RE: filmscanners: real value? paperless office

["Laurie Solomon" <laurie@advancenet.net>]

I would suggest (a) that your office is a rarity, (b) your office
technically is not a "paperless office" in that you still receive invoices,
receipts, etc. from others that you need to scan in, and (c) most other
places which are relying heavily on electronic operations still tend to keep
paper backup files and archives of their files and records just in case as
do their workers for their personal security and use.  It is still easier
for people to printout and read a hard copy version of a 100 page report
than to read it online or off the monitor - and often more convenient as
well.

Statistics show that with the advent of the digital age paper usage has
increased rather than decreased.  It seems everyone wants their own hard
copy of each and every document just for safety and security reasons; so now
files are keep both in electronic form as well as in hardcopy form by most
offices just in case of some electronic disaster, some hacker intrusions,
some virus, some inadvertent or deliberate deletion of files by happy or
disgruntled employees, and the like.

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-filmscanners@halftone.co.uk
[mailto:owner-filmscanners@halftone.co.uk]On Behalf Of Richard
Sent: Tuesday, January 30, 2001 4:12 AM
To: filmscanners@halftone.co.uk
Subject: Re: filmscanners: real value? paperless office



>> From: "IronWorks" <ironworks@ameritech.net>
>>
>> And we now have the paperless office that was predicted 5 years ago.
>
> I've been working in the computer industry for 20 years and I'm afraid you
> are wrong.

>The paperless office was predicted more like 15 years ago. :-)

And its been here in my office in Ireland for at least 3 years.

Every piece of paper, receipt, fax etc is scanned using a Visioneer
Paperport (very fast). As the items are scanned they come out the other side
and drop into a wastebin. (The latest version of Paperport is called Strobe
VX and scans in colour). The results are automatically OCR'ed and/or one can
embed keywords into the file. From the File menu I can then send the docs to
a MarcoPolo database, mine contains 20,000 items to date, one can also store
any file, Excel, Quark etc by printing to the database and even store the
original file if needed. I can search for any item whether it be the price
of a purchase, a VAT number on a receipt, a clients name or a description of
a product and up pops the scanned item in seconds. I can also search the
database remotely from any anywhere on the planet using TCP/IP.

I set up the same system for Radiohead's recording studio in Oxford. The
band and management team can access the database from the tour bus and run
their business on the road.

It's cheap, effective and I love it.


Regards

Richard

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 | @ @ ------->>> Richard <soho@eircom.net>
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