Scanners News, how-tos, features, reviews, and videos. The Neat Company NeatDesk for Mac. Sponsored Links. Sponsored Links. Macworld is your best source for all things Apple. NeatDesk Neat for Mac is an all-in-one application for storing and manipulating your scans. Neat for Mac can also import documents not originating from a scan—adding them either from the Finder. NeatDesk for Mac is a desktop scanner and digital filing system that lets you scan and organize receipts, business cards and documents. Neat's patented technology identifies and extracts the important information and automatically organizes it for you. Transform receipts into expense reports, business cards into Address Book contacts,. Fujitsu ScanSnap iX500 vs. NeatDesk As the conclusion, Fujitsu ScanSnap iX500 indeed possesses quite a lot of advantages that are too valuable to be missed. The performance difference can be a lot if you scan a lot of things regularly. The higher speed, the ADF, and the mobile connectivity are all very beneficial. NeatDesk Scanner and Digital Filing System. NeatDesk Desktop Scanner and Digital Filing System For Mac & PC with Gabrielle. NeatDesk Desktop Scanner and Digital Filing System.
For those that missed it, I recently posted a review of the NeatDesk for Mac – a great desktop scanner that really helped with de-cluttering my workspace. One of the main concerns with the NeatDesk to a mobile user, however, is its lack of portability.
Fortunately, Neat has an offering for the mobile professional as well, and they call it NeatReceipts for Mac. Today, I’ll take a look at the NeatReceipts, mainly considering it as a counterpart to its bigger brother, the NeatDesk. Read on for my thoughts.
Overview
While the NeatDesk is a robust and powerful machine with relatively few faults, the solution it provides – a desk-based scanner – doesn’t work for everyone. In particular, mobile professionals who travel frequently or are often away from their desks might find the desire the ability to scan documents into their database on the go. This is the idea behind the NeatReceipts, and I think it serves its purpose well.
As with the NeatDesk, the portable NeatReceipts is extremely easy to set up and get started with. Simply install the included NeatWorks for Mac software, plug it in, perform the 30-second calibration process, and you’re ready to begin. The entire process takes 5 minutes or less to complete.
Initial Thoughts
The NeatReceipts for Mac is a simple unit that basically supplements the NeatDesk for Mac, hiding away in your suitcase so you can scan receipts and documents when you are away from your desk. As such, much of its functionality is very similar to the NeatDesk for Mac, and it includes the same powerful NeatWorks for Mac software to manage your documents.
When you are on a business trip or away from you desk, you can simply feed your documents and receipts through the NeatReceipts. While it’s neither as fast nor as strong as the NeatDesk, it certainly does provide an answer for what to do with your paperwork when you are away from your NeatDesk.
Design/Style
Despite its small size and portability, the NeatDesk for Mac is very well constructed and solidly built. It features the same design aesthetic as the NeatDesk for Mac, featuring a compact, curvy design made from solid and durable white polycarbonate. It ditches the boxy “industrial” sharp corners and classic grey or black color scheme of many office products, the result of which is a device that is as stylish as it is functional.
Neat seems to have taken great effort in the design an implementation of this product. Unlike most portable scanners, the NeatReceipts neither includes nor requires an external power adapter. Instead, it can be powered and run using a single USB cable, and only takes up a single USB port on your Mac. This makes it much easier to pull it out, scan a few documents, then nestle it back into your briefcase as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Performance
While the NeatReceipts does perform well, and can process (in real-world use) 2-3 business cards or receipts per minute, it doesn’t perform to quite as high of a standard as the NeatDesk for Mac. After feeding a dozen or so receipts and business cards through each device, I found that the NeatReceipts just doesn’t recognize text as well as its larger counterpart.
While the NeatDesk for Mac correctly processed all 12 receipts and 11 of the business cards, and only required me to enter or correct information on a total of 2 business cards/receipts, I found that I had to make minor corrections on 4 of the same receipts and business cards that I fed through the NeatReceipts, and it entirely failed to process the data on 2 of the business cards (admittedly, these were fancier and more graphical cards.)
Even though it didn’t perform quite as well as the NeatDesk, it still did a good job, and I believe that most people would conclude that the device was still helpful and time-saving in nature.
Concerns
I didn’t encounter many problems while using the NeatReceipts, but was disappointed that it wasn’t just as accurate as the NeatDesk for Mac that I had become accustomed to. This disappointment was absolved somewhat, however, in that the NeatReceipts seemed to work slightly better with the NeatWorks for Mac software than its larger brother, and I did not experience the problem with opening documents in preview that I experienced with the NeatDesk.
A second concern that I had with the NeatReceipts is that it sometimes had difficulty distinguishing between business cards and receipts, often mis-categorizing one as the other. This, however, is a simple problem to fix within the database, taking just a second or two for each document.
Verdict
While the NeatReceipts for Mac was not as robust as its desktop counterpart, I still feel as though it performed admirably, largely met my expectations, and saved significant amounts of time and effort when trying to keep track of business cards and receipts.
I was impressed with its compactness, the fact that it was powered by a single USB cable and didn’t require an external power adapter, and how easy and fast it was to set up and get started with the NeatReceipts.
Ultimately, while I did run into a few concerns, and wasn’t 100% satisfied with the NeatReceipts for Mac’s performance, I doubt that any other compact portable scanner on the market could do much better, especially considering the very high quality of the included NeatWorks software.
Rating & Information
Rating: 4 out of 5
While the NeatReceipts for Mac certainly did a lot of things right, resulting in a durable, aesthetically pleasing, well designed and very high quality product, I was disappointed that the NeatReceipts for Mac didn’t meet the performance standards of the NeatDesk for Mac more closely, despite the fact that it is a portable product. Below are some of the pros and cons I encountered in my usage of the NeatReceipts.
Pros
- Portable, high quality, and powered by a single USB port.
- Very compact and visually attractive design.
- Works well as a solution for when you are away from your desk.
- Included NeatWorks for Mac software is extremely functional and useful.
- Decent value for the money ($200).
Cons
- Not as accurate as its counterpart, NeatDesk for Mac.
- Seemed to have difficulty distinguishing between receipts and business cards.
- Scanning sometimes felt a bit slow.
Further, while the NeatReceipts’ $200 price tag does represent a fairly decent value when placed next to its competitors, namely the Fujitsu ScanSnap S1100 ($200, Fujitsu) and the HP Scanjet 1100 ($250, Hewlett-Packard), especially when considering how well the included NeatWorks for Mac software looks and performs. I award the NeatReceipts for Mac a 4 out of 5. For more information, or to purchase the NeatReceipts for Mac ($199.95), visit Neat’s product page on the web.
Desk clutter is one of those unfortunate facts of life that everybody has to learn to manage and cope with. Massive piles of invoices, receipts, and business cards can be overwhelming, and finding a good solution can be taxing. Fortunately, Neat has a great product that, at least for me, helped tremendously as I dealt with this daunting task. But does the NeatDesk for Mac truly deliver? Read on to find out my thoughts.
Overview
The NeatDesk for Mac ($399.95, Neat Co, Purchase) aims to provide a solution for managing your desk clutter by allowing you to quickly and efficiently digitize all of your receipts, documents, and even business cards, while the included NeatWorks for Mac software interprets the documents that you scan through it, as well as acting as a database to help you store and later recall your important papers.
The included NeatWorks for Mac software worked extremely well. It was able to read names, addresses, phone numbers and other data from my documents, and was even able to fairly accurately read and catalogue entire sentences found on large paper documents.
Initial Thoughts
Straight out of the box, I was immediately impressed with both the appearance and durability of the NeatDesk. It’s very solidly constructed, made of high quality plastics that are not easily damaged, and has a solid heft – a good indication that it was built with quality.
Neat Desk For Mac
I found the NeatDesk to be extremely easy to use – once it was set up, which takes only about 10-15 minutes, the only thing left to do is to feed all of your documents, receipts, and business cards through it, and then check to make sure that the NeatWorks software is properly reading and cataloguing your papers. The vast majority of the work is done automatically!
Design/Style
As far as aesthetics are concerned, the NeatDesk for Mac does not disappoint. It almost looks like something that Apple would design, with its rounded corners and obvious emphasis on style. I particularly love how the blue light on the front of the machine pulses in such an inviting manner.
In addition to the physical appearance of the product, however, the design of the NeatDesk for Mac also reflects that a great amount of careful thought and consideration went into its design – the device is smooth to use, and never feels cumbersome, or like it tries to get in your way.
The unit features a removable slot that lets you feed documents, receipts, and business cards through it all at the same time, and the front plastic panel folds down, revealing a ridge that catches your papers as they come through the scanner. When you’re finished scanning your papers, the entire thing folds back up into a stylish and compact shape that just happens to look great on your desk.
Performance
When I first received this unit, I swiftly unpacked it and proceeded to follow the directions to get it working on my Mac. The setup procedure is very simple, and I was up in running in no time. I scanned my first document – A grocery. It looked great, and the built-in OCR detected all of the text, and automatically created a database entry using the total price, and the items purchased.
![Mac Mac](/uploads/1/3/4/1/134111564/345624668.png)
I then scanned a full-sized invoice – and achieved a similar result, with the only concern being that the scanner slightly cut the sides off of the document. This effect was lessened significantly when I fed the invoice through a second time, and when I fed an additional invoice through the NeatDesk, the scanner worked flawlessly, and did not cut anything off at all.
![Neatdesk Neatdesk](/uploads/1/3/4/1/134111564/714802231.jpg)
When working with various documents that use different fonts, the NeatDesk did make a few mistakes, skipping a word here or there and sometimes inputting the wrong word, but I found that as I continued to use the device, it was able to learn from the documents it had already processed in order to reduce the number of mistakes that it made.
NeatWorks For Mac
The included NeatWorks for Mac software is one of the most functional and complete hardware-bundled software solutions that I have ever used – it’s remarkably easy to use, works with scanners other than the NeatDesk (like the Fujitsu ScanSnap series), and is able to analyse, interpret, and convert your data into searchable and editable text quickly, efficiently, and with fewer mistakes than most OCR programs that I’ve used.
The design of the software is also compelling – both visually and functionally, NeatWorks for Mac is powerful, easy to use, and reliably got the job done every time, with very minimal intervention on my part. If I could describe NeatWorks using just one word, that word would be “polished.”
A Few Concerns
While the vast majority of my experiences with the NeatDesk for Mac were positive and rewarding, I did encounter a few points of concern. First, if NeatDesk for Mac isn’t already open on your Mac, hitting the scan button on the unit would occasionally launch Preview’s built-in scanning utility instead of opening NeatWorks for Mac. This only happened to me a few times, but did occur often enough to occasionally become annoying.
Second, while I appreciated the included paper insert that allowed me to feed receipts, documents, and business cards all at the same time through pre-sized slots, I was disappointed more than once that it wasn’t able to hold more – I was able to fit 12-15 documents, about as many receipts, and about 10-12 business cards into the holding slot all at once. This was fine after I’d already scanned everything into my library and was only using the NeatDesk for “maintenance,” but was frustrating when I was initially feeding all of my hundreds and hundreds of documents, receipts, and business cards through the machine for the first time.
Another concern that I had is that NeatDesk didn’t do a very good job of handling documents that contained columns, reading across the entire page when inputting my data into its database rather than reading column-by-column, however, in Neat’s defense, I’ve not yet seen any scanner software able to do this. Further, again as I somewhat expected, the NeatDesk occasionally had difficulty processing highly graphical business cards.
Verdict
Overall, I was very impressed with both the NeatDesk for Mac and its included NeatWorks software, and found that, while it sometimes took a while for the software to “learn” how to most accurately process your documents, the machine performed extremely well once it was established.
The NeatDesk for Mac and its companion software stand as examples of excellent, easy to use, attractive and intelligently designed products that do their job as well as I’ve ever seen a solution do straight out of the box, and while I did run into a few minor snags, my overall experience with the NeatDesk for Mac was exceptionally positive.
All things considered, I was very impressed with the NeatDesk for Mac, and found it to be an extremely valuable to to help me stay organized and be more productive, and I was very impressed with the design and build quality of the unit.
Rating & Information
Rating: [rating:4]
While the NeatDesk for Mac is certainly a well-designed, durable, and high-quality product, I was nevertheless slightly disappointed that it didn’t work perfectly with its software 100% of the time (occasionally launching the scanning utility included with OS X). Further, I occasionally found myself wishing it could hold more paper that it actually does, and I was quite disappointed at its lack of ability to handle documents with columns. Below, please find a list of the pros and cons that I encountered:
Pros:
- Durable and professional, and provides excellent performance.
- OCR text recognition worked very well.
- Reasonably priced in comparison to other similar scanners.
- Beautiful machine looks great on desk.
- Well-designed.
Cons:
Neatdesk For Mac Download
- Can take a while for NeatWorks to “learn” your documents.
- Cannot handle documents with columns.
- The driver seemed to have occasional issues, launching OS X’s scanning utility rather than NeatWorks.
- Included paper tray could be larger.
Taking all these things into account, I award the NeatDesk for Mac 4 out of 5 stars, because while it did excel at its task most of the time, there were just enough glitches and disappointments for me to occasionally become frustrated with the unit. I feel that I could strongly recommend the NeatDesk for Mac to most business-oriented consumers, or to anyone who need a little extra help to stay organized. For more information, or to purchase the NeatDesk for Mac ($399.95), visit Neat’s product page on the web.