Going paperless, flatbed scanners

lordy

Dear all,

over the past few years a lot of papers have accumulated that are kind of important (Taxes, Wages, Insurance, etc.). I would like to create digital copies of these for easier access and off-site archiving. My filetype of choice is searchable PDF.

I currently have an iMac and a MacBook Pro (both older models) and a Canon LiDE 20 flatbed scanner. I also got my hands on a Prizmo 2 Licence through MUpromo.com. However, scanning is very slow with my current equipment (about 2 minutes per page).

Do you think that upgrading to a newer+faster flatbed scanner would make sense (The LiDE 110 is about 70 EUR) ?

Has any of you worked with the ScanSnap ix500 ? Do you think this device is worth 400 EUR in time saved ?

Have you done anything similar and have a few tips and tricks?

emerald_octane

Don't even bother with flatbed scanner's you'll be frustrated in very little time.
The perfect combo on Mac is something like Scansnap+Devonthink for automagically organizing everything.

Scansnap is well worth the money. I've had my s300m (home) for about 4 years now and it's one of the few things I keep on my desk. I've scanned about 4000ish pages with it.
Benefits include:Insane speed Double SidedColor/Black WhiteCan handle varying thickness and crinkled paper semi well (although you may have to guide some peices)

I also have deployed the desktop variant at work and they're both great. Things can get a bit tricky if you want to do it set it and forget it style. You can switch between having a new pdf per page or you can do the entire scan job in one pdf, so in those situations you may want to seperate single pages, scan those all at once, then do your multipage parts. I wish there were a hardware switch to do this rather in software but that's just me being difficult.

lordy

Yeah, looking at the amount of paper I have collected a flatbed is probably too much of a hassle.

I have read a lot of good things about Devonthink so I might just upgrade to Pro Office as I already have Pro. Devonthink apparently uses ABBYY FineReader technology and buying the upgrade is cheaper than buying the current version of FineReader itself.

I probably won't do it right now but get back to this topic in a few weeks when other things on my list are done. I will try to update this thread then.

Cpl.Klinger

I have an Epson Workforce 633 all-in one, and I scan tons of stuff with the ADF on the scanner. Speeds decent, and I can output directly to PDF. Something you may want to look into.