

Ask HN: I want to go paper-free. How? - lukeqsee

I would love to scan all my documents and turn them into ocr'ed PDFs. However, most excellent scanners are cost prohibitive. The typical $450 is well outside my price range (college student). Most of my documents are letter-size, or odd bits of paper. I have a HP four-in-one, so I could scan them manually.<p>So, do you have any suggestions for software, cheaper hardware, or the ilk? Any great hacks for getting rid of the paper sprawl?
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dtwwtd
An alternative would be a traditional flatbed scanner.

While not ideal for catching up on a backlog of unscanned documents, it isn't
bad for scanning current documents. They can be bought for anywhere between
$30-70.

As another thing to consider for non sensitive documents (things like course
notes or the like) would be do find a copy machine on campus that can scan
multiple pages in a row. The ones at my school have the option to email pdfs
to you rather than print. It might be a good (free) way to scan many documents
at once if you can find one.

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JBerlinsky
As a college student myself, I know the deal. I have a networked four-in-one
(networking optional, but very convenient if you can get it to work) Brother
printer and an Evernote Pro account ($50 a year or so, or you can roll your
own solution). Everything gets scanned into Evernote. Simple as that.

The main reason I went with the Brother MFP instead of the other options is
that it has an auto-doc feeder, which is very nice for multiple-page
documents. However, it is not a duplex feeder, so double-sided papers will be
a pain.

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PagingCraig
You could try the Doxie scanner: <http://getdoxie.com/>

