Piles of paper, bits of notes, receipts that I might need "Some day." Well, piles be gone! Neat desk is probably the greatest thing I have done for myself and my business ever! The installation was more difficult than it should have been due to some conflicts with my computer, and XP. A friend installed windows 7 and all was well. He said he uses Neat Desk with XP and has had no problems, so my problem was unique. Once installed, scanning is somewhat intuitive. I'm still learning how to save things in folders for easy recall. Scan quality is excellent, and a two sided scan as well as color scan are available. I love the fact that Neat Desk provides totals for tax purposes. I now know that I have spent over $1500 in office related expenses for my schedule C and my piles of paper are gone. Tax day will be a snap and my desk is cleaner than ever. The only thing negative I can say is that I have been unable to find a number to call for customer support. (It may be there, I just couldn't find it.) I am too impatient to send an e-mail, or pour through videos to find the answer to my problem. I highly recommend this product! As for price, Amazon had the best price at the time of my purchase, saving me almost $50.00.

I am in the document scanning and indexing business and we use large high speed scanners and complicated software in our business. All that is good for our large document management applications and client requirements - but i always wanted something simple that sits on my desk and does the work of all the complicated software that manages a large document repository and index to manage my personal and office administrative requirements. I saw this NeatDesk scanner on Amazon and bought it right away - thinking that i would try it and return it if it did not meet my expectations. End of day 1 i threw away the packaging because i was going to keep this for good.

I like the product for the following reasons.
1. It is really compact and sits on my desk without taking up much space.
2. It comes with an indexing software that lets you index (link) the scanned documents to the text you link it to.
3. It has really good OCR (optical character recognition) capability that searches within documents. (Great feature)
4. It can scan in tiff or in PDF. It can also convert to PDF all the documents that are scanned in tiff initially.
5. It can batch convert documents once you pick them in the search and make them one index file.
6. It can scan business cards and put the data in the right place for your review. then you can sync it with Outlook.

All this said - let me tell you how it comes to practical use in my everyday life:

1. I scan all the business and personal receipts that i get once a week. then file them in the appropriate business or personal folder. this sorts out my business receipts by date. so now i have a great system to find all the business receipts that my business generated in a particular month in a few minutes. Once i find them i can then print them or view them. This is acceptable by the IRS - they do not need the original receipt. On the personal side - i can find the receipt of a product i bought a few months ago - if i have a problem with that product and want to return it or show proof of purchase to the store for maintenance. (Now i sleep better knowing that i can find the receipt that my wife wants a couple of months after she gave it to me.) I have been through a sales tax audit in the last 6 months and it took me and my family countless man-hours to find the receipts that the audit wanted. That was the main reason I wanted a good filing system so that next time around we do not have to spend so much time to find the right receipt.

2. I scan all the bank statements, warranty cards for all the various products that i bought, my wife scans recipes and my son scans his various projects that he does, we scanned all the critical house purchase documents, insurance papers, home warranty paperwork and anything that we see in my business and house on our desks. then threw most of the paper out - except the original cards or certificates.

Now it takes me or my family a few moments to find the right document and print it or view it. This is just amazing for what we spent on the scanner. Last week we re-financed our house and they gave me a big list of documents that they wanted from me - like bank statements, previous loans, credit card statements for the last 12 months. I got them the stuff they wanted on a CD the same afternoon from my NeatDesk software. They were just blown away at the speed at which i got them the documents.

This is how it has helped me practically in my Business and Personal life. Make sure that you make a reminder to back up the files once a month at least so that you always have a back up .

I purchased this product because the concept sounded great. However, once the software was installed, my computer was severely impaired. From login to the display of the desktop was delayed by 6 additional minutes. I contacted the company and found out this is essentially what their software does, and there is no solution.

I found the Quick Scan to be strange. When loading several test documents, it creates individual PDF screens, and then you have to go through several steps to put them into a single PDF file. If you pre-loaded 50 documents, then you would have 50 open PDF's to scan in. Organizing them is cumbersome. I'd prefer to use Adobe Acrobat but you can't do that with this scanner.

The scan speed was fast, but all the additional steps wasted the time advantage. I've decided to return the item because of these reasons. I'm very concerned about the effect of the software on the performance of my computer. It is a relatively new machine with 4 GB of RAM and an Intel Quad processor, which has worked very well to date until this software was installed. Removing the software completely eliminated the delays.

ADDED NOTE: I have since engaged in ongoing communication with the Neat Company. Although I gave a low rating to the scanner as it functioned for me, I would give 5 stars to the company. The focus is clearly on finding solutions to the issues that arose, and making this a very strong, effective tool. It is obvious that many people are having success now, and I expect the future will yield a product that works well for everyone. The staff members were not only professional, but pleasant and interested in understanding the issues.

I would suggest trying the product. If it works for you now, that is wonderful. If not, keep your eye on it because these people will overcome the complexities of all the technology challenges we face with today's new computers, software, and operating systems.

My purchase of the Neat Works machine promises...I believe... to have been a wise choice. It certainly simplifies the paper mess that has plaqued my home office for years...if not decades. And yet...despite a very capable PC..ie. fast processing speed... I am still left with time on my hands waiting for everything to process. The time between the scanning process and when the document becomes available for proper document storage seems excessively long...sometimes up to 30 seconds per document. I would hope this could be corrected at some point. In addition, I think the software for the machine needs some tweaking...specifically better coordination between doument type and document category. If you have chosen a specific document category you should only have to choose from a narrowed list of specific documents...as is organization for one geographic location you may have "x" bank and another location you may have just "y bank to file documents. As it stands your organizing list includes everything from every place. This would speed things up. I think this would be an easy software adjustment. In addition, being able to export documents from your PC into the Neat Works software...for filing back into your computer...would be helpful. Now you have to print the docment, feed it into the machine, wait, and then file. More steps than needed. O

The Neat document scanner has helped me clear the clutter off my desk. A lot of it is still virtual clutter within the Neat program, but at least it's digitally searchable clutter. I would recommend this system to anybody.

The actual scans are fast. The scanning is so easy. You just plop anything in the scanner, press the button and done. That's why I don't have the clutter on my desk anymore. The business card scanning works really well at identifying the info on business cards. The receipt scanning seems to work as advertised, but I don't use it much for that purpose. It's true what some reviewers said about the scanned docs being sometimes slightly askew, but it's very slight and probably doesn't matter for most scans. If you really need a perfect scan, then use a flatbed.

Neat scans documents well, but the digital filing software has a few drawbacks, which is the reason why I give it four stars on ease of use. #1 The scanned documents are not searchable through Google Desktop. #2 No title or date is automatically suggested for the scanned documents. #3 You have to make too many clicks to select a folder in which to file a document. #4 The software does not allow you to create sub-folders or to work within you the Windows folder system. I was hoping to have every document I create or every document that I scan in one place, but that didn't happen.

On the other hand, the Neat search engine is amazing. You can type in any word for any scanned document and it will pop up. Not just keywords or tags that you designate -- ANY word. Thus, the folder/sub-folder system is not was vital. Bottom line: This solution is a hell of lot better than my old piles, and it's the best affordable workable time-efficient solution for a small business that I found.