| You'd be surprised how useful having all of your documents digitally available can be. I've been doing this for years already (albeit using Google Drive - yes, some people dont trust Google - I understand that, but doesn't bother me) and these are some of the common use-cases where I find it really useful: * Tax returns. This alone makes it worthwhile. * Call-centers. You'll often have the reference/account number/etc you need quicker than the operator at the other end can look them up. * Travelling. Pulling up travel insurance etc details from your phone when you're stranded in an airport is so useful. * The inevitable "we need to see a copy if your birth certificate/driving license/passport/last 3 months of bank statements/bill from a utility to validate your identity" requests. Either email the PDF directly or print out and go - no box rumaging. * Health Records. Looking up the name of those pills you were prescribed 18 months ago, or when you had vaccinations etc. * Those moments when you're convinced you've already had your car serviced/paid that bill/renewed the warranty on your washing machine/dealt with something but cant quite remember. Tap-tap yeah there is the confirmation from the appliance manufacturer saying I am still covered by warranty - emailed it to the support people. Ball is now in their court. Job done - whats next on my to-do list? It comes up surprisingly often. Sure, not every single day, but certainly enough to justify the very very very small time investment of scanning it and uploading the PDFs Google Drive (I am sure there are alternatives that work just as well). When you retrieve something, the time-savings totally make it worthwhile. As someone else has said elsewhere, often when you need these documents it is a stressful situation - a death, an illness, an accident, something "wrong" going on financially etc. You dont want to waste time frantically digging through dusty boxes of paperwork trying to find something when you can just tap a few keys and get it in seconds with zero hassle. I highly recommend it. I "bootstrapped" my archive by heading into the office at the weekend and using the huge printers to scan in boxes full of old paper documents to PDFs. Now I top-up with a home scanner attached to my LAN - if you're looking to buy a scanner for home, make sure you get one with an automatic document feeder that can do both sides at once so you can just chuck the papers in and hit go, then collect the PDFs from your network drive. |
Any suggestions for one? I have a Canon P-208, but it's close to useless for batch scanning.