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?"

Fujitsu ScanSnap or similar

[introp]

A sheet-feeder duplex scanner that'll scan and OCR to a PDF. Drop in your year of bank statements, press the button, come back in five minutes. Scan your receipts, product manuals, whatever you actually use. Throw out everything else.

ScanSnap

[MikeMo]

Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500 totally rocks. I bought that refurbished for $250. Add in Yojimbo or Evernote and you'll be set. We've gone paperless in our office and at home, and this machine is the heart of that. We scan everything and shred it.

It's nice not having the paper around, but the BIG thing is not having to find it - it's always at your fingertips, searchable by document content or via the keywords in Evernote or Yojimbo.

Use a mounted camera

[Anonymous Coward]

I had this exact problem. With a scanner I was getting up to 3 scans per minute, and even at that rate it would have taken me months to scan all I wanted. I realized the problem was the physical moving of the element, and that if it were to take the whole snapshot at once then it would be a lot faster. A camera mounted overhead, with a trigger to snap photos dropped my scan time down so much I was doing 12-15 pages per minute. Assuming you get it well lit, with a decent camera that has little distortion, you can get images that are as good as a scanner MUCH faster. I posted about my setup here:

http://bobbaddeley.com/2011/05/fast-scanner/

Re:Fujitsu ScanSnap or similar

[musth]

A ScanSnap costs $400, obviously quite an intricate product (iphones are less than this). How much does manufacturing, assembling, shipping, and mining the rare earth metals and other materials needed to create one of these things counteract the environmental and monetary savings of keeping less paper? How many people can even AFFORD a luxury like this?

I think this might be another example of techno-delusional thinking.