitsu site).
This is a five star piece of hardware, but one star when it comes to documentation. Thus, 4 stars overall.
By the way, the ABBYY FineReader that comes with the Epson is the bare bones version. Good for basic OCR tasks, but if you have more complex needs, it can't handle the load. But, ownership of the base version qualifies you for the upgrade price to move to the full FineReader 10 program. I was able to purchase the full program from the ABBYY site for only $90 (happened to be on sale). If you're doing anything other than basic OCR, the full program is well worth the investment, especially if you can snag it at that price.
 The perfect scanner for the paperless office September 6, 2010
Elizabeth R Weiss
I own my own small (3 attorney) law firm and we are going towards a paperless office. We get a lot of paper, and fast, reliable scanning is a must. I have a huge 45 ppm Xerox Workcentre multifunction machine at the office, but I wanted something much smaller and less expensive for my home office that I could use if I worked from there.
I looked long and hard for a scanner that I could use to scan documents quickly into PDF format. I wanted something with a relatively small form factor, a high scan speed, and an easy user interface. I did not want a scanner that would jam, even if it occasionally had to scan documents that were folded, bent, etc.
This scanner fits the bill perfectly on all counts. It is small, fast, reliable, and makes great scans. It is super easy to learn to use - five minutes, tops, once you get it set up (which took another five minutes, maybe ten with the software installation).
My one complaint is that the software user interface could be more streamlined (fewer clicks for a default scan job) and I wish the software didn't automatically add in a document number ("0001," etc.) or a time/date stamp at the end of every file name. There is no way to turn that off (you have to choose one or the other), so if you want to name your files without the numbers, you have to do it manually after creating the file. It's an inconvenience that I hope they fix, because apart from that, this little machine has been absolutely perfect. It is a fantastic value for the money.
 Tedious workflow but good document scan results. August 22, 2010
S. Meredith (Kirkland, WA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is a pretty good, fast document scanner, but not suitable for photographs. The software installation is disorganized, and software itself is somewhat clunky, but you can get good document images with a little work.
Normally, I do not install any of the software that comes with peripherals except the driver. I tried this strategy with the GT-S50. I installed only the Twain driver, then launched my previously-installed version of Adobe Acrobat 9 Standard for the scanning and OCR. While this works, it turned out the be unsatisfactory. Acrobat is not able to detect the width and height of the scanned documents, and so my scanned images had lots space on the sides and bottom. I was not able to live with that limitation.
So I installed some of the other software that came on one of the CDs with the hope that it would do a better job where Acrobat was deficient. I selected Epson Scan and ABBYY Fine Reader, and skipped PaperPort, which I hate from previous experience. This is the new stuff I ended up with on my start menu under All Programs after the installation:
ABBYY FineReader 6.0 Sprint
-ABBYY FineReader 6.0 Sprint
--User's Guide
EPSON
-EPSON Scan
--EPSON Scan Settings
--EPSON Scan
-GT-S50_S80 User's Guide
--GT-S50_S80 User's Guide
--Uninstall GT-S50_S80 User's Guide
EPSON Scan
-WorkForce Pro GT-S50 Online Support
-WorkForce Pro GT-S50 Scanner Driver Update
Epson Software
-Read Me
--Copy Utility
-Copy Utility
-Event Manager
ISIS Scanner Drivers
-EPSON
--GT-S80 and GT-S50 Users Guide
-ISIS Network Server
-ISIS Network User Guide
-ISIS on Citrix Setup Guide
What a mess. This is shockingly bad. I had to clean this up manually.
ABBYY FineReader 6.0 Sprint Plus does a nice job with the OCR, page size recognition, blank page removal, and export to PDF. It does not suffer form the page size limitation that I found with Acrobat. But the workflow is tedious. To scan a document, you launch FineReader, then press the "Scan&Read" button. Then you get a settings dialog from Epson Scan. There is no way to set this up with defaults so that you can skip this dialog entirely. You have to press "Scan" on this dialog before scanning will start. And after scanning has completed, you have to press "Close" on this dialog in order to return to FineReader. Two extra clicks per scan can add up very quickly to a huge annoyance.
After the scan is complete and you close the Epson Scan dialog, you have to press the Acrobat button on FineReader to export to PDF. This opens the document in Acrobat. The last step is "Save As" in Acrobat so that the PDF file with embedded OCR ends up where you want it. This is more steps than it should be.
I found the scanner to be unbelievably fast at up to 200 dpi. At 240 and above, it gets a little slower. The OCR processing is pretty fast on my machine, but it can't quite keep up with the scanner and is the bottleneck.
I put a stack photographs though the scanner, but found the results to be unsatisfactory because there were streaks on some of the images.
So while I'm keeping the unit for document scanning, it's not everything I had hoped it would be. It's fast, and I like the resulting PDFs of my documents, but the workflow is unnecessarily tedious. I will not be using the GT-S50 to scan photos.
 Not worth it. August 20, 2010
p911
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Epson WorkForce Pro GT-S50 Document Imaging Scanner
The scanner is as fast as it boasts, but it also double feeds paper. I am disappointed because my motivation was to let it scan without having to oversee it.
Best Scanner I've Ever Purchased July 28, 2010
Richard F. Kutz
I've owned several standalone scanners and a couple of all-in-one HP scanners. This was my first Epson scanner and it's the best scanner I've owned. The automatic document feeder has yet to fail - it's never skipped a page. It's not silent by any means, but it's also the quietest scanner I've had. It doesn't take up much space and looks good on my desk.
There are some excellent reviews on amazon's site and I don't think I can improve on them. I highly recommend this scanner.
I purchased the scanner through amazon's Beach Camera affiliate. Their service was excellent.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 37
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