

How I filled two dumpsters and went paperless - ryanwaggoner
http://ryanwaggoner.com/2010/11/how-i-filled-two-dumpsters-and-went-paperless-with-the-fujitsu-scansnap-s1500/

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whatrocks
My apartment got robbed the day after I got a brand new external to back up my
MacBook. Guess where it was at time of robbery? Plugged into the laptop.
Luckily, I had a second, much crappier-looking external with most of my stuff
that the thief didn't take. But I still lost tons of pictures and music. I've
been Dropboxing ever since. But would love recommendations on secondary online
storage providers in case Dropbox ever whiffs..

~~~
chime
I've been using Mozy for over a year now. It works fine with my 700GB of
storage.

~~~
eftpotrm
Serious question - I'm a photographer so generating 5-10GB of new data in a
batch is far from unheard of, I've got hundreds of GBs stored and it's all on
external drives. Mozy's FAQ doesn't seem designed for me ;-)

When I've looked into this in the past, every provider has had issues with the
new and archived content volume, and sometimes even the use of external rather
than internal drives (!) that has made it unviable. I couldn't see from Mozy's
site whether this was the case with them as well? If not and I can genuinely
back up several hundred GBs of data (phone calls from ISP notwithstanding) and
potentially add tens to low hundreds of GBs new data per month, from whatever
drive source I choose, this sounds like what I want. Would this be the case
from your experience?

~~~
chime
Mozy will indeed work for the scenario you described. I easily have over 100GB
of photos and 300GB of home videos and have had no problems. When I purchased
my Mozy account, it was for unlimited data (not sure what it is now). Syncing
of new data is transparent and works very well (though sometimes I've had 5000
small mozy_temp files in my TEMP folder that never got cleaned up). Restore
from Mozy will not be fast but they do offer DVD burning service at a decent
price. Mozy has an online login but don't expect Dropbox.com quality browsing.
I also use Dropbox for personal documents and it works perfectly fine with
Mozy.

If you're adding 50GB/month, that's at least 1GB of upload per night. You'll
definitely have to have a good internet connection. I haven't had any network
speed issues with Mozy personally.

~~~
evgen
As a counter-point, I had Mozy for several years and eventually dropped it
because they throttled the upload and it took forever to get my data onto
their servers. If you are aiming to backup a lot of data then I would suggest
you find the cheapest all-you-can-eat service to use as a backup to your real
backup process and keep a mirror drive that you archive to every week and take
offsite. An online backup service will save your ass if you get lazy or
forgetful, but it may have a hard time keeping up and will be a PITA if you
ever do suffer a catastrophic event and need your data back quickly. Think
belt _and_ suspenders, with the regular practice of mirroring your important
drive being the primary backup plan.

~~~
eftpotrm
Thanks to you both; sounds worth a try. This wouldn't be my primary backup
because I've already got a (semi-) regular mirror to a backup drive in my
workflow, but domestic practicalities make getting an offsite copy complicated
so that's what I'm really looking for here and Mozy sounds like a good fit.

I should stress too - 50GB / month is a worst case scenario, not a typical
usage! Raws and processed JPEGs for a couple of big events can hit that
together but I don't often have a couple of big events in the same month.

------
cagey
I did this over 5 years ago (Fujitsu fi-5110EOX w/Acrobat 6.0 Standard running
on WinXP). It been a complete success, but we've also been a victim of it's
success: I read about all the cool new features of the newer Scansnaps and am
very jealous (chiefly because either automatic OCR + indexing isn't part of
the setup we have, or I'm too dumb to have figured out how to enable it). This
one feature is ALMOST enough to get me to buy a new Scansnap, but (a) the old
one works just as good as it ever did, and our "filing system", such as it is,
is "good enough" (to let us retrieve needed docs), and (b) new or old, these
devices aren't cheap (and I'm not clear how much benefit automatic OCR +
indexing would be). Anyway, it seems it should be a software only feature; if
only I could use the old scanner with newer software... but I investigated a
year ago and my scanner is in the "obsolete" category as far as the vendor is
concerned (sigh; is there any open source software that can interface to any
of the Scansnap scanners?). Also when I read the swooning reviews of the new
Scansnaps, it seems the platform is usually Mac, which I have no plans to move
to (are all the coolest features also present on the Windows version?). And
yes, shredders have been far less reliable than the scanner: we must have gone
thru at least 4 so far...

~~~
lazyjeff
If you already have PDFs, isn't OCR simply a PDF --> PDF+metadata conversion?
Why wouldn't some open source OCR software work, where you feed it your old
PDFs and it outputs OCRed PDFs. Is this some kind of tactic for scanner
manufacturers to sell newer versions of scanner or am I understanding this
wrong. (Maybe OCR happens at the pre-PDF level where the scanner can read the
document in a higher resolution?)

~~~
wladimir
You can indeed do OCR at any stage. The only potential issue I see is that
JPEG compression (as used by PDF) might interfere with some OCR algorithm and
make it less reliable, so OCRing directly on the raw output of the scanner
might yield a somewhat better recognition. Then again, I know nothing of the
protocols used by scanners over USB; it might well be that scanners send their
result already compressed, or that the resolution is so high compared to the
letter size that this doesn't matter.

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JabavuAdams
One security consideration that I didn't see addressed -- if someone
unauthorized accesses your electronic docs, it's easier for them to do it
without your knowledge. If someone breaks into your house, you'll usually know
about it.

This may not apply to government docs which are presumably stored somewhere
electronically, anyway.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
This is a good point, and one that I hadn't considered. However, like you
said, most of my docs probably also exist in the databases of companies and
the government. Ultimately, it's not something I worry about that much; I'm
probably more concerned with losing access to my documents than someone else
gaining access to them.

~~~
Symbol
Encryption can help here.

------
URSpider94
Another option to consider is NeatReceipts. The base version comes with a very
slim USB-powered scanner that can travel around with you, and they sell a
higher-end version with a sheet-fed scanner. It can also be set up to work
with certain third-party scanners, I believe the ScanSnap is one of them. The
default is that each page goes into its own PDF, which is pretty annoying, but
you can merge files together to make bigger documents.

What NeatReceipts offers over bulk PDF is the ability to capture and extract
lots of metadata that is specific to the document type (it supports three
types: document, receipt, and contact). You can use it to extract and export
contacts from your big stack of business cards, or to create a formatted
expense report from a pile of travel receipts.

What you lose is portability and accessibility, since all of the files live in
a "cabinet" on your computer.

I'm in the early stages of de-papering, and I'm considering using NeatReceipts
for business cards and receipts, and dumping all of the docs to PDF's that I
tag and organize using Punakea (a great tagging program for MacOS).

------
brianbreslin
I bought that same scanner. Freaking amazing. My intention is to scan 8 years
of business documents, just need a plan to organize them for backup purposes.
I did manage to scan my dad's novels he wrote on a typewriter in the 70s and
80s for him in record time. Tha alone probably justified the cost.

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troymc
When I moved from Ontario to BC about a year ago, I scanned about 95% of my
books using a similar system. Carrying them in my computer (+ Time Machine +
Carbonite) was much easier than hauling them across Canada in boxes.

I kept some books: my Tufte books (e.g. Visual Explanations), an old book of
poetry that I inherited, my Physics 101 textbook (of sentimental value)...

I didn't run the OCR. I found it too slow and the final results didn't impress
me. OCR can't handle mathematical equations. I suppose I could have used OCR
on the novels, but I didn't bother.

Scanning my books was a gamble because there was no tablet or e-Reader that
seemed good enough, but there were rumors of an Apple tablet coming soon.
Thankfully the rumors were true!

------
documentsnap
One thing I really like about his approach is he keeps it simple: instead of
going crazy with a folder structure he relies on search. Instead of using some
complex software product, he uses Spotlight. Very nice.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
I just know that I'm too lazy to make some complicated scheme work. I'd just
end up with stacks of paper that I intend to scan "someday".

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mike463
Ok, I have a question about this:

    
    
        Should you do it?
    

I've done this for a long time. I have the fi-5110EOXM for the mac that I
love.

Here's what I learned. I spent a lot of time scanning stuff. When in doubt,
scan it. I spent a days and weekends here and there.

I felt SUCH a relief after tossing all that physical stuff, but keeping it
"just in case".

But... I've NEVER looked at the stuff I scanned.

I mean, I _could_ look at it. I could data mine my power bills for trends. I
could start categorizing my spending over the years and predict stuff.

The reality is that maybe I could have tossed the stuff (make a DECISION) and
live with the consequences (which in my experience are zero).

I think I couldn't toss the stuff out of fear.

Maybe I could have used all the time saved to live a little more.

------
dlib
I did the exact same thing a year back, except for the books. Spotlight for
the searching, Dropbox for the backups and an scansnap for the pdfs. It's
working great, whenever I want to look something up I just search for the key
words and there it is. It's a pity there is no search functionality in the
Dropbox site. I don't think I'll part with my books though, but being able to
search through them would be awesome.

~~~
frossie
Same here, but used the ScanSnap-Evernote integration feature, so Evernote
takes care of both the OCR and the searching, and if anybody is feeling
particularly motivated they can also tag.

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seltzered
I'm working on similar goals right now, but focusing on making a bookscanner
(see <http://diybookscanner.org> ) instead, namely because many of the books I
have are out of print. I figure I can later just use the bookscanner for
documents as well

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AlexMuir
£30 cashback on these Scanners from Fujitsu in the UK, Germany, France and
Italy. Just send them your invoice.

[http://www.fujitsu.com/downloads/COMP/fel/scansnap/s1500-cas...](http://www.fujitsu.com/downloads/COMP/fel/scansnap/s1500-cashback-
promo.pdf)

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cowmixtoo
My wife and I just finished getting rid of two file cabinets worth of papers
using this MFP: <http://www.okidata.com/mkt/html/nf/MFP.php?sku=b4545series>

The pdf's it created were pretty small and the result of the project fits into
a very small chunk of my Dropbox account (50GB). Its great having all my files
for the past 20 years available everywhere I go.

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rb2k_
I'd really love to do this too, but I just finished my studies and feel bad
about spending 300 Euros on a scanner. Does anybody have good alternatives?

~~~
brfox
Buy a used one, scan everything, then sell it. That's what I was going to do,
but I liked the scanner so much I just kept it.

~~~
masklinn
The problem with selling it is that society as a whole hasn't gone paperless,
so you still have boatloads of inbound paper, which means you continuously
have to scan stuff.

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davidmathers
_For shredding, I picked up the Fellowes Powershred W-11C Cross-Cut Shredder.
Also not super cheap, and pretty noisy (what shredder isn’t)_

My Fellowes Powershred MS-450Cs isn't. I paid $170 for it, but totally worth
it as I hate the loud shredders.

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marknutter
I went through my only filing cabinet the other weekend and realized I had no
reason for holding onto 99% of the crap that was in there. I threw it all
away, and I have one small file folder with stuff in it, and most of it
sentimental. Good riddance.

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tlrobinson
I did the same thing, but I got the ScanSnap S300M because it's more portable
(and coincidentally the same shredder).

I use Everynote, which does OCR automatically, though I'm not sure I should be
trusting them with sensitive documents...

------
DannoHung
Why doesn't someone make a good scanner like the Snapscan that also has a
cheapo laser-printer attached for when you need to print out something like an
airline boarding pass or a cheatsheet etc?

~~~
Kadin
That's kinda like asking "why don't more toasters have coffee pots built in?"
They're two separate devices, which do two separate things. (Actually, you
could come up with an argument for the toaster+coffeepot thing, since they're
at heart both resistance-coil devices...)

Most MFPs are horrible amalgamations, basically discrete devices held together
with cheap plastic shells and shitty driver software.

Back in the 90s I remember seeing some dot-matrix printer addons that turned
the printer into a scanner, and there might have been similar gadgets for
inkjets, but modern scanners and printers wouldn't share many parts. There's
little to be gained from an engineering standpoint by combining the two.

~~~
haribilalic
I have a Canon MX850 all-in-one. It's almost two years old. It's a good
printer, scanner and fax. The printer has two paper trays and a cradle for
printing CD/DVD labels. The scanner has a flatbed scanner and an automatic
document feeder with double-sided colour scanning. It's listed at US$275 on
Amazon.

I've used it with ABBYY FineReader Express[1] on my Mac to achieve the same
result as the author for myself and my mum.

If you are after a toaster with a kettle, you can get one from Breville[2] and
other manufacturers, including one with an egg fryer.

1\. <http://www.abbyyusa.com/finereader/express>

2\. <http://www.breville.com.au/products_detail.asp?prod=435>

------
teach
Anyone know if either version of this scanner would work under Linux?

~~~
RK
There seem to be a few reports of success, but not a lot of details.

See, for example, here <http://www.documentsnap.com/fujitsu-scansnap-in-
linux/>

And from an Amazon review (November 30, 2009): _Also of interest is that the
scanner works under Ubuntu GNU/Linux using SANE drivers and gscan2pdf.
However, in my experience the scanner controls are not as complete under SANE
and gscan2pdf as with Fujitsu's proprietary drivers on a MAC and PC. Other
seem to have had better experiences than I. Ultimately, Linux users should
know that it is possible to use this scanner; however, it may take some
tweaking. But if you use Linux, you are most likely used to this._

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stcredzero
It's your own personal Rainbows End!

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbows_End>

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melissamiranda
Curious, did you PDF business cards to keep the image, or just save the OCR
data to your contacts?

~~~
ryanwaggoner
I don't collect a ton of business cards, and when I do, I usually just type it
into my address book, or increasingly, friend them on Facebook, Twitter, and
LinkedIn.

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thinkzig
If I wanted to try this on a PC does anyone know of a good indexing app for
Windows 7?

~~~
runjake
Windows 7 comes with Windows Search as part of the system, and it indexes PDFs
and is excellent (unlike the prior iterations of Windows Search/Indexing
Service)

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jrnkntl
This is exactly why I have a Scansnap (s1300) on my wish-list this december.

~~~
tricky
did you research the differences between the s1300 and s1500? if so, can you
let us know?

~~~
jrnkntl
Why I choose the s1300 over the s1500: Price, size, hybrid (runs mac &
windows).

Someone else already did the comparison for me (and you). In short; if you
want to scan a lot at once and care about the speed, go with the s1500.

[http://www.documentsnap.com/fujitsu-scansnap-how-are-
the-s13...](http://www.documentsnap.com/fujitsu-scansnap-how-are-
the-s1300-and-scansnap-s1500-models-different/)

Speed: 20 ppm vs 8 ppm

Capacity: 50 pages vs 10 pages

