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It's hard to imagine cleaning up a messy desk by putting one more thing on it, but that could happen with Fujitsu's useful and innovative ScanSnap color scanner.

At the touch of a button, this $495 device, which doesn't claim much desk space, can quickly scan up to 50 single-sided or double-sided documents into your PC at once, converting them directly to Portable Document Format via the included full version of Adobe Acrobat 5 software. The ScanSnap also automatically names the digital documents and places them into a folder of your choice.

You can whip those piles of business cards into your PC as well, using the included CardMinder software. My preproduction ScanSnap did a reasonable job of recognizing information from the cards and sorting it into the correct fields in CardMinder's database. The software displayed a scan of each card above the fields so that I could quickly change any incorrectly interpreted data. You can easily export all information to contact programs such as Access, GoldMine, or Outlook.

Twenty pages placed in the upright scanner's paper holder fed into my PC as a PDF in under 2 minutes. The unit's optional ability to recognize and skip blank pages was impressive. The ScanSnap, which turns on and off with your PC, scans in color or black and white, and at three qualities (the default settings produced clear scans in all my tests). As you place a piece of paper into the device, its monitoring software pops up on your system's screen. A two-sided color scan at normal quality created a file that was 947KB in size and perfectly readable.

The Fujitsu ScanSnap could be a useful tool for anyone who wants to routinely store documents digitally.

SUMMARY

Fujitsu ScanSnap Innovative color desk scanner, with significant software extras. Price when reviewed: $495 Current prices (if available)

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