Planning on archiving say a few hundred pages of misc stuff and want a B&W auto feed scanner. Looks like there are some cheap old hp enterprise scanners on eBay, and I'm wondering if anyone can reccomend me a model for say $50.
don't care about speed or quality...
Thanks
Posted Jun 23, 2019, 8:45 PM UTC
Cheapest would be an old inkjet mfp that someone's throwing away. The scanners rarely die, just don't expect to print on it.
And make sure the papers are completely flat. They will work perfectly until the end of time, but they will get jammed easily on folded papers.
I recently digitized about 1800 pages of paper notes from every semester of college.
I don't suggest a double-sided scanner, instead, I recommend getting a cheap reliable single sided form-fed automatic scanner. On Amazon, I got a Canon all-in-one for <$80.
Then, seperate your papers into batches of 30 pages or so, and scan each side in seperate runs, and use the free PDFSam program to merge alternate sides.
I think the cost and reliability of a single sided scanner more than makes it worth it. Just get a brand new single sided scanner and use software to merge both sides.
Once I got into a good workflow, it only took me about a minute a batch.
Canon makes some good double-sided scanners. Search for a canon scan front.