I own this piece of equipment and it has changed the way I view paper, filing and archiving of documents.
I am NOT an organized person by nature, except on the computer. If you could see my office floor right now, you'd know this is a fact. Organizing files on the computer has always been more intuitive for me than any paper filing system I've ever tried to use. So finding an inexpensive two-sided document scanner was important for me and it may be for you as well.
The Fujitsu ScanSnap fi-5110EOX is a workhorse and simple to use. I own the older version, so this updated version should work even better. It scans both sides of the paper at the same time and can sense whether it needs to be in color or black and white, or you can force that decision. It creates pdf files and will allow you to name each one yourself, or autoname them based on date, prefix, or any parameter you set.
We had boxes and boxes full of old documents that we were keeping for tax purposes and I worked my way through them in about a week. They are now gone from our garage and each one is archived to DVD and in a safe deposit box. This came in very handy during the adoption of our two daughters. There is a ton of paperwork we wanted to save forever, to give them when they are older. They are now safe and sound and easy to find.
We now scan each document as we receive them and there is no more paper. I love it. I don't know how I lived without it for so long.
Linda Davis wrote a post about her PaperPort. She loves that device as well, so check our her blog post as well HERE.
Jeff Turner aka respres
Dena, you're welcome!
Now, unless the fifth generation migrated from West Virginia, then we're probably not closely enough related to raise any eyebrows. : ) My family has been in the Virginia/West Virginia area since before the Revolutionary War.
Jeff,
I just picked one up recently for the same purpose of getting rid of years of old paperwork and also to make all of my transactions...paperless.
It use to take so long converting docs to pdf...but not any longer.
Don
I love my ScanSnap! I got rid of two filing cabinets of builder floor plans and neighborhood info. The fact that it scans both sides of the page at once and does it so quickly makes it ideal for association docs... Two years and I still have my original one.
Moo
Sheesh, Ms. Maureen Francis, with all the money you two must be making!! Just go out and buy one! :-)
And do it before December 31, so you can write it off on your 2006 income taxes..... :-) Here's the Yahoo Shopping page the model I have is the FI-5110EOX
I have been using paperport with a scanner since my first year in college back in 1994. I have over 200 gigs worth of documents scanned in.
I don't have any paper documents at my office either. It's all in PDF format, organized for each client, etc. I have everything indexed with the pdf indexing built into paperport.
Using foldershare, I am able to access any of my documents anywhere I have an internet connection.
Jeff,
I have the CardScan. It's ok however it doesn't always read letters and numbers correctly. I thought there was something wrong with it when I first got it and had it replaced. It must be the ORC not being able to read some of the cards correctly sometimes. You have to check everything once you scan the business card.
Question, I understand that the Fujitsu Snapscan scans business cards. Have you used it for that purpose or are you having problems of it not scanning letters and numbers on business cards.
George, I only use it to archive important documents. Works great for that.