Despite getting a sheet-fed scanner, I still use my flat-bed scanner to scan, mainly photos. The last couple of times we've been home, Mum has given us some old photos. Well, not necessarily given, but lent so that I could scan them and, if needed, print better ones.

The one on the right there, for example, was taken when I was 15 or 16, standing in front of the front door of our house at the time. 1972 or '73. If I recall correctly it was taken by my Uncle Ty, who still remains an avid photographer, though obviously at the time it was on film.

Looking at it now, it looks like I'm just about to sign up with The Style Council, or maybe even The Jam. Steely gaze under a fringe, and a polo neck. Damn cool or what?

To contrast that photo, here's a much older one:

This was taken in 1908 and shows my great grandfather and his family. My great grandmother, seated there, was pregnant with my grandmother, Mum's mother. Despite the general mortality rates at the time, all the children survived and grew up to be adults. Three of the lads even joined up for the first World War, although one of them was too young (Mum says he was found out and my great grandmother had to travel to France to pick him up). My great grandfather was a policeman in a village called Wolston, just outside Coventry.

I never knew any of them except for the girl seated on the right, who was my great aunt Annie, who died at about the same time as my photo above was taken. Unfortunately, I've misplaced the notes I took on all their names so I'll have to ask next time I phone my parents.

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About three months ago, as I was trying to gather documentation for my taxes to take along to my accountant, something finally snapped. I had all these invoices and statements and papers in a big old folder, and I was flipping through them, trying to find documents relevant to my taxes. In the closet in my office there's a bunch of other folders for previous years too. Ditto, the basement (oh, heck, I really need to sort it all out down there). It's a big mess.

I should scan them I thought, but the thought of digitizing them all with my flat-bed scanner in some manner was decidedly unappetizing. I knew it would never happen.

So I looked online for other solutions. After some browsing I came across the Fujitsu ScanSnap S300. It sounded ideal: a sheet feed scanner that automatically converts scans to PDF, and OCRs the images if you so wish. It does both sides of the paper at once and discards blank sides automatically. It also came with a document management application (ScanSnap Organizer) that helped store and organize (through the drag and drop of thumbnail images no less) your scanned documents. I ordered one from Amazon.

When it arrived, I set it up and started scanning some of my collected invoices/statements to see how it worked and what the results were like. It's fast, let's put it like that. I didn't bother with the OCR part of the scanning process (I don't care to actually search my phone bills, for example). A sheet goes in, you hit the button on the front, it scans, and automatically converts to a PDF on the PC, and puts it in the app's document folder to be sorted/organized. Very quick, very simple.

For my particular use scenario then, it's well recommended, but as I said, I haven't tried the OCR parts of the software, nor have I tried the business card scanning side of things. Anyway, after three months use I have an ever-growing set of PDFs, nicely organized on an external drive, and my paper shredder is getting more use than ever before. Every time an invoice comes in and is paid, I scan and shred it straight away.

(Note: there are several models in the ScanSnap series. I just chose the one with the smallest footprint. It's supposed to be "portable" as well, though I can't imagine taking it on a business trip.)

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