Breaking Through, Travelling On

Karmacat

Coolest thing **ever**: connecting up with my business partner on Skype, and learning which buttons to push

edinburgher

Excuse the random question KC, but do you have a scanner? Considering digitising my paperwork to avoid buying a filing cabinet, but was hoping to find someone else who had gone down the same route...

NorthernMonkey1

I keep copies of my important paperwork as PDFs which are scanned it.

edinburgher

NorthernMonkey1 wrote: »

I keep copies of my important paperwork as PDFs which are scanned it.

Can you recommend a scanner?

Alchemilla

Impressively technical tonight.

Karmacat

Ed, sorry I wasn't online - my toothache qualified as an emergency, I've been at the dentist's and under the shower (to relax) ...

Scanning - absolutely, I scan everything I can. I have a documents file of jpegs of scanned documents - passport, driving licence and whatnot - all my photos are scanned - that took absolutely ages, but is completely worth it - they're all on my external hard drive. One of the earliest is the photo of the wedding of one set of great grandparents, in 1903 ... you can't buy that, and it *has* to be preserved. I also have a flash drive of documents, photos and software, kept in the hotel bag.

I send my French accounts to my French accountant online these days, with scanned copies of the documents, and as it used to cost about £6 to get them over there, thats quite a saving financially - and that happens lots of times, things that used to have to be sent through the post can be sent online.

And of course lot of bookies need scanned documents - you can usually cope with a good camera or phone, but if you're going to do any great number of documents, I think a scanner is just **easier**.

Interesting that NorthernMonkey (great name ) mentions pdfs - thats one of the most important things, to my mind.

As to what brand - frankly, anything will do. When I got this latest laptop, the Dell printer I had didn't like it, so I had to buy a new one urgently. I just went with the offer at the local stationer's, to be honest! It was about £40, 2 years ago, a printer/scanner, the Epson SX218 - it converts documents into pdfs internally, or scans them as tiffs, jpegs, whatever.

HTH

rtandon27

Karmacat wrote: »

Ed, sorry I wasn't online - my toothache qualified as an emergency, I've been at the dentist's and under the shower (to relax) ...

Ouch! - hope you are feeling OK now!

edinburgher

What a detailed response, thanks KC.

Do you encrypt your files? It sounds like you have a lot of documentation that would be worrying to have fall into the wrong hands.

Alchemilla

How are the fangs today, KC?

Karmacat

edinburgher wrote: »

What a detailed response, thanks KC.

No probs - a scanner to me is more important than a printer.

Do you encrypt your files? It sounds like you have a lot of documentation that would be worrying to have fall into the wrong hands.

I don't, to be honest - the scans don't leave the house. I reckon not encrypting them is the same as having the documents in the house (which they are, of course). I tried to encrypt, as flashdrives have free encryption software on them, but they froze half a dozen times, and I gave up If I *did* take them out of the house, I'd push on through and find a proper way to encrypt them. The hard drive is in a fireproof container, so I'm pretty safe.

rtandon27 wrote: »

Ouch! - hope you are feeling OK now!

Alchemilla wrote: »

How are the fangs today, KC?

Antibiotics and painkillers is how the fangs are, thank you Appointment first thing on Monday, and I've realised that I've had a few things going on this last few weeks (all that sickness and nausea!) thats linked in to all this - it sounds like a dental hospital may be in my future, but there's a sizeable waiting list. We'll see. Taking it easy this weekend, no option really.