I bought a ScanSnap scanner a few years ago. It's a $400 scanner that can scan pretty much any document -- even double-sided ones. It applies OCR to printed tex

I bought a ScanSnap scanner a few years ago. It's a $400 scanner that can scan pretty much any document -- even double-sided ones. It applies OCR to printed text and can create searchable PDFs for you. At first I balked at the price tag, then bit the bullet and purchased the scanner, and now I think it's one of the best purchases that I've ever made. I've been able to recycle thousands of documents thanks to this thing.