3 ms·
Ask HN: I want to go paper-free. How?
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.
So, do you have any suggestions for software, cheaper hardware, or the ilk? Any great hacks for getting rid of the paper sprawl?
- dtwwtd 16y agoAn 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.
- PagingCraig 16y agoYou could try the Doxie scanner: http://getdoxie.com/ http://getdoxie.com/
- JBerlinsky 16y agoAs 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.