Gordon's Rules of Acquisition remind me that the purchase price is often the smallest cost of acquisition. So I like to digest each piece of gear before I bring down new prey.
The last meals have gone relatively well. My mother's iPad and my own iPhone 4 were big bites, but they went faster than expected. The Brother 2140 and updated Airport Express were bought for trouble-free implementation and they worked as expected. Migrating my old 3G to my son was more complicated thanks to AT&T's incomprehensible and undocumented contract rules, but it too has passed.
Since Canon refuses to make the dSLR I want [1], I'm delaying replacement of my aging DigitalRebel. So my path is clear for something more challenging.
Hence Project Shredder.
I am bad at filing. I've always been bad, but it's getting worse. Once the easy stuff is tossed, the hard stuff builds up in bins and boxes. I need a better approach [2].
I have some past experience with document and image scanning including developing document management technologies, but I've never felt that the technology was really ready for my home use. Over the past few years, however, OCR and full text indexing have matured into my zone of acceptably pain-free technology. Adobe's 1996-vintage PDF image/text format has become widely accepted [3]; it's the format I've wanted for fifteen years. The Fujitsu ScanSnap line has been stable and respected for at least ten years, and their space-saving S1300 has gotten a great review from a source I trust.
So it's time to make a stab at this. I'll have more to say in future posts about the S1300 when it arrives, and how the entire process plays out at our home [4]. Look for the "document management" tag for related posts.
The last meals have gone relatively well. My mother's iPad and my own iPhone 4 were big bites, but they went faster than expected. The Brother 2140 and updated Airport Express were bought for trouble-free implementation and they worked as expected. Migrating my old 3G to my son was more complicated thanks to AT&T's incomprehensible and undocumented contract rules, but it too has passed.
Since Canon refuses to make the dSLR I want [1], I'm delaying replacement of my aging DigitalRebel. So my path is clear for something more challenging.
Hence Project Shredder.
I am bad at filing. I've always been bad, but it's getting worse. Once the easy stuff is tossed, the hard stuff builds up in bins and boxes. I need a better approach [2].
I have some past experience with document and image scanning including developing document management technologies, but I've never felt that the technology was really ready for my home use. Over the past few years, however, OCR and full text indexing have matured into my zone of acceptably pain-free technology. Adobe's 1996-vintage PDF image/text format has become widely accepted [3]; it's the format I've wanted for fifteen years. The Fujitsu ScanSnap line has been stable and respected for at least ten years, and their space-saving S1300 has gotten a great review from a source I trust.
So it's time to make a stab at this. I'll have more to say in future posts about the S1300 when it arrives, and how the entire process plays out at our home [4]. Look for the "document management" tag for related posts.
-- footnotes --
[1] Stop the 3$!#$% megapixels Canon. Give us ISO.
[2] Adobe, like Microsoft, wasn't always a zombie company.
[3] Though Fujitsu's software distribution strategy may lead me to a Torrent client!
[4] I'll keep the way I file receipts and manuals. Receipts get tossed into a bin in chronological order. Manuals get placed in bookcase boxes in alphabetic order with the date of acquisition written on the front page. I weed receipts by tossing the bottom of the bin, the manuals as I add new ones. This process is so efficient I don't see much room for improvement.
