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(More customer reviews)Where the scientist ended up with his head spliced onto a fly's body and was flying around saying "Help Me, Help Me"? That's the V500 Office scanner. The base of the scanner is the V500 Photo scanner. The top comes from something else. They work together, but aesthetically they don't exactly match...they aren't even made out of the same color of plastic.
When you first open the box, you find a complete V500 Photo scanner and a separate Automatic Document Feeder. All of the setup instructions refer to the base unit. The sheet is labeled V500 Office, but the ADF unit isn't illustrated or mentioned. (Step One: Unpack; Step two: Install Software; Step Three: Connect and turn on; Step Four: Scan a photo...etc...) When you've finished, you end up with a very nice photo scanner and the feeder still in its plastic bag. (The instructions are up on the Epson website...to install the feeder, you turn off and open the top of the scanner, unplug the wire connecting the top to the base, lift the top vertically and it will separate from the bottom. Two pegs on the feeder fit into matching holes in the base. Fold it down, plug the power/control wire into connector on the base and fit the horseshoe shaped wire into the tilted input tray. Turn it back on and you should be in business. The software is intelligent enough to detect the presence of the ADF unit and adjust accordingly.) Installation, though, is something that's only done once...what's really important is how well the scanner works. So, let's go through the various parts...
Scanner Body - As I mentioned, the main body of the scanner is from the V500 Photo Scanner. Because it's designed to scan negatives as well as pictures, it has a fairly high optical resolution and a decent, although not spectacular dynamic range (D=3.4, if you're into the actual spec. The D value is a measure of how well a scanner can capture shadow and highlight detail...the higher the value the better. The V700 measures at D=4.0. Professional grade scanners can be substantially higher, while I've seen inexpensive units spec'ed as low as 1.8.) When using the glass platen, you can scan up to a standard 8.5"x11" letter-size paper. Legal size pages can be scanned using the document feeder.
Automatic Document Feeder - The ADF holds roughly 30 sheets of paper for scanning. It's strictly a single sided scanner. You'll need to run the paper through twice if you need to scan both sides of a document and then merge the two files together. I've had some serious problems with the feeder. It's common for it to pick up the top sheet off the stack, but then not feed it through the scanner. It also appears that the ADF has some other "unusual" features...this question, for example, is on the Epson website FAQ:
Q: The automatic document feeder pulls two sheets of paper when I click Preview. Can I make it pull only one sheet?
A: No.
It seems like the firmware needs a bit of updating. When it was working right, the ADF worked well. The scanning speed is dependent on the resolution and the speed of the computer that it's connected to. The linearity seems pretty good, with my scans of graph paper showing only a few hiccups.
V500 Photo Scanner Lid - The photo scanner lid comes with holders for both slides and various sizes of negatives. The normal white reflective surface can be removed and replaced with one of the negative holders. This allows the built-in light source to shine through the negatives. You can scan two strips of 35mm film, 120 or 220 film and larger negatives. If somebody has an archive of old 4x5 view camera negatives, this will convert them to digital form, but, frankly, for that kind of work, you should use a scanner with a better dynamic range. You NEVER want to send photos through the ADF, they're too likely to get scratched or mangled.
Software - Epson's software package includes the Epson scanner driver and Abbyy FineReader 6.0 (the current version direct from Abbyy is 10.0). The scanner driver has three levels of complexity - Home, Office, and Professional. The Office level provides enough flexibility for almost every application and I always leave it there. I suspect that the other two levels are the result of some misguided marketing guy's attempt to address different market segments. Files can be created as .JPG, PDF and a couple of other formats. For document scanning, I always use PDF. For photos, I use the lossless TIFF format to preserve as much of the original detail as possible. The Abbyy software works well in converting the scanned images into searchable PDF files, but won't take an external PDF and make it searchable or convert it to a Word document...you have to purchase the new version to add those functions.
Service - Nothing works forever, but, after two weeks, I was not happy when the document feeder stopped properly feeding pages. Today, I called the Epson service center to see if they had any suggestions to get it to work properly. The tech was very polite and after being put on hold twice and asked the usual troubleshooting questions, I was told that this was an "extremely unusual" hardware failure. He put me on hold a third time and after 29minutes and 22 seconds, the call disconnected. I called back and another support technician looked up the notes. He told me that I needed to take the scanner to an authorized service depot for repair. They wouldn't ship me another unit or issue an RMA number. I could ship it there, but at my expense. I was also told that this is the way that Epson handles all scanner repairs. I could understand that if the scanner was a year old or otherwise out of warranty, but for something that's only two weeks old??? Not exactly the most customer-centric way of doing things.
So...my conclusion...
This scanner is a bit of a misfit. There are better scanners more suited for an office environment. Both the Epson WorkForce Pro GT-S50 and the Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500 are faster, have duplex scanning and are designed for heavy duty use (I've run 50K+ sheets through my Fujitsu S510 (an earlier model) and 20K+ sheets through my GT-S50. I replaced the rollers on the Fujitsu and it runs like new.) Both are also about $100 more expensive. As a practical matter, most offices don't need the photo scanning features that the V500 Office provides. For home use, you need a printer anyway, so I'd go with a multi-function machine with a built-in scanner and document feeder. I really like the Epson Artisan 810. It's small and works very well...my review of that unit is near the top of the second page of reviews. The Canon PIXMA MX860 or Canon MX700 are also a good units that I've used at home and at my office. If you want to add negative/photo scanning, the V500 Photo, without the document feeder, is $100+ less than the V500 Office. The V500 Office's features, taken by themselves, warrant a four star rating...but you can't look at it by itself. A computer, scanner and printer need to be evaluated as a system. And when you add it all together and mix in the service problems, it's dropped down to the two star level.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Epson Perfection V500 Office Color Scanner (B11B189071)
Epson Perfection V500 Office Color Scanner
Click here for more information about Epson Perfection V500 Office Color Scanner (B11B189071)
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