Life at the Home20

In December 2006, I purchased two things that I felt I needed to complete the elusive genealogical scanning project I had been planning for some 15 years.

One was an HP Officejet 4215 All-in-One.  This model will scan, fax, copy and print in color.  The cost at the time, I believe, was about $99.  My old laser printer had bitten the dust, I wanted a scanner with an Automatic Document Feeder (for those pesky legal documents) and GetAlong needed a fax machine in the house for his trucking business.  This printer seemed to fit the bill in every way.  Unfortunately, the all-in-one’s drivers were not compatible with a wireless network (an upgrade kit is now available).  Sweetpea and GetAlong could not print to it from their respective computers as it was connected to my desktop.  We found a low cost HP wireless color printer (6830) to serve their purposes.  HP has recently come out with an all-in-one, wireless printer (7280) which sells for about $299, a little more than we paid for both of these printers put together.  I have one at work and love it, though I still don’t think you can scan over a network.

Now all I needed to complete my mission was proper software.  I chose PaperPort 10 which was about to be replaced by an upgraded version 11.  I got it cheap on Amazon for $80.  I wanted a professional document storage program that produced PDF files that would be easily read in Adobe Reader, available to anyone for free.  This would make file sharing easier.

And that’s where the project stalled for a year and a half.  This was a huge project to undertake. Fearing failure, I even shopped around for a better software idea and purchased a book to help me determine if there was an alternative method to my madness.  After deciding I had made the right decision in 2006, I finally installed PaperPort 10 on my computer and began scanning in some birth certificates.

And I’ll tell you how it is going on Monday.

ScanSoft PaperPort 11 is available at Amazon.com!

Tags: Computers & Genealogy //