By Contributor Scott Kramer
Here is a fantastic new document scanner
Sitting in my office some 30 years ago, I noticed the paperwork piling up across the desk. They were mostly articles about whatever topics I had been writing about. Not wanting to keep those physical documents – that was going to take up way too much space – I still wanted to reference them. And then I had an epiphany.
I took a few pages over to the office fax machine, and faxed them to myself via email. With hope, I checked my email and there was an electronic version of the pages. I saved them in my email. Then I went back and faxed the rest of the articles. By the end of the afternoon, I had digitized all of the articles and thrown out the physical copies. Have been hooked on scanning ever since.
Of course, scanning is incredibly simple and fast to do now. While I have a desktop scanner that connects via Bluetooth to my Chromebook or phone, I mostly just use my phone and the Google Drive app’s built-in scanner to digitize documents these days. It’s ultra-fast and super easy. Once I scan what I need, I download it to a thumb drive and shred the original. That way, the document is safely kept offline where no one but me can access it. I also back up that drive every few weeks. And I scan literally every document I need – bills, receipts, forms, articles, bank statements, whatever. Everything is organized in a way that makes sense to me, so I can access files much faster than anyone with a manual paper filing cabinet. Yeah, I’m obsessed. Have even thought about starting a document scanning business for friends.
And I’m always looking at new scanners that hit the market. One such model, the new ScanSnap ix2500, recently debuted and is now sitting on my desk. Because I don’t own a Windows or Mac machine, I’ve connected it by WiFi to both an iPhone and an Android model for testing. It’s really fast to set up. And although its features are limited on the ScanSnap Home phone app, it does work flawlessly so far in my testing.
The flagship scanner is armed with an advanced imaging chip that was originally developed for business-style document scanners to handle more intensive workloads and scanning tasks. It also includes a 5-inch responsive and intuitive touch screen that lets users program custom settings and save specific cloud-based destinations. And you can set up profiles to send scans to different places for various users. There’s also a physical scan button, in case you don’t want to commandeer the process from your device.
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It can do full two-sided scanning at 45 pages per minute and hold up to 100 sheets of paper at a time. Thanks to stable paper feeding technology, the process has been nothing but smooth so far. Skew detection can stop feed operation to prevent damage if any sheets are fed incorrectly. While the phone apps are rather simple and basic, there are more features offered on the PC version. Plus the machine takes up a small footprint. It sells for $460 and is available in white or black.
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