The Doxie Scanner: Productive and… Cute?

I’ve known about the Doxie scanner from Apparent for some time, but I couldn’t think of a real reason for buying it until I read this post from Michael Hyatt. I’m a big Evernote fan, and the idea of taking our file folders filled with paper and sending all of that information to the cloud got me really excited.

In his post, Michael recommends the Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300, a fully-functional scanner that can scan both sides of the page at once and a total of 8 pages in a minute. However, it’s slightly out of our price range at $254.99 (current price on Amazon). At $149 (I picked up ours for slightly less on eBay), the Doxie is an affordable option among personal scanners, and it makes it really easy for anyone to get their documents and photos into Evernote and other cloud services. Here are the reasons why I like it so much:

• Doxie is small and simple. The unit weighs under 11 ounces, and measures less than a foot long. Since Doxie is powered by USB, it’s completely portable, and it even comes with a nice carrying sleeve. Also included were a quick start guide, USB cable (thanks for not going cheap and skipping this, Apparent), and calibration sheets.

• The free Doxie software is well-designed and easy-to-use. Apparent has written Doxie apps for both Mac and Windows, and although I can’t speak to the quality of the Windows app, I appreciate that the Mac version feels very Mac-ish. They didn’t go for the lowest common denominator with an Adobe AIR app or a cheap port; it’s Mac through and through.

So, scanning a document with Doxie happens in just a few short steps:

1. Run the calibration sheet through Doxie (first-time use only).
2. Line up your document with the guides on the edge of the unit.
3. Doxie pre-feeds your document to keep it straight while going through.
4. Press the one and only button on the scanner to start the scan.
5. Doxie processes the image and allows you the opportunity to scan additional pages.
6. Select the service where you’d like your scan to be sent. Native apps supported by Doxie include Evernote, Dropbox, iPhoto, Preview, and the Adobe Creative Suite. Or, you can scan right to the cloud: Google Docs, Flickr, Tumblr, or the free Doxie Cloud service.

Here’s a look at how fast Doxie scans a sheet of paper:

In short, I’m really happy with our purchase of the Doxie scanner. It does exactly what I wanted it to do — quick and easy scans of all of our documents into Evernote. I have just one complaint: what’s with the pink hearts and bubbly typography?