NeatDesk Desktop Scanner Price: $199.99 Shipping Options:: $5 Standard Shipping Estimates: Ships in 3-5 business days (Thursday, Aug 20 to Tuesday, Aug 25) + transit Condition: Refurbished
This says Version 5, under Neat support, version 5 is the latest version/model for the software. For the scanner, seems to be the latest version as well.
Would this scanner work with a chromebook? The one issue i see off the bat is the software installs off a CDrom. I suppose one can copy the software CD to USB for installation on chromebook. But do we know if the software works with Chrome OS? Thanks!
Under the Specs, it says version 5 (Windows), which means the software is for Windows, ONLY. Not Linux. (which ChromeOS is a version of)
Chromebooks, don’t have a lot of space on them, as they use more web based access. You will have to do some searching to see if others have got this to work with Chromebooks (seen mixed reviews under Linux, which may be in part by hardware version number), and how much space it takes on the Chromebook, let alone how to get admin access to install the software.
I wouldn’t use a scanner with this low resolution to scan your pictures, you will be disappointed with the results. Look for something with 2400 or higher DPI if you want printable quality. If you just want to make an electronic scrapbook, 1200 dpi would be as low as I would recommend. (as someone who ‘lost’ a lot of old family pictures when an uncle scanned them all on the fastest setting - 300dpi - and then tossed them. we can’t make reprints bigger than 2"x3" of any of them.)
Piece of crap! Use your phone and scanable app with evernote. I bought one of these several years ago because it was on sale at woot. It didn’t do a great job of scanning and was always a hassle when moving computers.
The last time I tried to use it, it was cutting off the whole right side of the page…useless.
The one unique thing about it is processing the receipts, which is does only marginally well. You still have to get into each receipt to edit, which I found slow. Now, I just scan important receipts with my phone and put them in an evernote notebook.
I will say the email support is okay with going through ways to recover scans made on another computer, but they purposely make the desktop software crappy so that you pay for the $10/month cloud subscription…no thanks!
It doesn’t work that well for photos. I tried scanning a couple and the came out dark. It’s best as a fast document scanner.
Here are my overall thoughts on NeatDesk, after using it for ~6 months. Before I launch into this, I would say that I would still recommend this scanner for most people to take care of their home paper records, but I do have a lot of gripes in the bad column.
The Good:
-Scans quickly: With the sheet-feed, it can scan a sheaf of 20 pages of paper on duplex in about a minute on B&W. The software will take some time to process the batch, but the actual scan is quick.
-Good resolution for documents: I scanned 10-15 years worth of household bills and documents, and I feel that I could export as PDF or print on a printer to get a good version of the documents I scanned.
The Bad
-The sheet-feed is finicky: I had to get into the habit of slightly bending back the bottom paper corners when loading documents to scan, or the corners would catch on something inside the machine and would jam. 95% smooth scans after that, but jams are frustrating, especially if they’re page 5 of a 12 page doc.
-The software has some serious flaws: Because of the way the database is stored, there is a theoretical upper limit to how much can be stored in it. I don’t know the page count, but my database crashed when the sum of the database files hit ~10GB. This was around 4500 documents, with a lot of duplexed pages and multi-page docs, so I’d estimate 60-80,000 page images of data. Neat Support’s official line on it was that I should export and archive database material periodically so that I didn’t run into this problem.
Second big problem – exporting files and long file names. I’ve occasionally tried to export a file as a PDF and had the program crash. After tinkering I found it was because the exported filename would be too long. This is because, as defualt and I have found no way to change it, Neat exports a file as “[Type of File] - [Your database label] - [Date of Scan]” so a document with the label of “Mortgage Disclosure Agreement Statement” would be “Document - Mortgage Disclosure Agreement Statement - Scanned August 17, 2015” and the program chokes and crashes when trying to export that, so you have to trim your custom title down and re-name the file after export.
-The database files are also in a proprietary format that is inaccessible if your DB crashes. I had a problem with the large database crash, but fortunately I was able to get Neat support to repair and recover the broken files so that I could export and archive them to get them to a level that won’t break the database.
This cannot save to a portable drive. I wanted to use it from computer to computer on a 1TB portable drive and Neat Support said no. It has to be a computer drive and backups can to be portable drive. I was hoping not to install software on numerous computers so tough luck for me. Also, you have to verify device online for some reason.
Neat scanners are now on sale on the Neat.com site ($100 off all scanners/software bundles). The idea of buying an older refurbished model with a 90 day limited warranty over a newer model with a 1 year warranty to save $100 just does not make a lot of sense to me. And if you buy the square trade warranty with the refurbished model, now you are talking about saving only $70 to own a refurbished old tired model. Having bought one of the portable refurbished Neat scanners many years ago, I had to deal with problems that arise when using a product that was near the end of its useful life with no warranty to speak of. Neat does not do a good job at providing model numbers and differences among the models. The latest NeatDesk model of the scanner being offered on Woot today looks different than the one on Neat.com (the model on Woot looks like the model I was considering buying 5 or more years ago), but what other differences might be lurking under the cover?
I have held off on Neat scanners in the past due to the fact that it had to be tied to a computer. The wifi NeatConnect model looks promising, though. If you are considering the older model here on Woot, you might want to check out the Neat website and pay an extra $70 for a brand new model with a 1 year warranty. Then you can scan all the stacks and piles of documents and receipts in the first year which will put the scanner through its paces during the 1 year warranty period. Any problems that arise during the first year when you are burning up the scanner will hopefully be resolved under the warranty.
My vote at this point, though, is to go with the wifi ConnectDesk model, but for the price, I would expect a quality product that works well (and unfortunately, I will probably be disappointed). The model on Woot has been around forever (I feel like time has stood still for many years) and is pretty much a dinosaur.
If you are a Costo member, you can get even a better deal.
![[Preview 1]](https://d3gqasl9vmjfd8.cloudfront.net/54ed62ad-0535-4313-b9f3-63db4cadea8a.jpg){kind=link}
![[Preview 2]](https://d3gqasl9vmjfd8.cloudfront.net/335ef30a-e66e-4324-9666-88d83c4622ae.jpg){kind=link}
![[Preview 3]](https://d3gqasl9vmjfd8.cloudfront.net/0dae66cf-e566-427e-b0e9-f658115e4845.jpg){kind=link}
