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Ask Slashdot: How To Go Paperless At Home?
THE_WELL_HUNG_OYSTER writes "Over the years, I've had numerous scanners equipped with automatic document feeders — and all of them jam or grab multiple pages at a time (thereby missing pages). Like you, I've got years of tax returns and legal documents to scan, but with these kinds of barriers, it would take months to scan everything. Enterprise-grade machines cost 5 figures. How do Slashdotters become paper-free?"
Try using Evernote and scan as you go, keeping up on all current items. Do extra ones when you have the time.
-Myke
Lots of places will scan documents for you on professional-grade scanners, including your local Kinko's. Sometimes, you don't save money by trying to do it yourself -- like when you keep buying another cheap scanner at a couple hundred a pop to avoid getting it done professionally.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
This is the simple answer. This scanner actually works, unlike other ones I've tried. Multifunction printers with scanners, or flatbeds with a document feeder are all much slower and much more prone to jamming. The Scansnap rarely jams but when it does, it tells you and lets you fix it. It hardly ever grabs multiple pages at once, but when it does, it can notice it (mine has an ultrasonic sensor) and will let you fix it immediately.
I've scanned some 10k sheets with mine (not pages, as a double-sided document counts as 1 sheet but two pages). It works extremely well.
Yup, the Fujitsu ScanSnap 1500M is amazing. Never jams, great OCR software, VERY fast.
Check out the great reviews on Amazon
You can just toss in receipts and odd sized documents, handles them all fine.
The IRS has accepted scanned receipts since the late 90's, provided they are identical to the original and legible.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law - Aleister Crowley
http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p17.pdf
Page 16.
Basic gist: can go paperless as long as the digital images are indexed, legible and retrievable.
I'll agree with this. It just works and does so quickly.
Add a good shredder and a secure redundant storage system and you're good to go.
When I had a bunch of old documents i wanted to image, I used a tripod to suspend my digital camera over my desk pointing downward, set it to fixed focus along with a bright light nearby, then my wife and I started snapping pics as fast as I could lay pages out. We used a DSLR, but any camera should work. Setting it to fixed focus was key to prevent focusing delays.
I'd put a page on the desk and she'd snap a pic as soon as I'd lay it down (with a remote shutter release, it would be easy to do it with one person). We did over 1000 pages in less than an hour - it took longer to shred the docs than it did to image them because the cheap shredder kept turning itself off due to thermal overload. I taped the focusing ring and zoom ring in place to make sure it didn't move out of focus and spot checked a few docs along the way to make sure everything looked good. My 10MP camera gave around 250dpi resolution for legal sized documents, which was more than sufficient for my needs. I originally thought I'd save them as uncompressed TIFF's and convert to PNG's, but it turned out that the "fine" JPG setting on the camera gave good results with small file sizes (and didn't need as many memory cards). I've printed a few of the docs since then, with adequate cropping in an image editor, the printed docs look about as good as a photocopy.
Maybe not the best solution for ongoing needs, but if you have a single big batch to do and you don't want to spend a lot of money on a scanner, it might be worth looking into. This method would work well with poor quality and/or oddly shaped originals like thermal paper receipts.
I'll second this. My office has a networked Xerox Multi-function, and it handles scan-to-pdf very nicely, depositing a PDF in my inbox. Since I'm not using any paper or toner (as I would if I were making copies at the office) no one cares if I stay a few minutes late to run a sheaf or two through the scanner.
As an owner and avid fan of the ScanSnap S1500, I tell you: "Read the manual" (or at least the help files)
You can configure as you like, but on mine I press the blue magic button and I have a PDF file stored on my HDD in a folder I have preselected. This PDF is named according to the naming convention I have selected, and is later OCR'd when my computer is idle, as I have selected. No other selection boxes pop up and I don't have to click on anything at all on my computer. Just the one blue button.
That's why the Scansnap is magic
In God we trust,
everyone else we firewall!!
I've got a Scansnap S1300. Same software. If you have to do more than press the button on the scanner to scan a document, you've configured it wrong.
It does come with a manual.
S1500 is good if it won't ever move from a desk.
S1100 doesn't have a document feeder, but could be OK if you need utra-portability.
S1300 is a good compromise. A document feeder and also portable. It's the one I have and I like it.
They all use the same software.
Note that these scanners don't use TWAIN drivers. Which is mostly a good thing as TWAIN has drawbacks, and makes scanning fiddly. But it does mean these scanners won't work directly from within apps that use TWAIN, and might be a problem with Linux machines.
I have one of those and the programmer should be shot. Make that at least a dozen of times. After each scan I have to make half a dozen of mouse clicks to get ready for the next scan. Close the floating window. Then it asks me whether I want to throw away the last scan. Why would I want that? And why is it the default? Then you have to go to the dock, right-click (not an ordinary click), select the proper menu item to get the floating window again. AAARrrrrrggghhh.
What it does a nice job at is recognizing single sided and double sided, as well as orientation. OK, deduct two bullets.
Bert
You're doing it wrong. Seriously. The ScanSnap has two very distinct "modes". In the default "mode" it works with sort of a wizard interface. You press the button and a box comes up asking you "what do you want to do with this?" It walks you through the process. If you disable that mode (I think it's called Quick Menu) by right-clicking on the blue S systray icon and then clicking on "Enable Quick Menu", you open up a world of awesome.
In awesome mode, you define "profiles". As many as you like. You can define a single-sided, black & white, 300dpi, save as ARBITRARY-NAME###-DATE.PDF in X:\FOLDER. You can define other profiles with other settings, including the scan-to-email and scan-to-print options that mimic the options in the Quick Menu. When you're in a profile, you press the Scan button on the scanner and... it just DOES whatever that profile defines. At most you have a single OK button to confirm what it's going to do. Changing profiles is done by left-clicking on the blue S systray icon and clicking on the desired profile.
You're using the mode for people who don't understand computers. There's a whole customizable mode for people who do.
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