Flatbed Scanners

Why in the heck are flatbed scanners so dang expensive? Seriously? I can't seem to find decent scanner for less than $500. I can't really see why they need to cost so much. I mean, they're pretty much a single use device and they put these things into much cheaper multiple-function printer/scanner/copier devices and sell them for under $100 in some cases.

So what am I going to do about it? eBay.

A top feed, duplex Fujitsu is about $300. Still a touch pricy, but they're good scanners. Next up is a Xerox Documate for around $400. Finally there's the HP 5590, but frankly I've heard that this one kind of stinks.

So it looks like, unless I find something on craiglist, I'm going to be stuck with forking over $300-400. Oh well, it's for the greater good, right? Hmmmmm....

iPad in Church

So if you're gonna go paperless, you need to really commit to being completely paperless.  In my opinion, this means getting rid of as many paper books as possible... including my bible.  So this past Sunday I took the iPad to Church. 

This was much easier than you may think.  I downloaded Bible Reader by Olive Tree, put a copy of the American Standard Version, hooked it into my Evernote account and I was good to go.  Fully ready with electronic bible in-hand, ready to take surmon notes and all without wasting a single sheet of paper.

But it get even better.  My church has a Tuesday night Men's bible study too, so I took the iPad there as well.  What an awesome invention!

PaperlessGeek Is Such a Twit

No blog today would be worth anything if it's not autoposting on Twitter.  So, I went ahead and set up a Twitter feed as well.  Follow me @paperlessgeek on Twitter to get the latest posts and info.

Drive Corrupt...Panic Attack!....New NAS... Ah, That's Better

So the other day I went to pull some of my files off of my external 500GB harddrive, only to have Windows come back and tell me that the Legacy folder was corrupt.  Ack!  There's only about 15 years of data in that folder, so it's pretty much my entire computer life.  So the panic attack insued. So I ran the Windows drive recovery tool and had it fix errors, but once it completed, I couldn't mount the drive... Ack!  So, after rebooting the PC,  I moved it over to my laptop, hoping it something to do with my PC acting strangely... Ack!  It doesn't work here either? OK. OK. Calm down, Gary.  It's reallt gonna be OK.  Maybe there's something wrong with the USB cable... Whew!  Sure enough, that was it.

So I was luck this time.  Yes I have a back up but that could days to restore, and I just don't want to wait that long.  So I needed a more easily accessable means of storing my data but also had some built in reliability so I don't have to lose sleep at night if something goes wrong.

Enter the Netgear Stora!

It's a 1TB NAS with a lot of really cool functionality.  First off, it's a single 1TB disk, but there's an extra bay in the unit, so I just installed another 1TB disk I had in my collection 'o computer crap, and viola! An instant mirrored drive. It also has a USB port on the front, so I can attach an external drive to it for back up purposes or, as I'm currently using it, as a port that allows me connect my old external drive and move the files onto the NAS. It also integrates directly with iTunes, so I can easily migrate my entire library onto the device.

Now begins the task of migrating all of my legacy data onto the new device, but once it's done, I'll have a fully mirrored copy of all my important files.  Plus, I can set it up with my Mozy account, so I can continue to have offline backups as well.  How sweet is that?