Header banner
Revain logoHome Page
Nate Nelson photo
1 Level
803 Review
86 Karma

Review on πŸ“„ Fujitsu fi-7030 Affordable Color Duplex Document Scanner with Automatic Document Feeder (ADF) for Front Office Use by Nate Nelson

Revainrating 3 out of 5

deal breaker? TWAIN Slow B&W over 300 dpi

This is a preview after evaluating and configuring the device in just a few days. But then a problem arose – luckily there are two workarounds. I am using Windows 7 Pro, SP1. I have been using Canon's DR Series for many years to scan black and white documents at 400dpi. Pages physically pass through the Canon scanner at around 25 pages per minute, producing good black and white quality. Canon uses the TWAIN driver. The Fujitsu fi-7030 runs at around 27ppm at 300dpi, but if you set it to anything between 301-600dpi the speed of the physical pages going through the scanner drops to a deadly slow 5-6ppm . This is only possible if you are using the Paperstream/TWAIN driver. If you use the second bundled software, Snapscan, 600 dpi, you get good quality black and white images at 27ppm. Why the difference? TWAIN error? These are not special settings, you can see that Paperstream changes from 300 dpi to 301 dpi for the same settings. The first workaround, obviously, is to use Snapscan instead of Paperstream for black and white images. Paperstream gives you plenty of batch processing and other options, so you can sacrifice a little to return 27 pages per minute. Second workaround: Scan everything into Paperstream at 300 dpi or less. This is the normal strategy for grayscale and color, where the extra bit gives the equivalent of better resolution. I rate Paperstream B&W at 300 and below as marginal quality. How to change your workflow to scan grayscale black and white images into Paperstream. It takes 5-8 times more storage space, but that's a tradeoff. Let's hope the slow paper handling above 300dpi is a bug that will be fixed one day.

Pros
  • One year trial version
Cons
  • Available in white only