Bad UI, Bad usability, Memory hog, crashes, altogether awful – J. Maxwell – SF Bay Area, CA, USA
I feel bad writing this because I met the NeatCo folks at MacWorld and they were genuinely nice and engaged in the product they’re building.

Now that that’s out of the way, I paid 0 for their scanner bundled with this software and think it’s completely unusable junk. I only use it for OCR now and put everything in Evernote instead.

As I write this, I can’t even switch to NeatWorks because it’s completely locked up doing OCR on a PDF. My fan is running at maximum speed on the current top-of-the-line MacBook Pro.

It crashes frequently and doesn’t save.

It does an awful job of processing yellow receipts, especially those with blue text.

The organizational structure is confining and frustrating, forcing you to choose a “folder” for each scan type, and preventing you from tagging things across multiple smart folders. For example, in useful software like Evernote or Yep, I can tag something *taxes* *2009* *w2* *house*. Nope, not in NeatWorks. Pick one, and that’s where it has to stay.

Then try searching for something. Wait 3 minutes. Great, let’s look for all documents with the text “2009″ in it. There’s your search results. Now drag one to a folder and…hey! NeatWorks clears the search and you have to do it all over again.

Try scanning a document. Oh no, it’s about 2 degrees tilted and the OCR isn’t working right. Want to fix it? Sure. Crack open the file in the Neat library bundle, search for the PDF (or drag it out of the NeatWorks main window on to your desktop). Open it in Preview. Use image adjustment to fix the angle by 2 degrees. Save it. Drag it back in to NeatWorks. Reprocess. Only took 4 minutes! Or neat could just build all the os x coreimage utilities into this app, since they are readily available, and let us do this within the program.

So by now you’re frustrated and you want to report a problem. Contact their support. Wait a week. No response. Do it again. Still no response. Maybe the third time you’ll get a form letter back that may or may not actually address the issue (like the software’s habit of forgetting where the scanner is in the middle of a large document scan and causing you to cancel). Post in the forums? Don’t bother, you’ll only get other customers sharing their grief.

Anyway, I hope to do two things with this review:
1) dissuade potential customers from making the same mistake
2) Give visibility to this and pressure NeatCo to get their ass in gear and releases stable, quality software

For what it’s worth, upon buying my NeatDesk for Mac I recommended it to two people, both of whom have already returned theirs, bought SnapScans, and are using them with Yep/Evernote instead. I’d rather not give up yet and hope to give the next version of this 5 stars. Come on neatco…
NeatWorks Digital Filing System Software for Mac: The Neat Company: 00582 NeatWorks Software for Mac enables you to scan receipts, business cards and documents so you can organize, store and secure all your important information using a compatible scanner. The patented technology identifies and extracts the important information¿and automatically organizes it for you. Transform receipts into expense reports, scan business cards into Address Books contacts and create searchable PDF files from any document. Export information to PDF, Excel and Quicken. NeatWorks for Mac was built from the ground-up to look and feel like the OS X applications you use. It features drag-and-drop, multiple views, ¿print to¿ NeatWorks functionality and imports e-receipts. NeatWorks software is compatible with the Neat Mobile Scanner, Fujitsu S300 and S510M, HP Officejet J6480, Canon Pixma MP480, Canon Pixma MX410 – read more.

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