Going Paper-Free for $220
It’s 2011. Personal computers have been around and popular for well over a decade now, and yet we still have to deal with a huge amount of physical paper.
I’ve been wanting to go paper-free for a long time now. The advantages are obvious:
- Paper takes up physical space in our homes that digital files don’t.
- Digital files, if properly encrypted, are far more secure than sheets of paper that could be stolen.
- Digital files can be searched in an instant, while papers have to be laboriously sorted through.
- Digital files can be backed up perfectly and easily.
After reading this article I was psyched to scan and shred all the boxes of paper sitting in my apartment, but the $420+ price tag was hard to swallow. I started looking around for other options.
Here are the requirements I have for any paper-free system:
- The scanned files need to be OCR’ed so I can search them easily. I’m too lazy to categorize and tag files manually.
- I need to be able to scan files anywhere. If I’m out at dinner I want to be able to snap a picture of my receipt and tear it up right there.
- No “cloud” services allowed for unencrypted important documents. I simply don’t trust Google/Dropbox/etc enough to put my bank statements and such there.
- Files need to be backed up securely in case my apartment burns down.
- The entire process needs to be automated as much as possible, otherwise I’ll get lazy and not scan things.
It’s taken me a while, but I’ve finally got a system I’m happy with. This post will describe each part and how they fit together. The total cost is about $220, $160 of which is for a physical scanner.
via stevelosh.com
